You mean buying melt and pour blocks of soap? If you do that you're soaps only as good as what you start with and you have to purchase all your own EOs and FOs. Probably some additives as well to make a good shave soap. It also limits you to glycerine based soaps only. There are good melt and pour soaps out there, we sell them at the TSD store. JoAnna adds her magic touch and theyre great soaps. But thats only glycerine. There are tripple milled and cold processed soaps. Those you can only buy unless you go through the whole saponification process your self.
The benefit is that you can make them exactly what you want. The down side is that it is an extraordinary amount of work to test and perfect your soap. I have made some melt and pour soaps, but I now prefer to get the from people who have perfected the art.
I've heard of people just melting down whatever soap they normally use which sounds a bit suspect since shave soap seems to be a more complicated process. From what JayKay has said I think I'll stick with just buying it as is It sounds like a lot of trouble for little benefit.
I'm not sure if this is where you're going w/ this question, but some folks melt down their glycerin pucks so that upon cooling they form to whatever container they placed them in. I've done it and it works great. I have read from soap makers you don't want to melt them over and over however. At a certain point they loose their good shave properties. I don't really mess w/ melting anymore since basically moving on from glycerin soaps. They few that I do use already come prepoured from the vendors. Hope this helps.
That's what they were melting them down for was to fit the cup they used. It wasn't a special shave soap though it was plain old soap. This is what had me concerned about it working at all for shaving anyway.
Ok well it's generally not advised to use plain body soap for shaving. Shave soaps have extra additives and are formulated to provide slickness and moisture. Things like clay, glycerin, oils and butters. I shaved with a bar of body soap once in an emergency; worst shaving mistake I ever made...very lousy results. Anyway if melting concerns you, you can also mill a soap using a cheese grater. Just shred the thing, pack all the strands into a container, tamp it all down and add a splash of hot water on top to smooth things down. Works great. I just did this w/ a puck of L'Occitane the other night.
What Shep said. Personally, I won't melt any of my soaps. Milling is another story - I would mill my soaps.
I can see milling. My concern was using body soap melted down for shaving. As has been pointed out shaving soap is so different I can't see it working well at all. I used regular body soap one time in an emergency as you did and the results were pretty bad
Phil, Yes, the reason I was melting the soap was to fit the mug I had and to see what would happen. The Dove soap worked out well... EW
Darnit you were NOT supposed to give yourself away You aren't the only one my grandpa did it to which is what got me curious.
