Sorry, tryanything. Our forum experienced a system crash over the weekend and when it came back up, a majority of our forum was missing. We're still trying to figure out what happened and are very dismayed over it.
If you have any questions about shaving soap, don't be afraid to ask. Here are some of my own tips for a great shaving soap (hopefully more people will chime in):
1) Formulate your recipe in such a way that it has at least 20% stearic acid in it. You can do this by either adding stearic acid as an additive, or you can do it 100% naturally by just adding enough hard fats/butters. I myself do it naturally by adding enough hard fats/butters. My shaving soap contains enough of these hard fats/butters to get my stearic up to 20%: tallow, kokum butter, mango butter, and sometimes illipe butter if I have any on-hand.
2) The goal of a good shaving soap is to formulate it in such a way that it has way more creamy/stable lather than bubbly lather, so you'll want to make sure that your bubbly oils like coconut oil, pko or babassu are on the lower end of your formula. Castor oil- which some consider adds bubbles- is an exception in this case. I use it at 20% in my formula because at a high %it adds a creamy stability to the lather.
3) Some great oils to use for the rest of your oil amount to round out your formula are avocado oil, olive oil, rice bran oil, shea oil, etc..
4) Add 10% vegetable glycerin ppo to your oils. It really helps to keep the shaving lather in suspension long enough (at least 10 minutes) for a good shave.
5) Other great additives I like to use in my shaving formula are: clay, sugar, silk, and goat milk or coconut milk as all or just part of my liquid amount.
With all the hard fats/butters in my formula, I like to soap my shaving formula at 130 degreesF to keep things fluid and prevent pseudo-trace. I also soap it with a 30% lye solution and superfat at 7% to 8%.
Hopefully others will chime in with their tips.
HTH!
IrishLass
