Chances are, unless you’ve embraced the European way, or are a hermit or hobbit, you shave something on your body (I don’t need a list). When I first started using shaving cream I thought it was the equivalent of chocolate mousse for my skin, except it smelled like fairy farts and unicorn tears, and was made from clouds and the dreams of small children. It was GREAT. The bottle promised intense moisturization and glide, and was covered in fake little dew drops and swirls in a rather transparent attempt to convince you that you were shaving your legs in a Swedish spa.
I’m not here to try and convince you to stop shaving. I’m sure there are many benefits, like added warmth, lower maintenance, a stellar built-in Teen Wolf costume, and a strengthened ability to attract the opposite sex (hypothetically, at least… something to do with scent trapping). So, if you want to go au natural in the shaving department, I’d love to hear how that works out for you, but for now, that’s not me as I’ve already chosen a Halloween costume for this year.
Eventually, though, the unicorn tears turned from tears of joy to tears of agony, and the children’s dreams morphed into nightmares. Shaving cream lost its charm. I no longer wanted to pay $4 for berry-scented foam that had only one purpose and came in some seriously unfriendly packaging that I had to dispose of at least once or twice a month. Like an ill-maintained relationship, the romance was gone. Also, I like making things.
Enter: shaving soap! Once you can make normal soap, shaving soap is incredibly easy to make. No, really. You just use a bit more castor oil (USA / Canada) and add clay. That’s it. For real. It is best used with a brush, which adds all sort of turn-of-the-century romance to your de-hairing rituals. The lather is great, but it won’t be the same as the stuff you’re used to getting from a can. It’s less like frosting and more like bubble bath.
Shaving Soap
40% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
30% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
20% beef tallow
10% castor oil (USA / Canada)Per 500g oils:
- 1 tbsp kaolin clay
- 20g essential oil (or blend) of choice
Calculate to 5% superfat/lye discount
Follow the directions I’ve laid out in my entry on making your own soap, adding the clay to the oils as they cool.
LOL!!! I love you’re writing.
Thanks!
“it smelled like fairy farts and unicorn tears, and was made from clouds and the dreams of small children.” Best thing I have read in a long time. Your blog is inspirational!!
Thanks, Haley! Now, if I could only figure out where to buy unicorn tears I could make the perfect shaving cream…
This looks great! We have all the ingredients except the castor oil and lye, which I just ordered. I’ve never made any type of soap before and am a little intimidated to try, but also excited!
Do you recommend any specific essential oil for the shave soap?
Thanks so much for sharing!
Awesome! Enjoy your soap making adventures 🙂 I’d recommend using something you like enough to smell every morning/every time you shave, haha. Peppermint will give it a bit of a tingle, which you might like first thing in the morning. I also love citrus scents in soaps. I added fir, pine, and spruce essential oils to my first batch of shaving soap, but unfortunately they are so volatile that the soap didn’t smell like anything by the time it was done aging 🙁
Thank you for sharing this recipe! I was wondering, where can you buy shave brushes?
The Body Shop has some pretty ones 🙂 Otherwise, most pharmacies like Shoppers Drug Mart, and even Wal Mart, sell them. Thanks for reading! And be sure to check out my all-purpose soap recipe, it’s soap/shampoo/shave all in one.
You’ve made a classic mistake with this recipe, I can tell just by looking at it. Shaving soap is a far, far different beast from regular soap. Simply put, a good shaving soap needs to lather well first, with moisturizing and lubricating being only slightly less important (neither of which it can do very well if it doesn’t lather first). Olive oil kills lather, so it should never be your primary oil for a shaving soap. What you have here is a recipe for some terrible shaves.
You do have some things right though. Castor and coconut oil make for great shave soaps, and there’s a very vocal contingent of wet shavers who swear by tallow based soaps. Tinker with replacing that olive oil with something else. Stearic acid is also common in shave soaps. Consider adding some extra glycerin as well. Personally I’ve been toying with the idea of using some shea butter in mine, but I’ve yet to sit down and figure out what kind of effect I can expect from it. Since I use my own soap every day and don’t want to get stuck with a couple months worth of unusable soap I always do my homework.
Hi Raf—Thanks for chiming in. It sounds like you’re a dude who shaves a lot more sensitive areas than just his legs, so you’ve likely got much more finicky shaving needs than I do. I’ve always found this soap (or one similar to it, since I’m usually mucking around with my recipes) to be perfectly lovely for my shaving needs. I’m looking into trying to make cream soap for shaving for something truly thick and luxurious. Shea butter has always done me in good stead with my soaps. I love the creamy lather it produces, and it’s a staple in my all-purpose bars, which I use for soap, shampoo, and shaving (my legs, not my face). And might I point out that unless you seriously bung it up in the lye department, there is no such thing as “unusable soap”? If it’s not perfect for a shave, it’ll still get you clean and make great gifts (I know my friends and family have taken many less-than-perfect bars off my hands, haha). You can do as much homework as you like, but in the end there’s nothing like just trying something to find out for yourself 🙂
Hi Marie,
This is wonderful, thanks for sharing. I may have missed it, but what percentage of superfat would you use for shaving soap? 7%?
Thank you for everything that you share with us! Love your blog so much!!!
Hi Stefania! Anything from 5–7% would be a good choice 🙂
Hi Marie,
Thank you for the recipe! I’m just wondering if you have the recipe for that soap bar in the picture? It looks so nice! Would you like to recommend some powders/oils that create such colours while not being hard to find? (I live in China and the options are pretty limited, urgh. maybe French Green Clay can get the job done)
Can I use cocoa butter instead of tallow in this recipe? (Time is basically not a problem)
And a final question-do you have any suggestion on creating that beautiful big swirl in round shape silicone moulds?
I know I’ve got a lot of questions and can’t wait to try this…Thank you soooo much for sharing!
Hi Celine! This recipe is the recipe for that bar, though without the colourants listed. I used French Green clay for the overall green, and some spirulina for the darker swirls 🙂
Here’s my article on alternatives for tallow.
In my experience swirls don’t come through well in round silicone moulds if done in the mould, so I’d recommend doing a very gentle pot swirl before pouring 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Might need to revisit this recipe. Its not a shaving soap at all. Olive oil is a no no, stearic acid is a must, and you have to use KOH and NAOH. Clay dulls razors too.
True wet shavers require dense lather with none of the airy fluff. Lather is supposed to last 20 minutes too.
🙂
Yup, I’m sure you can see that this recipe is well over 4 years old 🙂 I’ve definitely learned a lot since I published this. It does make for a good leg shaving soap, though!
This looks lovely ! trying it today with a good ol’pringles can as a mold. I imagine it in puck form ! Thanks Marie ! Its been alot of fun making good quality soaps for my family !
Oooh, lovely! I hope you like it 😀
Have you considered creating a newer, better shaving soap recipe?
It’s on the list, but it is a very long list these days! 🙂
Hey Marie,
Just wanted to say first off that you have a great blog… it’s nice to have a resource for making some quality diy products.
I have a question with regards to this recipe, as I noticed in the comments section that some people have been using lye for this project, but it’s not listed in the recipe itself. Is it required for this project? Also, how long does this soap have to age?
If you could let me know that would be great.
Cheers!
Hey Anne! Yes, lye is required: there is no such thing as soap without lye. But yes, the instructions are not very good! This is a very old post, and I guess I lumped the lye part into the general soap making instructions, throwing the lye calculation part in there as well. I will make a note to update the post, thanks for noticing 🙂 3 weeks should be plenty of aging time, but as always, if you live somewhere very humid you may need more time.