How to Make a Shampoo Bar

Author: Sinclair A. Sheers Published on: August 31, 2001

This soap can be used as a shampoo. The castor oil and coconut oil make a nice lather. The jojoba oil and shea butter provide rich conditioning. The olive oil makes it mild. The palm oil hardens the bar and quickens trace. The cocoa butter and beeswax both help to harden the bar, too. The silk and goats milk make it luxurious.

Ingredients

Oils
1 oz castor oil
1 oz cocoa butter
4 oz coconut oil
1 oz jojoba oil
6 oz olive oil
5 oz palm oil
1 oz shea butter
1 oz beeswax

Lye Mixture
at least 8 fl oz distilled water
2.6 oz lye
one square inch silk fabric (any color) or 1 T hydrolyzed silk amino acids (available from http://www.from-nature-with-love.com )

Additives
3 T powdered goats milk
your preferred fragrance oil or essential oil (I use 1.5 tsp. Blue Lilac fragrance oil from http://www.soapcrafters.com)

Run the recipe through a lye calculator like the one at http://www.the-sage.com/services/calcula... before proceeding.

These directions are for hot process soap. You can make this recipe using the cold process method by following the directions at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/7683...

Remove all but the bottom rack of the oven. Preheat it to 200 degrees. Weigh all the oils. Put them in a big stainless steel pot on the stove. Remove a few tablespoons of the oils from the pot. Save them in a measuring cup for later. Heat and stir the oils in the pot until they turn to liquid. Turn off the stove.

Measure the water for the lye mixture. Go outside, don gloves, goggles, and apron. Measure the lye. Mix the lye and silk into the water. Stir until the lye and silk are completely dissolved. Pour the lye mixture into the oil pot. Stir with a stick blender. When it reaches trace, put the top on the pot. Put the pot into the oven. Cook it for an hour stirring every 15 minutes. During this time, grease the molds with a little oil.

When the soap is cooked, remove the pot from the oven. Mix the additives into the few tablespoons of oil saved earlier. Make a slurry of it. Pour the slurry into the big pot of soap. Mix it well. Pour it into molds. Since this is Hot Process, the soap is ready to use when it cools and hardens. It takes a few days to truly harden. If you have trouble getting the soap out of the molds, put your molds into the freezer for a few hours. After you remove the soap from the molds, you can do the happy soap dance!

When you use this shampoo bar, I suggest you rinse your hair with a combination of 1/3 white vinegar and 2/3 water after shampooing.