soap for a pig farmer

[mare61]

Hi guys!

I'm trying to come up with a soap for my husband that would take the smell of his hands. I was thinking about using cornmeal and coffeegrounds to get some scrubbing action and maybe black tea leaves and then adding anis eo. Does anybody had any success making a soap like this. Any other fragrance ideas????????

 

[7053joanne]

Well you picked the things I would have suggested....coffee and anise EO. I think any of the standard oils would work as the soap base. I will be making a similar kitchen soap this weekend. Let us know how it turns out!

Joanne

 

[organicsoapgal]

I think a good fragrance is important, but you also want to try and use ingredients that are going to absorb the odor on his hands, not just mask it. Maybe, like a clay based soap???

 

[IanT]

I have been thinking that a very good ingredient to use for deodorizing would be activated carbon (ground up)...its pretty much charcoal... ((beware...chem stuff ahead!) Since the carbon molecule has 4 bonding sites available, in its activated state it will basically latch on to any other contaminating molecules in the air or surrounding atmosphere (ie if you used it in soap it may work on your skin!).. By latching itself to these molecules it in essence changes the molecule from its normal state, into an altered state that no longer has the odor!))


charcoal is also said to absorb toxins from the body! (this would be a soap you would NOT want to add scent to as it would most likely neutralize it...but it WOULD neutralize the odor (in theory!)



Hows that idea!

 

[Laurie]

I know in the soapmaking class I took that got me started
in soapmaking a number of years ago, we made a soap for
getting rid of odors. We used coffee as the liquid. Recipe below.

4.5oz lye
12 oz distilled water
8 oz canola oil
8 oz olive oil
8 oz coconut oil
8 oz crisco

Brew triple strength coffee and use in place of the distilled water.
Add 1 Tbsp. used coffee ground at trace.

I can't remember how well it worked.

Just an idea. Laurie

 

[happyday]

Hi! I've been reading and lurking for months now, but this topic has been on my mind this week too, so you forced me to register and speak up!

We don't have hogs, but we do have sheep and cattle. Two nights ago I mired the tractor in mud at the cattle feeder and by the time I got it dug out, that sour anaerobic poop smell was pretty well embedded in my skin. Why don't I ever think to wear gloves out there??

I have 5 different home-made soap bars on the bathroom sink at the moment :roll: .... so here's what I can tell you. The softer, higher-conditioning, higher superfatted soaps had absolutely no effect on the stink no matter what the scent was. I tried lavender/rosemary/spearmint, chocolate/peppermint and blood orange/spearmint and all I ended up with was sweet minty poop stink. The scrubby bar with coarse sea salt, corn meal and fir/cedar/spruce made a little progress, and the spa bar with 100% coconut oil, and table-grade sea salt mixed 1:1 salt to oil made the most progress in odor removal (I doubt the salt had much to do with it, but it's the only high-cleansing soap I have).

I know that if I had relented and used the Gojo mechanics soap with pumice it probably would have taken care of all the smell, but I'm trying to avoid that kind of thing in the quest for homemade stuff that works instead.

So... I'm kind of thinking that the smell is embedded in oils and because those oils are very close to our own body chemistry, they're hard to remove, thus the conditioning soaps don't touch it. I haven't tried coffee soap or charcoal yet, but if they're known to help with odors, then it's definitely worth a try, but I think I would choose a blend of oils that is very high in the cleansing catagory and with as little superfatting as you can safely get away with. That's because the "cleansing" oils do so by bonding to loose oils on your skin and carrying them away. Make sense?

You've given me the kickstart I needed to delve deeper into it -- I'll try a coffee soap with a super-high cleansing number tonight and report back how well it does.

One other thought (yes, you'll all be glad when I shut up and go back to lurking!) -- if tomatoe juice is supposed to be so good for taking skunk oil and other nasty odors off of dogs, is there any chance that tomatoe juice as the liquid in a soap might lend some of the same advantages?

 

[lsg]

Mechanics dream soap takes the smell off hands. I gave a bar to a friend of mine for her DH. He used it to get the deisel fuel smell off his hands and wanted another bar. Here is a recipe for a small batch.

Mechanics Dream Bar
8 ounces olive oil
4 ounces coconut oil
4 ounces palm oil
1 ounce of lanolin added at trace
1 teaspoon finely ground pumice added at trace
1/8 cup finely ground expresso added at trace
2.3 ounces lye
7 ounces water
1 teaspoon Sandalwood Fragrance oil

I used strong brewed coffee instead of water.

 

[Neil]

I made an odor reducing soap recently with Coffee and it works pretty well but I also made a soap awhile back for poisen ivy that contained about 3 tbsp of cocoa powder in about 22 oz of oils and this soap is the best Ive seen to remove odors. I used a little tea tree oil in it also. you may have to just experiment some.

 

[gloworm]

I've made a kitchen soap using strong brewed coffee for the liquid with used coffee grounds added at trace and it does work well on odors. Good for onion & garlic smells on hands as well as being pretty good on fuel oil odors on hands too.
Glo

 

[mare61]

I made a coffee soap today with the following recipe:

600 g coconut oil
200 g vegetable shortening
200 g olive oil
156 g lye
250 g strong coffee

At trace I added 1 oz of glycerine, 1.5 oz of black coffee FO and 2 tbsp. of coffee grounds. This is supposed to be a very high cleaning soap.

The soap smells wonderful. We'll see how well it works.

I tried to find a recipe for a soap with activated charcoal but couldn't find anything.

Thank you so much for all the great suggestions.

 

[IanT]

If your going to use AC, I would just add some at trace just like if you were going to put some bulk herbs in, i probably wouldnt even add any scent to it, just make an unscented bar as the AC might absorb some of it!....


let me know how the coffee soap works!!

 

[mare61]

I gave my husband a piece of that coffee soap to try and he thinks its a winner!

 

[IanT]

Awesome!! glad it worked out for him!