Balms have been quite more painful to me than soap making believe it or not! I'm still tinkering with balms as we speak as I wanted to aim for something of a thinner consistency (thinking Natio for Men / Nivea / Myrsol Emulsion). But to no avail as of yet. The balms are quite hard when it comes to suiting a person's skin type, so much so, I thought of making at least 2 types, one for "oily" skin (as I have) and 1 for "dry" skin. Currently as they stand I find that they are highly concentrated, so much so that personally, I only use a few drops.
I have had some great feedback in regards to the balms, and I agree that the balms are sometimes so thick that trying to "squeeze" them out of the bottles is a bit of a pain (oversight on my part), so I may look at introducing "pumps" once I have exhausted all the bottles.
Balms are fairly easy for me to make on a "one bottle" at a time basis (which is what I do for testing), however, when I make them they are usually in batches of 7 or more.
The base for the balms are all the same and fragrance is added at the end, so I could very well make unscented balms and then fragrance them all seperatly once they are ready to go.
With soaps its a little different, as I make the base and then add the fragrance at which point the base is then thoroughly mixed to ensure even distribution of the scent. I have on occasion made "once off" soaps, in which I measure out base soap required and then mix in the fragrance by hand which is not my prefered method as the base tends to start harden which makes it a lot harder to work with.
I have also been looking into Aftershaves yet again, however, I have simplified the formulation to that of "Fine" in which the main ingredients are Water, Alcohol, Fragrance and Menthol (in the particular version I was working with). The concentration I have been working with is that of an EDT, but needless to say it gives quite the "bite" due to high alcohol content but have found that longevity is a lot better than my previous release which had way more ingredients in them. This also lead me on a search for glass bottles, as some of the feedback I got was that it would be good to see them in glass bottles with a dripolator. Unfortunately I was only able to find one local stockist of such bottles, so I may look at still using the plastic bottles (sorry guys) but providing the option of either drippolator or atomizer. I know after using the above aftershave tester that a drippolator would be much better as Menthol + eyes = much burning LOL...