From David Fisher,
Your Guide to Candle & Soap Making.
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A warning - once you try a real soap to shave with, you'll never use a commercial shaving cream again! This recipe, which you can tailor and modify to suit your own oil preferences, is not much different than a regular cold process soap recipe except for some added cosmetic clay and a higher percentage of castor oil. The clay helps give the soap extra "slip" and also works to purify your skin. (Think of a clay or mud mask.) The added castor helps give a thick creamy lather. All you need to do is grab a shaving brush

Note: If you want to use a melt and pour base to make a shaving soap, check out my Melt and Pour Shaving Soap recipe.

To modify your own recipe, just take your basic soap recipe and add about 2 tsp. of Bentonite or other clay for every pound of soap in the batch. I prefer Bentonite clay, though you can use Kaolin, Rhassoul or Fuller's Earth. (Click here to buy clays direct or look at the links on the right for more information about clays.) The recipe below makes about 3 lbs. of soap, so I'm using 2 tbs. of clay. Up your percentage of castor oil to about 8%. That's it. Add a fragrance or essential oil appropriate for the person shaving - but be sure that it is one suitable for sensitive skin - remember, you're shaving through this soap.

The recipe I use is:

• 40% Olive oil - stable lather and good skin conditioning
• 30% Coconut oil - rich, bubbly lather
• 22% Palm oil - stable, creamy, hard bar (can substitute lard or tallow)
• 8% Castor oil - for lather and creaminess

For my 3 lb. batch of soap, this works out to be:

• 13 oz. Olive oil
• 10 oz. Coconut oil
• 7 oz. Palm oil
• 2.5 oz. Castor oil
• 4.7 oz. Lye (about a 5% discount)
• 9.4 oz. water
• 2 Tbs. of Bentonite Clay
• 1 to 1.4 oz. of fragrance or essential oil

Make the soap like you would any other Cold Process Soap recipe. You can add the clay pretty much any time you want in the recipe. Some people add it to their lye water. Others just mix it into the oils as they are melting. You can also take a half cup or so of your melted oils, put them in a measuring cup, a mix your clay into the oils. Then add this pre-mixed clay/oil mixture to the soap once you've reached trace. Any method works fine.

I like to pour the soap directly into coffee mugs or tins. Another option is to pour it into lengths of 3" PVC pipe that has one end plugged up. This will give you a disc of soap that can be placed into a mug or tin. Let the soap cure as normal, and when it's done, enjoy a wonderfully old-fashioned but terrific shaving soap!