This year our holiday brought us to Greek Islands. Sea and sunny beaches. Not my cup of tea exactly. But, I am a family man and sometimes just follow what the wife and daughter come up with. In Crete I discovered this very sympathetic soap workshop called Fisika. They also have a shaving soap. The basic ingredient there is Cretan olive oil. So I wondered whether that would make a good lather. To my surprise, it does. The texture is similar to a glycerine soap. More importantly, it is a good treat for your skin.
Back home I wondered if I couldn’t make a similar soap myself. There is functional difference between ordinary toilet soap and shaving soap. Toilet soap is used to degrease and clean your skin. Shaving soap needs to oversaturate your facial hear and is a lubricant to help the razor glide smoothly over your skin. Olive oil is excellent as a lubricant, but won’t give you a nice lather. You need coconut oil to get a foam rich of water.
Making your own soap is not too difficult. You can buy the ingredients online and find instructions (Check soap making resource). Just make sure you won’t be disturbed by any pets or children in the process. Caustic Soda (Sodium Hydroxide or NaOH) mixed with water might cause serious burn injuries . But the result, after some weeks of saponification, is always rewarding.
So, here is my recipe for this experiment:
Olive oil, 338 gr
Coconut oil, 150 gr
Castor Oil, 150 gr
Palmbutter, 60 gr
Avocado Oil, 20 gr
Carrot Oil, 20 gr
Caustic Soda, 113 gr
Water, 306 gr
Bentonite clay, 1 spoon
Lemongrass Essential oil for the scent


