As a maker of shaving cream and now shaving soap, permit me to respond to the original question here regarding “artisan” shaving soaps versus “artisan” shaving creams. Although I started out as an “artisan” soap maker, I knew that my approach to both of these products had to be more along the lines of cosmetic chemistry rather than soapmaking! The first difference is that cosmetic products are made with formulas that are based on 100%. It is much easier to work with all the individual ingredients and deal with their proper usage rates when using them in a formula. Soapmakers work with what they call “recipes” which often calculate the percentages of the oils/butters/fatty acids that are used then calculate the amount of bases required to saponify these ingredients then finally calculate the water need to create a certain lye solution strength based on the amount of bases (often hydroxides) to come up with their “recipe”. These don’t add up to 100% and adding other ingredients to this becomes difficult and often inaccurate.
There are so many types of shaving creams it is difficult to compare them to one another without first taking a look at their ingredients lists. When first doing my research to make shaving cream, I looked at the ingredients used in the major brands of what were typically “British” creams and went from there. I searched for old soapmaking books as well as cosmetic chemistry books and many of the resources that are available. I also had the benefit of knowing some cosmetic chemists personally and would go to them with my queries and questions. I put aside everything I knew about making handcrafted, cold-process soap, ignored what I had observed in what is known as “cream soapmaking” whose techniques and ingredients did not apply to the type of shaving cream I was making and I went from researching the ingredients, available documentation, process and procedures and I then began experimentation. The more research I did and the more experimentation I did the closer I got to the type of formula I wanted to make. The ingredients for these creams are pretty much the same from product to product so that made things easier and it also made it easier for me to compare my results with what was out there which was what I had used as a shaver myself for so many years! During the experimentation I took copious notes and have 130 pages documenting my research, observations, experimentation and development of this product. The actual production of shaving cream is not difficult and had been no problem to produce in my 800 square foot work room in our completely renovated building/retail store. The most amount of time is spent weighing out the ingredients and bringing them up to temperature and the actual manufacturing process is quite short! I found if I did the weighing one day that I could manufacture about five large batches the next day!
My recent shaving soap project took a few months beginning with more research which led me away from the usual hot-process soap that is typically being made now to actually using the cold process method with procedures that I created for this particular process. I started off with about six different formula directions then out of these I picked the third one I had made because it offered the best results out of the six! I was very surprised that I ended up with this path as it was totally based on my shaving cream formulation which I ended up turning into a shaving soap formula. To the best of my knowledge, no one else has done this in this particular way. The results speak for themselves and I am enjoying using it every day myself which is pretty amazing as I was originally a shaving cream guy!
Anyway, because of all of my lengthy and varied research, I found that there was a great deal more usable information available to me for formulating shaving creams than for formulating shaving soaps! I have observed since I began working in this area in 1998 that the only way to achieve the best results is to do as much research and experimentation as possible and to “think outside the box”! If artisan soapmakers limit themselves to only available current online blogs and boards, they limit their possibilities! This may be why you are seeing more shaving soaps than shaving creams! I got where I am because of thinking outside the box and not following what was being done out there in Online Soapland!
