A Rude Awakening

A little explanation up front for this to make sense. In the simplest terms, soap is produced with oil and lye are mixed in a process called saponification. Lye is a rather nasty player - it can be used to dissolve bodies. When making soap, you are supposed to test it with Litmus paper to ensure all of the Lye has saponified.

So, yesterday I had a brand spanking new soap from an up and coming artisan. I made a great lather and got about halfway through the first pass before my face started smoking. (ok, it wasn't really smoking, but it felt like it was on fire)

Vinegar will neutralize lye and I always have it ready for action when I'm making soap, though I was taken by surprise and didn't think about that. It took about 30 minutes to get back to normal and all is good today.

Wow. A shavingsoap that creates an instant Halloween-mask ...
I can imagine that was a nasty surprise. Did you inform the artisan so s/he can recheck his/her QA?

I'm going to get with them. Also, so everyone knows, this isn't an artisan that I have ever seen on a wet shave forum. I also have never seen their stuff for sale from Maggard's or any other sites that sell other folks soap.

This is an outfit mainly focused on beard products.

Are you sure it was because of unsaponified lye? I've had a pretty bad burning sensation from one soap in particular and I'm not afraid to say which. It was Soap Smooth Bruyere. Fantastic soap and scent but it just lit me up! I couldn't even get through the first pass before I had to rinse it off. I realized it was no fault of the artisan, just my sensitivity to the fragrance I guess. Now if it was because of the lye, that might be a different story. Poor soap making skills.

I think you are right Jeff. I tested it with litmus paper and tested fine. The scent isn't that strong, but it must be strong enough for me to be sensitive to it.

Come to think of it Pete123, I have gotten a caustic chemical on my arm before and it felt very similar. Like my skin was literally on fire.

There have been a couple of soaps that have caused a mildly burning sensation on my skin, usually not at first, but by the second pass of a shave. These were both well-known and popular brands, so my guess is that there was probably some fragrance component in each soap that just did not play well with my skin.

However, the lye issue is always a possibility, although hopefully a small one. I was reading a thread on a UK forum a while back, and it seems there was a special edition soap that had been released, even though the saponification process was not complete, and several people had some issues with it. Thankfully nothing drastic, though.

Pete, good to hear things are well.

It is the bizarro menthol - perfect for those winter months. Glad that it worked out and agree, sounds as if it was likely an ingredient that didn't agree with your skin rather than lye.

Could also be lanolin, one of those ingredients that are known to cause allergic reactions.