Hi All

As I jumped into the shower this morning I ripped open a new bar of soap. On reading the ingredients (sad I know) I was rather surprised to read that rosin was one of them. I wonder if I could use my new bar of Pears on my bow or wash with my violin rosin?

Ha Ha, it wouldnt do your bow any good at all. Wearing my chemists hat ( I specialise in chemicals from natural oils like soap, fatty acids, glycerine etc), some soap can contain a salt of Tall Oil Fatty Acid, which is a by product of papermaking, and contains some things called rosin acids.
Rosin for your bow is Gum Rosin usually ex China or Portugal, and known in the chemical trade as 'colophony'
I guess it's not beyone the realms of possibility for a very small amount of this to be present in soap if it is a special exfoliating one.

Pears soap is lovely - it's fantastic for soft clean skin. It has a wonderful, unique smell too

(I buy it in bulk from Tesco and always get strange looks )

I think Pears will have quite a bit more glycerine content (several %) than most other soaps. Glycerine is a good moisturiser. Contents should be on the label

Way but why do we use the expression to "jump into the shower"? I use it frequently!

Clearly nobody would dream of actually jumping into a shower cubicle, because of the health and safety considerations

must stop thinking, and go to work!

Don't you jump, I always jump over the "lip" of the shower tray. Perhaps not to be encoraged amonst the ladies due to the risk of causing black eyes!

Just looking at the label on my bottle of "traditional lemonade"-type of stuff and it has glycerol ester of wood rosin listed as a stabiliser.

Drinking rosin, as well as washing with it?!
Wow, it really does get everywhere

That didn't surprise me, glycerol esters are found in all sorts of products in the food industry, particularly glycerol monostearate, but this wouldnt be too far away chemically from a glycerol ester made from rosin fatty acids.
Sometimes its astonishing how one chemical can have so mnay different uses, I trade a lot of stearic acid, (made from palm oil). One minute I can be selling to a tyre producer (mould release agent), next a sweet manufacturer (eg Polo mints, as a tabletting aid) and next a pharmaceutical company making suppositories (so you know where you can stuff that ! )

Gum rosins main use is in adhesives by the way, but maybe that's not too surprising.