What ingredients are found in commercially available soap?
What is the difference between commercially available soap and Sherlock Soaps?
What is glycerin and why is it beneficial?
Were you influenced by Fight Club, the movie?
Do you use organic olive oil?
Where do you get your herbs and spices?
What are you soaps made of?
All of our ingredients are listed under Products. We use an olive oil base for its moisturizing properties. Different oils have different properties. In addition to olive oil, we also use soybean oil (moisturizing), coconut oil (to enhance the “sudsiness” of our soaps), castor oil (moisturizing), beeswax (durability). We also only use aromatherapy-grade essential oils, instead of fragrance oils, which can cause allergic reactions.
What ingredients are found in commercially available soap?
Soap is made by reacting a strong base (Sodium Hydroxide), with oils and/or fats. Although different manufacturers will use different oil and fat combinations, tallow and coconut oil are most commonly found in their ingredient lists. Tallow is rendered beef fat.
To ensure their products will last long on the shelf, large manufacturers add preservatives to their soaps. These preservatives are generally synthetically made, petroleum by-products.
What is the difference between commercially available soap and Sherlock Soaps?
Sherlock Soaps are 100% handcrafted from natural ingredients, and contain only vegetable oils and fats. We do not use preservatives, and as a result, our soap has a shorter shelf life than most commercially available soap. However, Sherlock Soaps are milder for the skin, and naturally moisturizing, as glycerin is retained in all our soaps.
What is glycerin and why is it beneficial?
Glycerin is a moisturizing agent and a natural by-product of soap making. However, as glycerin is widely used in the cosmetics industry, glycerin is frequently removed from the soap and sold. Commercially available soap is harsh to the skin only because the glycerin has been removed. Sherlock Soaps, on the other hand, retains the glycerin that is produced in the soap making process, resulting a milder bar of soap.
Were you influenced by Fight Club, the movie?
I get this question a lot. I do use sodium hydroxide (or lye) when making my soap, except I use the “cold process” method of making soap, in which the glycerin is inherently contained in the soap. I believe in Fight Club, they extract the glycerin to make bombs. One tradeoff of extracting glycerin is that you get less of a moisturizing bar, regardless of what oils/fats you use to make your soap.
Do you use organic olive oil?
No. The reason is that good soap cannot be made from Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Better soap is made from refined olive oil, which is not commonly organic (at this point at least). Many of my customers have expressed the desire to use organic soap, and I am exploring whether different suppliers will sell organic refined olive oil.
Where do you get your herbs and spices?
Most of my herbs and spices were either obtained from my backyard garden, or from health food stores.