Category: Life

Since I had J’s handy-dandy digital scale available (my parents only have a poorly-calibrated analog postal scale), I decided to make yet more soap, this time focusing on better hair soap for sibling C.

The first bar soap I made was 100% tallow, about 5% superfat (in excess of the saponification stoichiometric ratio), with some amount of sodium hydroxide. The lather is thick and creamy, but not voluminous or stable.

To attempt to fix this, the new bar of soap was made with mostly tallow (since I can get this locally, cheaply, and fairly sustainably- it’s considered a waste product of meat production), some coconut oil (supposed to make cleansing soap), and some hemp (because I had it on hand). I used sodium hydroxide again because I wanted to make bar soap (and I don’t have KOH).

Here is the full recipe, made using SoapCalc. There are other soap calculators, but SoapCalc has a whole bunch of pre-loaded oils so you can easily play around with your soap’s properties (how hard, cleansing, moisturizing, etc it is).

The soap seemed to turn out fine. It’s curing now. I used my dad’s 40-year-old pH paper (left over from his days in grad school) to make sure the saponification reaction proceeded as expected.

I made a previous batch of tallow-based bar soap (in January) that turned out fairly well. In fact, sibling C swears by it for washing her hair! Interestingly, hair washed with the soap feels very similar to hair habitually washed with only water. The soap is just okay for shaving, though, so I’ve been wanting to do a second improved batch.

The internet says to use a lot of stearic acid to make better shaving soap. Stearic acid makes stable lather, but it is a palm-oil derivative, so definitively not sustainable. However I discovered that soy wax, that is, fully-hydrogenated soy bean oil, can be used as a substitute for stearic acid. So I was planning on buying that until I discovered that… people sell everything on eBay! So I ended up buying “used” stearic acid (from someone who used to make their own lotions).

Apparently, there are tons of things that can go wrong with soap. It seems like most of them only happen when you try to do fancy things (e.g. coloring, fragrance, milk) and I haven’t done those particular things.

However, the combination of stearic acid (very high melting point), tallow (grass-fed from the farmer’ market! moderately high melting point), and sodium hydroxide (used to make hard/bar soap, as compared to potassium hydroxide, which is used to make liquid/soft soap) makes extremely hard soap. It’s super crumbly now that it is completely hardened… On the bright side, the harder the soap, the longer it lasts.

I used SoapCalc to formulate the final recipe. Don’t try to replicate this soap; I’m including the recipe for reference purposes only! You could try the same proportions of oils and use KOH instead of NaOH, that might work.

I made the lotion. The recipe yielded about two cups. I ended up using a KitchenAid stand mixer with the whisk attachment, in place of the advised blender. I don’t think hand-whisking would work.

I substituted water for the aloe vera gel (found some pre-owned on eBay, but it was too expensive. I bought some fresh as a second resort but had trouble extracting the pulp, then tried to eat it so it wouldn’t go to waste and found it incredibly bitter…). I used sweet almond oil for the liquid oil, coconut for the solid, and left out the lanolin (you can also buy this pre-owned on eBay).

The product is very appealing! Lightweight, similar to commercial lotion, and much less greasy than just using plain oil. I plan to make future batches. The addition of aloe vera and lanolin can only make it better! I will probably use shea butter in place of the coconut oil so that the lotion can be used on the face without fear of it causing acne.

This lotion doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge, unless you will consume it slowly or you used ingredients that tend to go rancid quickly. The texture is light and quickly-absorbed, much like commercial lotions, so it’s a good option if you don’t like the greasy feeling of using oils straight.

This recipe is adapted from Rosemary Gladstar’s book Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health. I learned about the book from a low-waste Youtuber who gushed about all the cool recipes in the book. This was the only one I was interested in; I’ve been looking a long time for a lotion recipe that produces something like commercial lotion.

Waters

2/3 cup water

1/3 cup aloe vera

1% citric acid by weight (optional, acts as a preservative for the aloe vera)

Oils

3/4 cup liquid oil (I use sweet almond oil. Other skin-friendly oils, such as sunflower or jojoba, will work, although shelf-stable ones are ideal. Hemp oil, for example, would necessitate refrigeration.)

1/3 cup solid oil (coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, etc)

1/4 tsp lanolin (optional)

1/2-1 oz beeswax

1. Melt oils together. Let cool to room temperature, until thickened.
2. In a blender on high, slowly add the waters to the oils. It is done when combined, thickened, and fluffy. The blender will probably start having trouble!

Substitutions

If you are going to use this on your face, use only oils with low comedogenic ratings! That means don’t use coconut oil or cocoa butter. Shea butter, on the other hand, is non-comedogenic and is very unlikely to cause acne. Sunflower, jojoba, and hemp oils are all non-comedogenic, but there are many other liquid oils to choose from.

I haven’t actually made this yet, and I’m planning on whisking it by hand. It may not be possible, but wish me luck!

I happened across a craft-related TV documentary series from the ’70s. The first episode I watched, embedded below, is an interesting look into Ireland’s spinning tradition, which is surely much less prevalent now.

This particular episode was filmed in 1978 in Kilcar and Carrick, Ireland. This series has other awesome episodes, like Irish Spinningwheel Making, Donegal Weavers, and Donegal Carpets.