Sponiebr

So, I haven't had a ton of time to actually "play" with soap making, because, y'know Christmas and doing "purposeful" soaps that would make nice gifts et cetera... But I got to "play" with some soap making last night, or whenever Monday night into Tuesday morning was... I made a 500g test batch with the HTFHP and used: Lard 51% CO 76F 22% Canola 20% Castor 5% Beeswax (refined) 2% 30% water:oil (more on this later) Replaced ALL of the water with Aloe vera juice. AFTER COOK: 2 tbls warm yogurt dissolved in 40 g aloe juice to bring total water content up to 38% water:oil. 1 tbls honey 1 tbls (LEVEL 1 tbps ppo) oat flour into the aloe/honey/yogurt slop. No FO's calculated in as well this was basically a OHM formulation and, as we all know, that needs no scent help. Oh, did I mention I was using lard? I HATE THE SMELL OF LARD. So lard and me have a serious hate (love... naw... I just hate the stuff.) When I quit smoking and drinking somehow I got a sense of smell back that is pretty precise, to the point of being able to dissect recipes and FO's if I know what the smells are. All I smell with hot lard is pig manure, and it's GAGINGLY strong to me. Finished soap with lard has a similar odor, but more like cooked bacon... It's hard to describe, but it is so unique to me that I can smell it even when a soap has FO's. Still, I used the lard, and I opened the place up until I got it to "cook" in the lye long enough to get rid of the manure smell. The cook went just fine but I realized I wasn't going to be able to deal with the unscented bars, and because I had limited amounts of CS' FO's available in little 1oz testers I kinda had to pick and blend to make something that I thought would be "honey-esque". More on that in a minute. So the idea behind the 30% water was to cook the soap with the high temp fluid HP method until it came down to the wire and was needing to do that last little rest and loosen up phase before the pour. I calculated the formulation to use 30% water:oil and targeted 38% water to oils as my final pour ratio. It WORKED. It was a little batter like, but as a general rule it worked and it worked well. I might increase the yogurt /or the honey a tad, but this worked well. It produced a very creamy off white soap that with the FO blend was to be "acceptablely honey-esque". I wasn't prepared for what happened today when I cut the bloody loaf. It should not surprise any of you that have been reading my posts for a while, that I have little voices in my head giving me moral and practical wisdom on how to avoid the fires of hell and/or an untimely death via bizarre circumstances... It should also not surprise any of my devoted folowee's that SOMETIMES I don't actually EMPLOY all of those moral/practical directions... o.O (don't judge me) Last night I had another one of those whiny little creeps nagging me inside my head, droning on about "hey you might want to record some of these particulars, you know 'cause you might want to (mufgfsjkklee)..." I cut the pesky little creep off, gagged it, and threw it back into it's demented little cage in the back of my mind. I was then free to proceed blissfully unencumbered by the pedantic nagging whine of "oh... you my want to write that down.. ohyoumighwanna" (ugh) What a nightmare! Can't you see I'm CREATING!!!!??? Lemmealone!!! ---Dammit! So today at cut the smell that came off of that little loaf of mostly lard soap was, for lack of a better term: knee-buckling... I was SHOCKED!!! All I was trying to do was get a honey like scent from a couple of Candle Science FO'S! All I had used was Holly Berry and Snickerdoodle! That's IT!!! I was NOT expecting to have created the absolute of a child's pure hope for Santa Claus on Christmas morning. The scent was DIVINE! I'm still pretty amazed at the stuff. It's somewhere between warm honey dipped graham crackers and Heaven's version of Gingerbread and masala chai (made with cream). It's AHMAZING!!! There's one problem: I didn't write down my amounts or the ratios for the FO blend. :/ I roughly remember that it was more holly berry than snickerdoodle, or at least that's what I had intended it to be. Practically it was probably 60/40 holly berry to snickerdoodle and maybe 1/2 - 3/4 tsp. PPO. I guess that gimpy pedantic disembodied nagging voice was right, but don't tell him that... He's already enough of a PITA jerk, he doesn't need self righteousness to "round his complex out". Cheers, Sponiebr the executor of the super max for creepy, pedantic, disembodied, whiny, nagging, know-it-all-voices inside my head... o.O Oh, and they say "hey y'all"....

Here's a source for heavier ones: http://www.tkbtrading.com/category.php?category_id=39

Awwww. Thanks TT! I really needed that! Wait... That's not what you meant huh?

Yeah but I can't say the "F" word on my soap, much less SUPER "F" word... They'd burn me at the stake! I'll take your advice and skip the whole Super "F" word issue... Somebody also mentioned in "that-other-place-which-was-no-more-but-now-again-is" that if I want to sell by weight that I have to have my scales certified by the State. I know something about scale certification due to my work, but I mean DAMN!? Really!? In order to get hard cured soap that isn't going to have any moister evaporating off i'll have to have a BUTT TON of soap on the racks at any particular time, just curing... I could price it by the bar, but then I'd have to have a surefire weigh (there's a double entendre in there I promise), to cut the bars EXACTLY the same and also be able to mold them, and have them end up finished exactly the same... Selling by weight seems easier. You know what... As cheap a bastard as I am... (yep! Cheap bastard, and HOW! ) I really need to go ahead and get those books by Gale on labeling and GMP, because the death doom and destruction in this selling soap labyrinth is just palpable. (shudders) Sponiebr the Cheap Bastard

Thanks J! I really appreciate the help. I do NOT want to go pissing off the Feudal Demagoguery Administration. As I said these are going out to friends and family as Christmas gifts, so I'm not relabeling them, but I will take the SF % off the labels in my template. So I goes over to them Pinterest and hey! my soap on a string idea is there! Not only that but a sudsy friend of mine posted a picture of her soaps that she just got done wrapping and she had some of those soaps on a string! GMTA!!! I think I'm in love with the concept of a small paper bag with the end folded over and closed with a string. That just seems so fast and breathable and just generally a good idea, and because I like the idea it's probably going to cause the soap to develop toxins not normally found on Earth...(Shrugs, I'm just used to it by now.) Slainte, Sponiebr

These are just the Christmas presents, but... now that you mention it... I was going, (for the time being), with the "it's soap" and "calling it soap" loophole and skipping the ingredients thing for right now. Are those labels shown above not good to that end?

No... no... not at all... It was more like instant mental diarrhea. Fairly inspired though... I'll get over there to Pinterest tonight. I'm gonna go to sleep now before I get goofy.

OH HELL!!! I JUST HAD THE BEST IDEA THAT THE EXECUTOR... NEVER MIND!!!! I GOT THIS! Get this: Plug a hole in the soap bar, and run a string with a tag through the hole!!! Oh this is SO GOOD! Low impact, low cost, easy to do, fast, comes with a hanger loop for displaying on a peg board. THIS IS AWESOME! Thank you for inspiring me TT! Sponiebr

This is by no means all of it but this is what I have wrapped thus far. I think I want to outsource soap wrapping... There's a Disher here that sells cuts straight off the log, I would like to consider this... "Thank you so much for your purchase of (glitch). Here's your soap in a brown paper bag. There is a card in the bag denoting the soap specifications. Have a wonderful day and I hope you really enjoy your soap! :D" BZZZZZZT: Thank you so much for your purchase of (glitch). Here's your soap in a brown paper bag. There is a card in the bag denoting the soap specifications. Have a wonderful day and I hope you really enjoy your soap! :D" Those oval ones are a flat out PITA. they are wrapped in wax paper under the tissue paper. Sponiebr the Outsourcer of... (things he don't like to do... )

like this mebbe? I just found it... I have no experience with the company: http://www.grand-wholesale.com/product/mugs-without-handles-4733.htm

Uh, just out of curiosity, is there a way to actually "clean" the wax of FO and dye? I would think some sort of molecular filter maybe? But maybe just some sort of absorbent and a centrifuge? Like I said, I'm just ask'n out of curiosity but some of this in an extrapolated way is fairly useful to my life.

Wait... whut? Glass jars can CRACK!? (You know what this means?) Yeah. Windows could break. And... Drinking "glasses"... Nothing is safe anymore. "The truth is out there." "Trust NO ONE." :\

I like the red star for some reason. It seems to me to be more balanced in size and color with the rest of the label...

I'm asking... Not contributing: What about some Dimethicone and maybe a little Cyclomethicone to add a little something to the slip? Also what about jojoba for a long life "oil"? The ewax mixes with the methicones right? (I was almost sure it does...) Sponiebr o.O

I think I see what you're talking about. Some of the bars are not drying evenly and are becoming warped.

I'm about to gear up for a "fast batch" aka a HP batch... I add my mica, and well... everything... at the end of the cook on HP right? These shimmer thangs... I can't really use them in my regular batches because of the FD&C coloring and the Lake dyes, but I can certainly make up a few test batches for the sake of seeing how they perform. I can also use them in batches that I know the end user isn't going to die from touching the soap. Am I being overly cautious? Probably. But I always say "Better completely inanimate and in your safe zone than not being completely inanimate and in your safe zone." Oh and "We can dance if we want to..."

o.O I was at the Dollar Tree tonight buying my month's worth of groceries and I was looking for wrapping ideas and... blah... blah...blah... Long story short: I ended up looking over in cosmetics and found L.A. Colors "SHIMMERING LOOSE EYESHADOW with BRUSH APPLICATOR". Whadda-ell is THIS? Fast FORWARDED abridged version: it's 2.5 g of mineral, FD&C, and Lake dyed cosmetic eye and lip safe Mica. For $1. That's a little expensive at the ounce rate but if you just need a quick fix for topping or (I'm going to try some in a batch) then that's pretty darned convenient. There's mineral oil and some other sticky stuff in the comp but not enough to be of any real concern, I don't think... Here's L.A. Colors' website showing the product I bought, and their link showing their vendors is below it. Thort I'd pass this lil find along to those who need it most. Chandler's might benefit from this as well... https://www.lacolors.com/Shimmering-Loose-Eyeshadow-1146.html https://www.lacolors.com/location.php Slainte, Sponiebr

Wait a sec! YOU DON'T actually LICK your soap!?!?! I mean I do... I lick my soap from time to time... (Don't judge me...) Does that make me a bad person? (gawd... NOW I feel dirty...) Zap testing is my standard for checking CP and that's just FINE for CP. I was just wondering about the testing equipment because, gosh, with that High Temp HP stuff I can't tell if the burning and blisters in my mouth are from the lye or just from the heat of the hot soap... I want to be accurate y'know! If I have to keep zap testing boiling hot soap with my body parts, so be it... But, I dunno... I thought I'd at least ASK if there was a easier, softer way...

Beat me to it! Well, apparently... ONE of the many things that have been found out to not work well in micro gravity environments is getting pregnant... Apparently this has been extensively tested in space, and found to be EXTREMELY difficult to almost impossible to become pregnant in space. The fertilization process apparently needs gravity to facilitate the movement of stuff from point A to point B. Now THAT PISSES ME OFF! Seriously NASA, you're a bunch of Bass turds! YOU PAID THESE PEOPLE WITH OUR TAX MONEY!!!! I MEAN Jeeze!!! I would have TOTALLY done it for FREE!!!! -Sponiebr

I really have no idea where else to ask this so I'll ask it here, because "I, I, I, oh here I stand before me..." (somebody might get that reference, but I doubt they'll admit it... ) So, are all y'all doing pH testing and if (yes, I used "if"), so what are you using? Tester? Reagent solution? Strips? Bits of lichen off of rocks? The old drop-on-the-wrist-and-see-if-it-smokes? Cheers, Sponiebr the ______________ (meh, get creative and fill in the blank)

Here's what the last batch looked like TT... Not half bad huh? Sea Mist by CS... Insert other media

Did I reply to this already or did my post never make it off my laptop? Well, just in case... I did... I'll reverbatize my responceification... Really? Do they shrink up that badly? I made my last batch at 40% water and after the cook and the evaporation and all I suspect that my end % was somewhere in the 35-37% area. I won't know however because I didn't bother to do an accurate weight after the cook. I'll warn my co-worker that these might shrivel up after a while... Thanks for the heads up TT. I didn't have any yogurt or SL so I fell back on my old standby of winging it and my fats and everything ended up as soap! I keep getting soap dammit! My reputation for bad ideas is on the line here... I'm sure I just jinxed myself, which is a pretty bad idea, so (sighs) I'm right on track! o.O

Whoa... Everything you wanted to know about Candle wicks but were afraid to ask. That's awesome TT!

Oh HI! I'm lost and confused and I think I've forgotten something... Oh! Hi there! I'm a little lost and I can't understand something... Something like... What the HELL is up with the flipp'n SUGAR and sodium lactate in the Fluid HP method? I found out about the yogurt last night, the honey seems to loosen up the soap for pouring and, it's just a hunch, but I'm thinking that the SL and the yogurt (because they're listed in EVERY stink'n formulation), are some things that aid in lowering the viscosity of the soap as well. It doesn't seem to be actually written anywhere, so will anyone confirm that hunch for me? Also, does anyone have some other methods or items that would improve flow and lowering viscosity of the soap for pouring and swirling? Somewhere in the back of my head I remember something about adding large quantities of alcohol to the hot soap, (which seems like a stink'n nightmare, maybe cyclo?) Direction people! I need direction! I also probably need a straight jacket... Your input is always appreciated, (and 99% of the time actually put into practice). Slainte! Sponiebr the (oh damn! I'm LATE!!! )

Thanks TT, that's exactly what I needed to know. I ended up with 3 bars of tests but my outbound soaps I wrapped a 3 layer deep ring of stark white crepe paper streamer and then laid on the label for Christmas and last topped with a single layer of that EZ Start tape. They look pretty good. And thatks all for the wrapper suggestions. As much as I want to do the shrink wrappers, time and locality has me pretty much stuck with tape and or paper products taped together... I will improve over time, just like the soap.