Quick question, i read somewhere that even though glycerin is an emollient if you put too much in the soap it can act the other way and dry your skin. Is this true? If so what do you think is the maximum amount you can put in a shaving soap? I always used about 10-12% of the total oils weight.
Glycerin is a humectant, which means it draws water to itself and helps the skin to hold water. If you were to put straight glycerin on your face, it would dry you out because it is going to draw water from somewhere, so it draws it from your skin. If you cut it 1:1 with water and then put it on your skin, it helps your skin to hold onto that water. So it makes sense that if there were a TON of glycerin in a soap, it might potentially draw some water from the skin. However, anything that lathers is clearly not going to be anywhere near 100% glycerin. it would be hard to imagine having enough glycerin in a shave soap that it might actually dry out your skin, because it would have to make up more than 50% of the total soap in order to do so. I do know that there are some shave soaps sold that list glycerin in the top 2 or 3 ingredients on their ingredients lists. Rockclimber can probably give you a better idea of what percent by weight is OK.
Thanks, so i can up the quantity to around 25% without a problem, altough i think that this will keep the soap in a paste like form. Sent from my A5_Easy_TM using Tapatalk
