shaving cream - Chemists Corner

Formulating

shaving cream

Posted by azzja on December 5, 2014 at 9:44 am

Dear all, I’m new to this forum so firstly I would like to say hi to everyone
I have recently started making and formulating my own products. I’m not an expert or a professional, it’s just something that interests me.

I got asked if I could make a shaving cream, and I was wondering if you could help me.

what do you think of these ingredients? what would you add/change, and in which percentage would you use it?

shea butter, apricot kernel oil, sunflower seed oil, hitecream 3000 (as an emulsifier) with cetyl alcohol, beeswax, imortelle (Helichrysum arenarium) hydrosol, orange hydrosol, glycerin, eo sweet orange and preservative geogard 221

belassi replied 10 years, 1 month ago 5 Members · 12 Replies
12 Replies

David

Member
December 5, 2014 at 9:58 am

I would start easier:

aqua(water), stearic acid, glycerin, triethanolamine, and preservative.

These few ingredients will, if you find the right %, make a nice cream already.

From there yo can tweak it with perfumes, oils, extracts or whatever you like.
azzja

Member
December 5, 2014 at 10:27 am

thanks David!
azzja

Member
December 5, 2014 at 10:39 am

i just did a search and there’s no available triethanolamine where i live, and i don’t have time for on line orders. is there an alternative to that ingredient?
Chemist77

Member
December 5, 2014 at 10:47 am

There sure is e.g. KOH, NaOH and anything which can neutralize (alkaline hydrolysis) the stearic acid in the formula, but make sure you check the SAP values for these.
azzja

Member
December 5, 2014 at 11:14 am

thanks milliachemist!
belassi

Member
December 5, 2014 at 11:25 am

Or see PDF document M-0016(LA) from Lubrizol. Item C(5) is a commercially available blend.
azzja

Member
December 5, 2014 at 11:37 am

thanks Belassi!

this combo looks like it might cause some skin irritations, and the person who wants the cream has very sensitive skin and wants the product “as natural as possible”.

i don’t advocate for exclusively natural ingredients since i think there are some great synthetic ones as well and i like to include them in my creams.but this person’s skin reacts to sls and als. and i don’t think they would be happy about dea :S
Bobzchemist

Member
December 5, 2014 at 3:13 pm

@azzja, have the person you’re making this for work up a lather with regular bar soap and water, and try shaving with that. That is essentially what you’re making with neutralized stearic acid. If the soap is too irritating, try adding some hair conditioner to the mix. If that works, come back here and we’ll tell you how to formulate that into a cream.
azzja

Member
December 5, 2014 at 5:47 pm

I’ll ask him to try that and report the results.

Thank you Bobzchemist!
belassi

Member
December 5, 2014 at 6:58 pm

Supposedly the ideal shaving soap is made with a mixture of NaOH and KOH rather than one or the other. You can find discussions about that on soap forums. It’s usually a hot process with a lot of stearic acid; the aim is to produce a dense, slippery lather that is very stable.

You can have fun experimenting with different mixtures of oils and fats to find the perfect recipe. For instance, if I were going to do that, I might use a mixture of 40% stearic acid, 20% castor oil, 10% shea butter, 10% olive oil, and 20% coconut oil. I would probably try a 50-50 K/Na mixture at first, to use as a baseline.

You will need to neutralise it with boric acid.
azzja

Member
December 6, 2014 at 6:08 am

i think i like how this sounds, thank you Belassi

i’m just not sure about the percentage of NaOH/KOH mixture, i understand i’m supposed to use it as a baseline, but how much of it? and in which step do i neutralise? sorry if i’m asking too many stupid questions, but i’ve never made a shaving cream before and i wouldn’t like to mess it up.
edit: i found this formula, it sounds similar to yours, what do you think of it?

Stearic acid 33.1g

Coconut oil                           9.12g

Glycerol                 19.41

Pot. Hydroxide     7.13g

Sod. Hydroxide    0.86g

Borax                                     0.59g

Perfume                 0.91g

Water                                     28.67g

Procedure:

1.
Heat the fatty acids (stearic and coconut) in a porcelain
dish to 75-80 C

2.
Dissolve KOH,NaOH, borax and glycerol in
water, then heat to the same temperature.

3. Add #2 to the fat melts in #1 with slow stirring. Stirring
is continued for 15-20 minutes at 75-80C
belassi

Member
December 6, 2014 at 11:30 am

What you describe is a hot process soap using around a 7:1 ratio of potassium to sodium soap. You can vary the recipe once you are proficient at calculating the saponification values. For instance soapcalc.net is an easy way. I strongly suggest you join a soap forum if you want to do this because you will find many more people with direct experience to advise you.