Using stearic acid

[Todd Ziegler]

In what recipe or situation would stearic acid be the best ingredient choice to go with?

I was just trying to learn more about the different ingredients there are for CP soap making. Today I picked stearic acid and I read a lot of posts and articles. There were lots of varied opinions on wether they liked it or how it worked for them. There were not very many articles on why or when it would be the best choice. If there were, I missed them.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated m

 

[Obsidian]

I've only used stearic acid in a veggie recipe to harden it since I couldn't use beeswax and I didn't have any butters.
It did its job but the soap wasn't very impressive.
I find too much stearic leaves a waxy feel to the skin.

Now I only use it for shaving soap which I rarely make anymore.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

I've only used stearic acid in a veggie recipe to harden it since I couldn't use beeswax and I didn't have any butters.
It did its job but the soap wasn't very impressive.
I find too much stearic leaves a waxy feel to the skin.

Now I only use it for shaviing soap which I rarely make anymore.

Thanks. I did find it in a vegan soap recipes and a lip balm recipe. I was just curious about it. I definitely could see it causing a waxy feel.

 

[Obsidian]

I like candelilla wax better for vegan recipes. Not to mention that often stearic is animal based.

Waxy stearic is the reason I gave up on cream soap. I love the consistency but it feels awful on the skin.

 

[Megan]

It really depends on how it's used and the other ingredients as well. I have a lip salve recipe that is 30% stearic acid and it doesn't feel waxy in the least (which was suprising to me as well). It actually feels a lot like vaseline.

I wouldn't use stearic in CP soap because of acceleration, but I would maybe try in HP.

 

[IrishLass]

I use stearic acid (@ 28%) in my hubby's shave soap. Some folks use a lot more than that, such as the 52% stearic acid in Songwind's famous shaving soap recipe, but I prefer to use mostly butters and tallow (which feel much less waxy) and use only enough stearic acid to boost up my overall stearic content to the level I shoot for to give my shave soap the qualities my hubby likes. Happily, it doesn't feel waxy at all at this % in my shave soap. I do have to HP my shave soap, though, because of the stearic acid.

In lotions it can feel pretty waxy, which is why I prefer to use cetyl alcohol as the thickener in my lotion formula instead of stearic.


IrishLass

 

[amd]

I think stearic acid is a must for a good shaving soap.

After doing a couple of independent experiments with stearic acid, at .5%, 1%, 3% (trying to remember if I also did 5% but I don't think I did because I remember the 3% becoming a real bear to work with, and I also tend to do my experiments in comparisons of three... thanks OCD), and evaluating what they added... I found the 3% to be a bit waxy, and the .5% was no affect. I settled on 1% because it didn't feel waxy, but the soap lather behaved more like a well cured soap (more like what I typically see in 6 month old soap than 2 month old soap).

I use it at 1% in my regular soap recipe when I add honey to it. I found my regular recipe becomes very soft when I added honey to it. The small amount of stearic acid hardened it comparable to non-honey soaps.

Also, I'm not sure where @Obsidian sources her stearic acid from, but the sources I have found are palm/vegetable sourced stearic acid. While stearic may be sourced from plants or animals, I think it is more common for it to be plant based, but you'll always want to double check with supplier rather than assuming.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

Thanks everyone. I really learned more in these replies than my Google search.

I have been going down the list of ingredients on my soap calculator and researching the ones I am not familiar with. It has been a great experience so far. I am learning many different things. Some I may never use but others may come in handy.