Firm scrubbing bar
A hard tallow and coconut bar for the workshop sink, with a fast, thick lather that cuts through grease and fine pumice for grip. Scented with Siberian fir and Atlas cedarwood, it lasts for months by the back door.
- Skill
- Beginner
- Method
- Cold process
- Batch
- 1000 g of oils about 1473 g of batter
- Hands-on
- 1 hour
- Cure
- 4 weeks
- Gel phase
- Either way gel or not, both work
What you need
For 1000 g of oils, which fills a 1.5 litre loaf mould. Weigh everything, liquids included.
| Edible Tallow · 40.0 % | 400 g | 14.11 oz |
| Coconut Oil · 30.0 % | 300 g | 10.58 oz |
| Olive Oil · 20.0 % | 200 g | 7.05 oz |
| Castor Oil · 10.0 % | 100 g | 3.53 oz |
| Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) · the lye, 100 % pure | 143.1 g | 5.05 oz |
| Distilled water · for a 35 % lye solution | 265.7 g | 9.37 oz |
| Pumice powder, fine · 3 tbsp, stirred into 30 g of the recipe's olive oil first | 34 g | 1.20 oz |
| Siberian fir essential oil · 2.0 % of the oils, at trace | 20 g | 0.71 oz |
| Atlas cedarwood essential oil · 1.0 % of the oils, at trace | 10 g | 0.35 oz |
- Superfat
- 5 %
- Temperatures
- Oils and lye solution each between 38 and 43 °C (100 and 110 °F)
Method
-
Get ready
Put on splash goggles, nitrile gloves and long sleeves, open a window or turn on the extractor fan, and keep children and pets out of the room. Line the mould and have a small bowl and spoon ready for the pumice. -
Weigh the oils and the scent
Weigh 400 g tallow and 300 g coconut oil into the pot, and 200 g olive oil and 100 g castor oil into a jug. Weigh 20 g Siberian fir and 10 g Atlas cedarwood essential oil into a small glass cup. -
Make the pumice paste
Pour 30 g of the olive oil from the jug into the small bowl and stir in 3 tablespoons of fine pumice powder until smooth, with no dry lumps. -
Make the lye solution
Weigh 265.7 g distilled water into a heat-safe jug and 143.1 g sodium hydroxide into a small dry container. In a well-ventilated spot, pour the lye slowly into the water, never the water onto the lye, and stir until clear. Leave it to cool, labelled and out of reach. -
Melt the tallow and coconut oil
Melt the tallow and coconut oil together on low heat until completely clear, then pour in the rest of the olive oil and the castor oil. -
Check the temperatures
Carry on when both the oils and the lye solution are between 38 and 43 °C (100 and 110 °F). Much cooler and the tallow starts to cloud, which thickens the batter before it has traced. -
Combine and blend to light trace
Pour the lye solution into the oils down the shaft of the stick blender, tap the blender to let trapped air out, then pulse and stir until a drizzle leaves a faint line on the surface. -
Add the scent
Stir the fir and cedarwood oils through by hand with the spatula, then give the batter one short pulse to even them out. -
Thicken to medium trace
Pulse a little more until the batter is like thin custard and a drizzle sits on the surface for a few seconds. Thinner than that and the pumice sinks to the bottom of the mould. -
Stir in the pumice
Scrape the pumice paste into the batter and stir it through by hand, right to the bottom and corners of the pot, until the batter is evenly speckled grey. -
Pour and cover
Pour into the mould, tap it on the worktop, smooth the top and cover it with a lid or board and a folded towel for a day. -
Clean up with your gloves on
Wipe the raw batter off the pot and tools with paper towels into the bin, then wash everything in hot soapy water. The pumice is gritty, so wipe it out rather than letting it wash down the sink. -
Unmould and cut
After 24 to 36 hours, when the loaf is firm, unmould it with gloves on and cut it into bars about 2.5 cm (1 in) thick. Cut it soon: tallow soap gets harder to cut cleanly every day. -
Cure
Stand the bars on edge in a dry, airy room for four weeks, turning them every few days.
Tips
- Buy pumice sold as fine powder; coarse grades feel like sandpaper. For a gentler bar, use 2 tablespoons.
- Without the pumice, and at this recipe's 6 % superfat variant, the same oils make a hard everyday body bar. For a palm-free men's bar with no grit, see Men's cedar and orange bar; for a heavier garden scrub, see Gardener's pumice scrub bar.
- If the bars have a band of pumice along the bottom, the batter was too thin when it went in. Wait for a thicker trace next time.
The oils
| Oil | Share |
|---|---|
| Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) | 40.0 % |
| Coconut Oil | 30.0 % |
| Olive Oil (virgin / refined / olive oil) | 20.0 % |
| Castor Oil | 10.0 % |
How it is made
| Process | Cold process |
| Alkali | NaOH |
| Superfat | 5 % |
| Water | lye water at 35 % |
| Iodine value | 47 |
| INS | 165 |
Why make it
This is a bar for grimy hands. Forty per cent tallow makes it hard enough to sit by a workshop sink for months, and 30 % coconut oil with 10 % castor oil gives it a quick, thick lather (bubbly 31 on our scale) and a cleansing 22, strong enough for oil and garden dirt. Pumice gives it grip. Scrubbing soaps are an old idea: a 1908 handbook of soap manufacture lists pumice among the additions for motorists' soaps (Simmons and Appleton), and animal fats have made hard soap for hundreds of years (Faiola). The fir and cedarwood are there because many people like a woody smell on a work bar, nothing more. Pumice is for hands and feet only: it is too rough for the face or for daily use on the body.
Sources
- The Handbook of Soap Manufacture, by W. H. Simmons and H. A. Appleton · Scott, Greenwood & Son, 1908
- Pure Soapmaking, by Anne-Marie Faiola · Storey Publishing, 2016
What tradition, makers' experience and research say about soaps like this, each labelled for what it is. It is not medical advice, and no soap treats a skin condition: if you have one, ask a doctor or pharmacist.
What the numbers say
- Lauric acid 14.7 %
- Myristic acid 7.3 %
- Palmitic acid 15.6 %
- Stearic acid 10.7 %
- Ricinoleic acid 8.9 %
- Oleic acid 31.5 %
- Linoleic acid 4.9 %
- Other 6.6 %
Saturated : unsaturated 52 : 48
Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.
Try it differently
35 variationsThe same soap with one thing moved. Each opens in the calculator ready to change again.
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping)
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping)
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping)
- 6 % superfat
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and 4 % superfat
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and 6 % superfat
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and 6 % superfat
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and 6 % superfat
- water at 38 % of the oils
- lye water at 33 %
- lye water at 40 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and water at 38 % of the oils
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 33 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 40 %
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and water at 38 % of the oils
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 33 %
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 40 %
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and water at 38 % of the oils
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 33 %
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) and lye water at 40 %
- 6 % superfat and water at 38 % of the oils
- 6 % superfat and lye water at 33 %
- 6 % superfat and lye water at 40 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 4 % superfat, and water at 38 % of the oils
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 4 % superfat, and lye water at 33 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 4 % superfat, and lye water at 40 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and water at 38 % of the oils
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 33 %
- Lard (pure rendered pork fat) instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 40 %
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and water at 38 % of the oils
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 33 %
- Palm Oil instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 40 %
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and water at 38 % of the oils
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 33 %
- Palm Stearin instead of Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping), 6 % superfat, and lye water at 40 %
From the guides
All guides
Lard and tallow: soaping with animal fats
Why lard and tallow make hard, mild, creamy soap, how to render and store them at home, how beef, mutton and pork fat differ, and classic recipes.
Soap additives: salt, sugar, sodium lactate, clays, oats, silk and more
What common soap additives do, how much to use and when they go in: sourced doses for sodium lactate, salt, sugar, honey, citric acid, clays, oats and silk.
Trace: how to tell when soap batter is ready
What trace is, how to read emulsion, light, medium and thick trace, how to spot false trace, and what makes soap batter thicken faster or slower.
Where these proportions come from
Our own construction for a workshop bar: tallow and coconut oil for a hard bar with a fast, big lather, 10 % castor oil to keep the lather thick, and a 5 % superfat. Fine pumice gives it grip.