My wife had used a few commercially/or small artisan made shampoo bars but never gotten good results from them. Even the 'artisan' made ones were, with the gift of my relatively new soaping knowledge - relatively poorly made having the majority of their ingredients made up of PO+CO.
Cut a long story short made a small (1lb) batch last night which was based on the formulation recommendations from a mammoth 68 page thread over at SMF. Was done in hopes of adjusting to my wife's irritable scalp and also oily hair combo plus working with the actual ingredients I had on hand or could access easily here in regional Australia. Apparently shampoo bars are VERY individual specific and while most people will agree a certain body soap is good you get a lot more issues as hair type/scalp type etc come into things.
Ended up going with:
OO 40%, AvO 20%, Castor 10%, CO (Copha which has the convenient advantage of containing lecithin, which some think helps hair shine) 5%, RBO 19%, PO 5%, Neem Oil 1% (so low as my wife HATES it's smell but it works very well on her scalp)
SF@3%
1/2 the water was made into a tea of fresh parsley, rosemary, camomile + green tea, fresh Aloe Vera and Manuka Honey. Strained and added at light trace. And also 1tsp of Bentonite clay.
The other half I made the lye solution in (think I could have just added all together to simplify things!)
Scented with Rosemary + Tea Tree EO at 2:1 ratio with just a dash of Lavender.
Took a tad longer to trace (than my whopping 3 previous batches of experience!
but surprisingly very firm this morning. Will zap test and cut pending this @24hr mark.