Teach Soap

Hi soap forum denizens! I have a question that feels prohibitively broad, but has been baffling me for too long to not see if anyone has thoughts about it.

I’m a very new soaper - started about 5-6 months ago, and I’m preoccupied with it beyond what is I think normal or advisable. Sometimes I’ll zone out while my husband is talking to me and he’ll put a hand on my shoulder and say, “you’re thinking about soap, aren’t you?” Yes. 9 times out of 10, yes I am.

I’ve experimented with many different recipes, tinkering and adjusting, playing with additives and soaping temperatures and using different liquids, and while I’ve gotten a general sense of what oils and butters I like to use, I have never, not once, made a soap that doesn’t dry out my hands terribly. As in, the backs of my knuckles are red and irritated like I’ve been chopping wood in the snow without gloves on. Ok, it’s not always that bad, but it sometimes is, and at the very least my hands are sort of rough and flaky. This happens even with my 100% castille olive oil soap, cured 5 months.

I’ve tried superfatting up to 8%, i’ve tried not superfatting at all after reading a particularly compelling post by Gerry that effectively dismantles the myth of superfatting, I’ve been researching fatty acid profiles and concocting recipes with minimal lauristic and myristic acids. I’ve bumped up my olive oil, I’ve bumped up my butters. I’ve added aloe extract and mallow extract, I’ve used goats milk and added honey. I use sodium lactate, and then don’t use sodium lactate, and nothing seems to really help. The soaps aren’t lye heavy (I use the zap test and ph testing strips, and all is normal), and I’ve never had a problem with false trace.

My recipes tend to look like this:

3% superfat
30-50% olive oil
10-20% avocado oil
10-20% hempseed oil
5-20% coconut oil (20 is highest I’ve gone, typical use is 8-13%, because, you know, I HAVE THIS SKIN DRYING PROBLEM I CAN’T FIGURE OUT)
2% jojoba oil
5-10% castor oil
5-20% butters (most often shea butter, sometimes kokum butter, occasionally cocoa butter, mango butter, avocado butter)

I soap at 100-120F in coldish basement (60 degrees or so), non-gelling.
I usually try my soaps after about 4 weeks of cure time.

I should also mention that I do have tremendously sensitive skin which gets very easily dry and flaky. BUT, I don’t have eczema or an actual skin condition, and I’m usually fine with commercial liquid hand soaps (though commercial bar soaps are a nightmare on my skin).

SO. Is this just a bar soap issue? As in, my skin doesn’t like bar soap period, and my soaps are actually fine, and other people could use them and find them delightful?

OR, should I start thinking about throwing caution to the wind and just going with something really counterintuitive, like instead of going low on coconut oil (lauristic/myristic) and high on olive, hemp, and avocado oils (oleic/linoleic) and butters, maybe I should INCREASE the coconut oil and superfat at zero? Or something? I’m so down the rabbit hole on this, guys.

I’m going to try adding some tussah silk and 1.5% bees wax soon, but I can’t help but think that additives aren’t the answer here. Am I just a complete aberration? Have I been hexed?

Literally any thoughts or feedback would be deeply appreciated.

I always look at the super-fatting, not as a way to moisturize or condition the skin but more as a means of insurance.
The makeup of oils can vary as to how much of which fatty acids are present in the finished oil depending on growing regions, variety of the plant the oil is harvested from and the processing method, and this can affect the sap value for the oil.
Likewise, Lye manufacturers are given a certain amount of leeway in packaging that can result in your lye not always being 93% pure or 95% pure from the same manufacturer.
Then there are our digital scales, their ability to measure accurately can drift over time meaning we may not be getting the exact amounts we think we are.
I seldom super-fat less than 5% for those reasons.
Personally I would not add avocado oil to a soap that is already high in olive oil because their fatty acid profile is so similar.
Your recipe does not appear to be heavy in palmitic or myristic acids so I am not sure why its drying to your skin unless it’s because of the slow nature of the olive oil.

3% superfat is nowhere near enough. I can see why that soap would be drying. Some people do a 5% superfat.
I prefer a 7-8% superfat as anything below that my skin finds drying.

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

Hmmm... it could possibly be an sensitivity issue to high alkalinity. Bar soap of saponified oils has a pH close to 10. Synthetic detergent based soaps as in the commericial liquids have a pH that's closer to neutral 7. While that's a huge difference, most people have no problems with the high pH of natural soaps, even on the sensitive parts. But there's always exceptions.

Perhaps you should consider concocting a syndet bar and see how that works...

lissa,

First, do your hands react only to your soap, or do they react to everything (commercial soap, shampoo, etc). If only to your soap, that's good news. It defines the scope of the problem.

You says your skin is super sensitive. Mine is also, sometimes much more than others. When my skin is in a super sensitive phase, it is always indicative of an underlying problem. I prepare income taxes for a living, and its tax season now, and my trunk has been really itchy. I've done this for many years, and I know my skin is reacting to stress. More dramatically, I had active Grover's disease for 10 years...which finally was tied to mercury toxicity. I spent the good part of a year detoxing, and my diseased skin finally cleared. I have other strange stories I could tell you about things my skin has done and what the problem turned out to be.

I mention these things not to suggest that you are reacting to stress or to mercury, but to illustrate the dramatic range of underlying issues that can impact our skin. If your skin is reacting to more than just your soap, then that may be a clue that you need to look deeper.

Thank you all so much for putting your brains on this with me.

Gerry: First of all, big fan. Seriously. I've never tried a syndet bar, but I think it makes a lot of sense as a next step. My skin is rather famously sensitive, and at this point I’m trying to figure out whether the problem is my soap, or just how my skin reacts with the soap.

JFoster: So interesting you should ask the question about whether or not my skin reacts to just my soaps or to everything, because one thing I have found baffling is that, despite claims that natural soap is more skin-friendly than commercial detergents, my hands do just fine with store-bought liquid hand soaps, and even the junk that you get in public restrooms. But between you asking this question and Gerry bringing up the difference in ph levels between natural soap and synthetic detergents, the picture is starting to take shape.

That is good news. I'm happy for you. That's much better than having an underlying issue.

You may have already tried this, but do you wash hands in either hot or cold water? My hands are extremely sensitive, and if I remember (I usually forget), I try to go with baby-bottle warm water. Not too hot for your wrist, but not too cold either. Otherwise, my hands are red/cracked. Sometimes I think the cold water is worse.

Cheers!
JS