Teach Soap

Hello. I have a couple questions about some shea butter that I recently purchased. I am new to making CP soap and I found a good deal on 3lbs of "raw, unrefined Ghana shea butter" online. When it arrived it wasn't quite what I had expected and I'm trying to find out if perhaps this was a bad purchase. I have heard that shea butter is supposed to be soft and easily absorbed into your skin. This shea butter is kind of hard and greasy. I have a hard time applying it to my skin. It also is not a solid color. It almost has a marbled look with a darker,greasier looking yellow and then a softer, lighter yellow tone. It's not much of a difference..just a slight 'marbled' look.
I probably would not be as worried about this shea butter except for the fact that it arrived bundled up in a simple grocery sack and when I was going to use it, I also ran into a couple strands of human hair. Perhaps they just fell in the bag, but this all seems a bit off to me. Any thoughts?

I would contact the person that you bought it from and let them know.

I no longer buy unrefined shea. The last batch I got was yellow/green, smelled awful and had
some small animal parts in it. This is not something that I would feel safe to use in any of my products.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

yikes! I wasn't aware I had to watch out for animal parts in my shea butter. I was buying the raw shea butter b/c I kept reading about how the unrefined maintains more of the 'good stuff' but animal parts and stray hairs sure weren't on that list. Can I ask if that happend while ordering shea from one of the large, well known suppliers?? I bought mine off of ebay which I know probably was not the best idea, but I'm tring to make some basic recipes on a budget. Thanks for all of your input.

I don't know about a "large" supplier, but they have been mentioned a couple of times on other forums. I decided to try them and will not use them again.

I don't buy my supplies from ebay, as I don't want to take a chance on something that could be...you know....not such a great deal & not such great quality.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Hold on a second before everybody gets their panties in a wad over this stuff.

I get this stuff by the bucket via free trade agreement from Ghana and Congo. This is the most raw material of shea butter you can find. The stuff is scraped straight off the tree by long metal, flexible rods and placed in a bucket where they tamp it down the stuff it in burlap sacks for transport. There's nothing wrong with what you have. It's not processed or cleaned like the shea you buy from BB or anyplace else. It has a distinctive odor (which I like) and is yellowish in color. Mine sometimes has little pieces of bark in it. I will say that this melts better and performs more consistently I've found than processed shea butter. Use the same lye calc as you would with processed shea. I use this in my goat's milk soap and a bunch of other batches for superfatting at trace. Rub a little on some dry skin if you're not convinced and compare. You'd be surprised. In multiple other countries they melt raw shea and pour it over food to aid in digestion. It's very healthy if ingested properly.

If you have doubts I will give you my address and you can send it to me I use this in the majority of my batches and love it. Give it a try before your opine gets tainted here.

Scraped off the tree???

Shea butter, or karite, is made from the fruits of the Karite Nut tree. The pits are first removed from the fruit, boiled, sun-dried and finally roasted. When the pits have been completely dehydrated, they are handcrushed.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

The person who sends me this is from the Congo and the mayor of a small town there. She sent me photos of her and her family scraping shea that gathers beneath the bark from the tree. Maybe something got lost in translation because she speaks French and I speak everything but. I thought the same thing about karite but haven't been able to confirm that it's the same thing.

thank you both for all of the input I appreciate it