My first soaping disaster...

[Nate5700]

Honestly, I would leave out the milk for now. Its just another thing to go wrong and it really adds nothing to the soap.

Maybe. I've used the powdered milk in all my CP soaps and the previous shave soap, and the CP soap has turned out fine and as much as went wrong with the shave soap none of it seemed to be related to the milk. It may be all in my head but I think I notice a difference, at least in the bath soap, with it in there. I'd be with you if I thought it was a real risk of ruining the soap. Still something to think about.

If this batch works out for you, you can alwaya rebatch and add FO. Shave soap melts back down nicely since its soft.

Didn't think about this. I've never done a rebatch, but I can see how a softer soap would melt nice. I will probably want to do this since if the batch does work out I should have plenty of shave soap for a while (unless I give some away).

Check every 5 minutes, 15 is too long if something starts to go south.

Good call. It may get a little old having to hover over my soap that way, but until I get a feel for how it's going to behave I'll want to keep a close eye on it.

Also, HP doesn't have to be cooked until zap free unless you want to use it immediately.
I usually mold mine up as soon as its it mashed potatoes instead of vaseline.

Good to know. If I make it tonight my face should be smooth enough until tomorrow, and I don't have to work tomorrow. It would be less work. Still, I'm an impatient fellow and it will be hard to delay testing it...

 

[steffamarie]

Honestly, it's a mountain to get through, but I found a lot of very useful information in the "My first shaving soap is a success" thread. I made my recipe based on what the testers found worked/didn't work in their experiments, and mine came out great the first time. My recipe may be in the thread near the end - I used stearic acid as a main component and I actually don't sense a waxiness. The lather is creamy and extremely dense and very stable - and was from the beginning. I tested a little on a shaving brush after the cook/mold and it really exploded! I highly suggest reading that thread even if it does take a little while to do.

Edit: [here] is a link to the page I posted my recipe on.

 

[Nate5700]

Honestly, it's a mountain to get through, but I found a lot of very useful information in the "My first shaving soap is a success" thread.

I've perused that thread on and off but haven't made it through the whole thing yet. It wasn't exact (he didn't use shea butter), but I basically tried to follow what songwind was doing since he had so much success. I never saw how much water he used in his though, so my first try I was really just guessing. I guessed wrong.

Plunging ahead. Revised the recipe as follows:

6.5 oz Coconut Oil (41.9%)
6.5 oz Lard (41.9%)
1.7 oz Stearic Acid (11%)
0.8 oz Shea Butter (5.2%)
0.8 oz Powdered Goat Milk
1.3 oz Glycerin
2.6 oz KOH/0.4 oz NaOH (6.9% Discount)
6.4 oz Water

Now 2 hours 25 min into the cook and we're still in the "Vaseline" stage. I think maybe it's getting lighter on the edges though. No major disasters, everything basically looks like it's supposed to. It's just taking for...ev...er.

I wonder if it's the lard? I think I may have picked up somewhere that it saponifies quite slowly. Ugh.

I think as soon as this hits "mashed potatoes" I'm molding it up and going to bed. No zap tests, no testing it tonight.

 

[Nate5700]

It finally finished, at 3 hours even into the cook. I finished at midnight. Here's what it looked like this morning, and well...



It's brown.

I'm not sure why it didn't lighten in color. It turned orange as soon as the goat milk hit it and just got darker from there, so that's probably it. But it doesn't smell burned or anything. It actually has a rather pleasant smell unscented, it's a maybe slightly roasty version of the shea butter smell.

As far as the shave, it's a winner. I don't know if it was better than the last batch, but it may be more photogenic:



I like this batch. I don't know if I'll rebatch to add FO, I kinda like the smell of the shea butter. So maybe this all worked out in the end. I suspect I'll make this recipe again, even with the 3 hour cook time. But man it was tiring.

Edit 5:22 PM: I rebatched 2 of the 3 jars, so I kept one with the natural scent. Redivided the other two, did one jar of almond and one jar of the following:

4 parts Cedarwood EO
3 parts Carrot Seed EO
2 parts Basil EO
2 parts Vanilla FO

I did this in one of my CP soaps and I think it's a great scent. Woody and earthy and green. It needs the vanilla to sweeten it though, otherwise it just smells like you were rolling around in the dirt.