Shaving Soap

One of the recent soaps I've experimented with making was a shaving soap. Unlike most of the other soaps, it does not contain goat milk. However, it does have two special ingredients that are integral to making this a shaving soap: Castor Oil and Bentonite Clay. Castor Oil creates a wonderfully thick lather and bentonite clay (which is from naturally occurring volcanic ash sediments) enables the razor to glide smoothly across the skin.

Important Note: Lye is very dangerous, and it's crucial to always wear appropriate safety gear and to work in a well ventilated area. For more safety precautions, click here.

Ingredients:
11.52 ounces Distilled Water
10.56 ounces Olive Oil
9.6 ounces Palm Oil
9.6 ounces Coconut Oil
4.597 ounces Sodium Hydroxide (Lye)
2.24 ounces Castor Oil
1 tsp Powdered Sugar (also helps create a thicker lather)
2 Tbsp Bentonite Clay
1 Vitamin E capsule (I usually squeeze the contents of the capsule into the melted oils before adding the lye solution)
Fragrance Oil (in this case, Cool Water)
Ultramarine Blue

Prepare the soap just like you would any other basic cold process soap recipe. But in this case, I blended the bentonite clay into the melted oils before adding the lye solution to them.

After bringing the soap to trace, I poured all of it into the mold - a 1 foot long piece of 3" PVC pipe. After 24 hours, it was ready to be unmolded and sliced. [To ease the unmolding process, I placed the pipe in the freezer for 20 minutes. I also used a can of soup to essentially push the soap out of the mold.] I was expecting it to be a little harder to unmold, but, after sitting in the freezer and utilizing the soup can, it came out like a dream.

The sliced soap:

Although, it has to cure for 4-6 weeks, here's a sneak peek of how well it already lathers up:

And another sneak peek of the newest soap we made today, Absinthe (think I'm going to call this one Green Fairy)