@psfred Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I just learned more about shaving soap in your one post than I have in the last month of reading. I'm going to do exactly as you suggest and go with very high stearic acid and tallow. I better get the tallow on order. I'm so excited about this I'm actually going to pry open my check book and pay for shipping from Amazon to get it next day.
I did find a chemical manufacturer that makes 92% pure stearic acid, but no one carries it for end user purchase. The only places that carry it are the big supply places that want to know how many pallets of the stuff you want. So soy wax it is! I've read a few of DeeAnna's posts that state that stearic acid doesn't produce glycerin when it's saponified. I noticed that you said that soy wax has a glycerol backbone, so I'm wondering if soy wax *does* give off glycerin when it's saponified? I'm also not seeing soy wax in soapcalc. I hate to bother you with this, but would you mind posting a link to where you bought yours, and also where you got the SAP values? Actually... you know what, never mind... I've been researching the heck out of stuff, and I'm not going to take any short cuts now. I'm gonna chase it down myself!
I have Tetrasodium EDTA, and BHT on order. I have a ton of citric acid here, so I'll make my own citrate. But yes, I'll definitely take your advice on avoiding rancidity. I DO NOT want rancid soap!
I just looked over the ingredients list of Tabac, and if you break it down to the soap ingredients and "other" ingredients, it's actually a fairly simple soap. They list the ingredients in their saponified form, but it's easily decoded. It's also very similar to your suggested recipe. It basically has tallow, stearic acid, cocoa butter and glycerin. One thing that throws me off a bit is that it lists Tetrasodium EDTA, and then Tetrasodium Etidronate. I thought they were the same thing? The rest of the ingredients are either smelling (no "fragrance" here) related or other non-essential additives (I've looked every one of them up now).
Not only does Tabac start out slippery, it *stays* slippery the more you dilute it down with water. When most soaps have long since lost their slipperyness due to too much water, Tabac *stays* slippery.
One last question.... do you hold out the shea and/or cocoa butters and add them after the mixture passes zap to make sure that the super fats are, indeed, either/both the shea and cocoa butters? I'm kinda leaning toward only holding out the 5% shea butter (so yes, 5% SF), and adding it only after the zap test passes so that I can make darn good and sure that the SF is the shea. I did this with the soap I made two nights ago, and I love the post shave feel of the soap that has the shea butter as the SF. It's a very soft, non-dry feeling. OK, so I'm a big guy: 6'2' and 220 lbs. Tough as nails. Never in my life did I think that I'd just type out the fact that I like that my face feels "soft and not dry" after shaving. I feel like I need to go do something exceedingly manly now. This whole shaving thing really seems to get a guy in touch with his feminine side.
@psfred Thank you so much for your help. I think you now have me pointed in the right direction on my quest to make my very own, non-smelly, Tabac. It may not be smelly like Tabac, but you can be darn sure it's going to be something masculine smelling by the time I'm done with it!!! Now where did I put that rose essential oil...
Seriously, though... You have been a great help both on this forum and on Badger & Blade. I always look forward to reading your posts on either forum, because I *know* I'm going to learn something. Guys like you are few and far between, and hugely under appreciated.
I'm gonna go make a small (4 oz total oils weight) batch of a slightly different variation of the recipe I cooked up two nights ago, so I can use it as a benchmark for the new tallow recipe I'll cook up once I get the tallow and soy wax delivered. I reload my own firearm ammunition, so I have multiple scales that are accurate at very small weights. In fact, it's going to be the larger batches I'm going to have a problem with; none of my current larger capacity scales have the accuracy I'd need to feel comfortable using them for soap.
Edit: Darn it, left out one last question.... are you using 5% SF?
Yet another edit: Soy wax *is* in soapcalc.
And here we are with another Edit: It looks like I might have found a pretty high purity stearic acid. The saponification values for it are very close to the values in soapcalc. It seems that stearic acids that have a high percentage of palmitic acid have a higher SAP value than those that have a greater percentage of actual stearic acid. The linked stearic has an SAP value closer to that listed in soapcalc than I have been able to find up to this point.
I just learned more about shaving soap in your one post than I have in the last month of reading. I'm going to do exactly as you suggest and go with very high stearic acid and tallow. I better get the tallow on order. I'm so excited about this I'm actually going to pry open my check book and pay for shipping from Amazon to get it next day.
I did find a chemical manufacturer that makes 92% pure stearic acid, but no one carries it for end user purchase. The only places that carry it are the big supply places that want to know how many pallets of the stuff you want. So soy wax it is! I've read a few of DeeAnna's posts that state that stearic acid doesn't produce glycerin when it's saponified. I noticed that you said that soy wax has a glycerol backbone, so I'm wondering if soy wax *does* give off glycerin when it's saponified? I'm also not seeing soy wax in soapcalc. I hate to bother you with this, but would you mind posting a link to where you bought yours, and also where you got the SAP values? Actually... you know what, never mind... I've been researching the heck out of stuff, and I'm not going to take any short cuts now. I'm gonna chase it down myself!
I have Tetrasodium EDTA, and BHT on order. I have a ton of citric acid here, so I'll make my own citrate. But yes, I'll definitely take your advice on avoiding rancidity. I DO NOT want rancid soap!
I just looked over the ingredients list of Tabac, and if you break it down to the soap ingredients and "other" ingredients, it's actually a fairly simple soap. They list the ingredients in their saponified form, but it's easily decoded. It's also very similar to your suggested recipe. It basically has tallow, stearic acid, cocoa butter and glycerin. One thing that throws me off a bit is that it lists Tetrasodium EDTA, and then Tetrasodium Etidronate. I thought they were the same thing? The rest of the ingredients are either smelling (no "fragrance" here) related or other non-essential additives (I've looked every one of them up now).
Not only does Tabac start out slippery, it *stays* slippery the more you dilute it down with water. When most soaps have long since lost their slipperyness due to too much water, Tabac *stays* slippery.
One last question.... do you hold out the shea and/or cocoa butters and add them after the mixture passes zap to make sure that the super fats are, indeed, either/both the shea and cocoa butters? I'm kinda leaning toward only holding out the 5% shea butter (so yes, 5% SF), and adding it only after the zap test passes so that I can make darn good and sure that the SF is the shea. I did this with the soap I made two nights ago, and I love the post shave feel of the soap that has the shea butter as the SF. It's a very soft, non-dry feeling. OK, so I'm a big guy: 6'2' and 220 lbs. Tough as nails. Never in my life did I think that I'd just type out the fact that I like that my face feels "soft and not dry" after shaving. I feel like I need to go do something exceedingly manly now. This whole shaving thing really seems to get a guy in touch with his feminine side.
@psfred Thank you so much for your help. I think you now have me pointed in the right direction on my quest to make my very own, non-smelly, Tabac. It may not be smelly like Tabac, but you can be darn sure it's going to be something masculine smelling by the time I'm done with it!!! Now where did I put that rose essential oil...
Seriously, though... You have been a great help both on this forum and on Badger & Blade. I always look forward to reading your posts on either forum, because I *know* I'm going to learn something. Guys like you are few and far between, and hugely under appreciated.
I'm gonna go make a small (4 oz total oils weight) batch of a slightly different variation of the recipe I cooked up two nights ago, so I can use it as a benchmark for the new tallow recipe I'll cook up once I get the tallow and soy wax delivered. I reload my own firearm ammunition, so I have multiple scales that are accurate at very small weights. In fact, it's going to be the larger batches I'm going to have a problem with; none of my current larger capacity scales have the accuracy I'd need to feel comfortable using them for soap.
Edit: Darn it, left out one last question.... are you using 5% SF?
Yet another edit: Soy wax *is* in soapcalc.
And here we are with another Edit: It looks like I might have found a pretty high purity stearic acid. The saponification values for it are very close to the values in soapcalc. It seems that stearic acids that have a high percentage of palmitic acid have a higher SAP value than those that have a greater percentage of actual stearic acid. The linked stearic has an SAP value closer to that listed in soapcalc than I have been able to find up to this point.
Last edited: