Sugar and/or Salt to make a hard bar

[Nicolesica]

I personally like salt better to harden soap, I use 1 tsp PPO dissolved into the water before adding lye. I use whatever salt I have around, usually canning salt or sea salt.

Really? I may have to try salt, then. SL can get awful expensive and I’m almost out

 

[Johnez]

Thanks DeeAnna!
Yeah, I came to this conclusion when I used the 90% KOH soap with 2gm of NaCl.

The soap is very hard and lathers very well but takes effort to load it into the brush because the coconut oil content isn't high enough to make the soap more soluble.

The French soap, Martin de Candre, which is the same recipe as per the massive Songwind thread on here, is 100% KOH, 48% coconut oil and has added sodium chloride.
It lathers up super quick and easy.

In any case, I hated the recipe as it was so harsh on my skin. I'm going to stick with my lovely butter based shaving soap...
Cocoa/kokum butters (combined make up 60% of the soap), Soy wax, coconut oil, castor oil, liquid silk, 60% KOH.

Lathers up a treat and my skin absolutely loves it!

Lather pics of my butters soap:
View attachment 70658View attachment 70659

That is a nice looking soap Nav.

I've never tried MdC however am curious if SongWind's attempt at a clone matches the vaunted performance of MdC, or if MdC is overblown hype. I made it and am not a big fan, however I've never tried the original. It was serviceable and fun as heck and my first shave soap. This is an ignorant suspicion, but I suspect the CO % can be worked on. 48% seems incredibly high. Another project for another day, and I'll definitely have to grab a jar of the original for comparison sake.

 

[AliOop]

I don't remember the Songwind recipe (and don't want to dig through that monster thread!) but there is an MDC dupe posted here that uses 45% CO.