Sponiebr

Weeeeaaaalll.... TT has a point about comedogenic fats... But, (oh there is a but, there is always a but) generally speaking these oils are only comedone forming when used as a stand alone oil or as an emollient and these fats do not cause zits when turned into CP soap. Most of the problems in using CO in facial soaps is that even when superfated to 20% it is extremely drying to the skin. Having said that, these oils CAN be comedone forming when used as a "specific" and high super fat in a HP soap. I think the upshot of what I'm getting at is don't sweat comedone ratings for oils that you are intending to use in soap making just yet. I'm only talking about soap here and not any of the other B&B schtuffs. You know then there is the whole everybody's different thing where "X" causes acne in Subject 0 but does not affect Mr. Dude, and what affects Mr. Dude does nothing to Subject 0. Your mileage WILL vary. Just for your future reference (way down the line future reference bubba...) here's a site I use to look up comedone ratings for oils. https://www.beneficialbotanicals.com/facts-figures/comedogenic-rating.html Interestingly enough, it seems that any oil which would normally lend itself to being an excellent emollient becomes very drying when turned into a soap. CO is so very frequently used in B&B products as an emollient as is shea butter, but when either of these is turned into a soap they are very aggressive soaps and generally very drying to the skin. Well, back to my bad idea management... -Sponie

Oh Kathy's BRILLIANT! I still go to her site from time to time. That was the first place that my soap dealer (I mean my (cough) friend who makes soap...) sent me to learn more "modern" methods of soap making.

We've been over this already. Alcohol BAD! Alcohol make BAD PITA mess. Alcohol belongs in soap maker not soap making.

Welcome Lora! I make soap but I find it fascinating to read all of the candle makers posts in numbers and all of this talk about throwing stuff... it's just AWESOME!!! There's a ton of really in depth info on these boards and a lot of sincerely helpful and talented people. Glad to have ya! Slainte, Sponie the Executor of Bad Ideas

Amen! Oh this is GOOD STUFF!!! Yeah Candle Science had a $.99 1 oz sample sale and I bought 26 flip'n FO's. (Most of which I have been extremely happy with) It has given me a variety of FO'S that I can mix if I want and didn't break the bank. Anyway... MOLDS: So I made one of those hinged adjustable molds where the 2 long sides fold down and the ends are held together with a single carriage bolt and wing nut on the ends. My end pieces are just blocks of wood cut and finished to the width and height of the inside dimensions of the mold. When I line this mold with freezer paper all I do is take out the end pieces and lay down the freezer paper across the open mold (sides laying down) I tape the paper to the outside long edges and then fold them up applying a crease as I flip up the sides. At this point I have a perfectly taught and neat freezer paper lined channel. I then wrap the ends like little presents making sure all the seams and taping is on only one side of the block. Then I just drop those little wrapped ends down into the mold at the length I want them set at and tighten up the end bolts. I get very, very little leaks at the very ends and not for nothing, but I really don't even have to re-wrap the end pieces every time, as long as they come out in clean and undamaged condition I just used them again in the same end and same orientation(the little soap seepage has made a gasket for me). And yeah... Just some basic oils. That Great Value Shortening really is some of the most awesome and cheapest soaping fat on the planet. Chefmom, I dunno about the single oil thing... All of my soaps in the beginning (my recent beginning) were single oil soaps. Truth be told, I had never even considered olive oil for making soap until I think it was earlier this year. I just could not fathom using something so dear as olive oil for soap making. When I tell you I grew up in the middle of nowhere I'm not joking, I had never even tasted OO until I was a Junior in college. Soaping fat for me growing up was usually whatever the butcher would give me in a sack and I had to wet render it outside in Florida summer heat over a Coleman dual fuel camp stove set down on a wooded cable spoon that was set amid the chicken coops, burn barrel, compost bin, and the ash leaching crib made from half a plastic 55 gal drum (I hated that damned thing). Sometimes I'd get a treat and mom would buy a bucket of Armour Lard and a can of Red Devil Lye (we eventually used both of these exclusively, much to my relief). My aversion to the smell of lard and lard based soaps stems directly from my childhood, and yet there is NOTHING that smells more like soap or "clean" to me than lard based soap... Oh and we never had a soap mold, not once, not ever. I used the largest pyrex rectangular baking "pans" we had and lined them with black visqueen or a black trash bag. I have dedicated molds, and I buy, (in a STORE) my fats and lye for making soap now... Life is SO much easier. Cheers, Sponie the (meh you KNOW, you know...)

For what it's worth I use #08 stainless steel leader wire, (Tooth Proof by American Fishing Wire @ Walmart) because it's ~$2 for 30 feet in my beveler. It's rated at 86#'s... I don't have a gang cutter yet though. Also tuning machines can be pretty pricey, Stewart MacDonald has a couple of good deals right now: http://www.stewmac.com/Hardware_and_Parts/Tuning_Machines/Solid_Peghead_Guitar_Tuning_Machines/Economy_Covered_Gear_6-In-Line_Tuners.html Cheers, Sponie The Executor of, (ya know, just watch from a distance... preferably behind a blast shield. I'm just say'n... )

YEah the charcoal, isn't going to hurt anything it just might stain a washcloth or some grouting if there is too much. For what it's worth I've put a TBLSP of bronze mica in a batch (normal dark coloring would be around 1/4 tsp.) and the soap turned out usable. It was really just a note for your future reference to maybe help save you a little product. The TRACE though... Oh boy. Sounds like you had a NPE... (near pinetar experience) NPE's are never a pleasant thing to have lived through. I feel your pain man... I was wondering what the little white flecks were, and now we know how they happened I don't know this for a fact, because I haven't tried it or actually ever hear of anyone trying it, but if you can find hamamelis virginiana (witch hazel) bark and twigs either from a herbal supply or in your woods, you could brew your own and use that without the alcohol and see if that behaves more reasonably. Alternatively you might be able to find a concentrated tincture of witch hazel and add that to your soap. Some companies that offer alcohol based tinctures and extracts also offer some in a glycerin base for children and hepatically compromised users. When I was over in East Europe witch hazel could be bought in little compressed wafers that looked like Pu-Ehr tea cakes to add to a sitz bath, but there was NO WHERE that you could find a witch hazel tonic like we have here in the States. You can get the dried bark and leaf from Mountain Rose Herbs (I just LOVE those guys, even if they are a tad pricey! ) https://www.mountainroseherbs.com/search?page=1&q=witch&utf8=✓ You can also get alcohol free witch hazel products already prepared, Thayers makes several https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/thayers-alcohol-free-witch-hazel-with-organic-aloe-vera-formula-toner-lavender/ID=prod6161180-product Anyway dude awesome job, sounds like an awesome save as well! Keep on do'n yer thang! Slainte, Sponie the Executor of Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ideas and Sundry Services.

Those are nice looking bars! My only thoughts would be to be careful about the witch hazel, because alcohol can accelerate the trace and give you a bad case of soap on a stick blender. I don't know how big your batch was but I think you'll find that just a smidge of charcoal (powdered) will carry you a very LONG way. You don't want the charcoal to end up coming out in the lather. If the charcoal bar ends up being too drying for you, you might dial back the coconut oil and bump up the olive oil, maybe something more in line with your basic formula. Looks really good though dude!

That Red Ginger and Saffron (the top 2 photos) gave me similar results as last time. I tasted the exudate and it's the FO. I'll try another batch with a known well behaved FO and see what happens. I guess I'm gonna be rebatching some soap. (HIGHLY irritated, nay, not irritated, I'm PISSED OFF...)

2nd attempt at the Honey Aloe Ghost Swirl. I cut the honey WAY back from the 25g PPO to 10g PPO and I actually mixed the honey in with the fat instead of "cooking" it in the lye water before hand. The second set is some CO & lard 60/40 with 5% SF and Florida Water FO (Save on Scents) made with a drop-pour ghost swirl. I made this log up for that Church in West Palm Beach asking for soap donations to send to Haiti. Slainte! P.S.: I can STILL smell the lard. I can always smell the lard. This batch wasn't nearly as disagreeable to me nose as normal though...

I soap so my choices are a little more limited, BUT... These are the ones I have to have on hand: Pomegranate Cider Red Current Jamaica Me Crazy Cucumber Mint Himalayan Bamboo Citron and Mandarin Ginger and Red Saffron I also really like: Pumpkin Pie Snickerdoodle Black Sea Strawberry Shortcake Ocean Breeze Coconut Pine Cone Blue Spruce Mistletoe Frasier Fir Sea Mist Vetiver (This one may end up in my stock list) Mediterranean Fig Fig and Brown Sugar Holly Berry Juniper Breeze Christmas Tree I love the smell of Christmas Hearth, but I can't use it in soap... (Which SUCKS) Their Plumeria and Bayberry are nice as well...

No... You got it right... I do that kinda regularly, really.

OOOOOOH!!!!! Ok! I thought that lye might work kind of like an acid where it eventually works itself to death. Your comment about water and lye having a reaction drives this point home. Water and lye DO get hot and we make soap from that... So the sugars are using up VERY, VERY, little of the lye. It all makes SENSE NOW!!!! I can see it all so clearly now... (crap... this looks exactly like the same place I was before I read this. Yep I'm still in my room...) Slainte, Sponie

Another thought just occurred to me... At LOW levels of additives this is a non issue. 1 Tsp of honey PPO or something like that, not an issue. I'm at almost 1 oz PPO of honey though... THAT'S A LOT. This ghost swirl was an experiment, and I knew going in that I might lose the batch just because it was completely dark territory for me... Oh... but the REALITY of losing a batch is so PAINFUL, I can't have this happen again!!! I MUST KNOW how to stop this evil from happening!!!! (yeah) Jcandleattic I'm totally feel'n you on the freezer thing. I do the same thing with my OHM soap. I react the milk and the honey before hand, and then re-chill the solution and I soap as cold as I can get everything and I even chill my wood box that holds my silicone mold. As soon as it's poured it goes into the freezer. I use a cookie sheet under the box so I can move it quickly and keep it all level. Then I freeze it solid, and after that it goes into the fridge to defrost and then finally out to room temp. This takes almost 2 days BUT, when I do it that way, not a trace of gel happens, and I get a beautiful light colored OHM soap. I haven't made a batch in my big loaf mold yet because I don't have a freezer big enough to accommodate the mold, which really sucks because that's the ONE soap people keep asking me for. Maybe I'll find me a freezer on the side of the road and gut it and wrap the guts around a soap mold and have me a cryo-saponification unit. LOL! ( I totally WOULD do something like that...) -Sponie the Executor of Bad Ideas

You bring up a REALLY important point Kelly. WHEN I add in stuff that's going to heat up, (actually strike that)... I ALWAYS start with ice cold lye water before I go to any other steps. If I had added honey to hot or (maybe even room temp) lye water, I'm certain it would have volcanoed out of my lye pitcher. I always start as cold as I can with everything and that allows me to manipulate the heat to what "I" decide it will be instead of my soap deciding what "I" will have to deal with. It's a small thing but REALLY important when dealing with super heating ingredients. Even when I just add* honey* to the nearly frozen lye water it gets incredibly hot. I have burnt honey before (I didn't with this batch) and let me tell you, it smells BURNT, oh, and it's almost black. Burnt honey has a very caramelized look and smell to it. The ice cube liquid content thing works well with liquid milk soaps as well. As far as things staying the same across the board with regards to additives, the lye has to be using up some of it's "lyeness" or else nothing would happen at all. I guess the real question is how much of the lye is getting used up in these separated event reactions like adding the milk and honey into the lye BEFORE adding the lye solution to the fats, AND is there an order of precedence as to reactions for the lye when you just dump it all together unreacted. I'd have to think that because sugars heat up soaps so quickly and that CP soaps take at least 24 hours to saponify that the sugars react before the fats in a combined ingredients reaction. Reacted lye is the same thing as less lye and that would be the same thing as a lye discount... Again the issue would have to be how much are we actually losing? If it bumps up my SF by a couple of percents, no biggy, but if it's a big jump and I've already calulated in 10%SF and I actually end up with 18%> (or whatever) that's a problem. There also might be some tweak like water discounting that might speed up the saponification to meet with the sugar lye reaction speed... I dunno... (*I swear I just typed ass hiney. I'm so frigg'n tired...)

So honey will heat up your soap even after you have reacted it with the lye before hand? Which brings up another question, that if I'm burning up lye with additives should I reduce my SF% to compensate for the lye lost in the additives reactions? If so, then by how much?

My Gawd Kelly! LOOK AT THIS STUFF!!!! It's BLEEDING OUT ALL OVER THE PLACE!!!! What THE HELL!!!!? It's NOT a Ghost Swirl, it's a ZOMBIE fart.

Yeah the honey is rather high, but, (and I DON'T understand this) it's very popular with the crazy amount of honey. Why would I cook it? It's a ghost swirl it needs to go through gel to get the differentiations in tint. The way I make honey, and milk, and anything that will burn is to get it and the lye together so they can get their naughty business on in private and be all chilled for the main event. I'm proactive like that. My OHM soap doesn't get hot at all when I make it, it just barely sits there all luke warm. I dunno, maybe it was too much honey... maybe when I use additives that burn up lye I need to knock down the superfat to compensate. You know this stuff reminds me of a re-hydrated shrinky-dink, cold and wet.

Okay. Here's the carnage: The little individual molds got a ghost swirl in them too, but they were left at room temp so i could see what would be the difference between the CPOP and the regular CP. Here's what I've got in this mess.: Water replaced 100% with Aloe Vera Juice. Honey 50g. (It's about 1 oz PPO.---ish) 1.5 tsp Ginger and Red Saffron FO from CS. Over all batch was 52 oz at initial mix and 54 oz at final cast. Aloe vera juice and honey mixed together and then frozen into cubes. Then I added the lye to the mix and chilled it all back down and strained it for good measure. The formula for the soap is my standard: 40% GV Shortening 35% OO 20% CO 5% Castor Ghost swirl water discounts: 66% of the batch was made at 33% water to oils. 33% was made at 38% water to oils. I made up the entire batch at 33% water to oils and then I took 33% of the batter and mixed in my 50 g distilled water to get the 38% water to oil for the center pour. The 38% is the center or dark swirls and it's what's giving me the most trouble. There is this weird red brown ooze coming out of the soap (It SQUISHED OUT WHEN I CUT IT!!! IT FRIGG'N SQUISHED WHEN I CUT IT!!!!!) There's also these weird little conchoidal fractures of the low water soap... I cooked it for about 1.5 hrs at around 140-ish F. Then I took it out and let it set on the counter at room temp until the next day. I also cast the loaf in a silicone mold. OVERALL softish soap: The room temp stuff is VERY soft (like a little harder than cold shortening), and the CPOP is harder (more like a soap) but more "squishy" (there's that word again) in the high % water. There is no zap, and the lather is a weak "meh". Hand feel is very emollient rich. I'm wondering if I "burnt up" all of my lye in the honey and aloe juice. Anyone know what might have happened? Here are the photos: (viewer discretion is advised) The goo at the bottom of the purple mold...

Oh... No you don't... You THINK you want to see the carnage... But you don't... Trust me. (sigh) Photos to follow soon.

Thanky!

From ghoulies and ghostiesAnd long-leggedy beastiesAnd things that go bump in the night,Good Lord, deliver us! Now, maybe I can lure and catch a long leggedy with this soap... Seriously, Auntie Clara's Ghost Swirl is bloody INSPIRED! I'm going to have to play with this A LOT more. I can't wait to cut this. Honey aloe with Ginger Red Saffron FO Ghost swirl.

I'm not getting a real clear answer from my web searches, so it's time to pick all y'all's brains. Preface: Remove all additives from this discussion. It is understood that saponification is technically the root of the issue. Question: What causes soaps to overheat? For my hurricane fun daze in no power and bored blind, I have made some pretty basic 60% CO 40% GV Shortening 1% SF laundry soaps. I made smallish batches too... (32 oz oils) I used my smaller 42 oz silicone loaf mold which has a 1/4" thick light pinewood box it sits in. They BOTH went through COMPLETE gel phase fresh baked split down the top and all. The crack was only about 1/4-3/8" deep, and it kinda closed up after it cooled down a bit. The soap is fine, (actually it's wonderful), and I'm kinda liking this gel phase stuff because 3 hr old soap had NO zap and was becoming too hard to cut, and in 5 hours I had ready to use soap. I kinda liked that. I used full water in both batches, which as I understand lowers the gel phase temperature, and I soaped at room temp. The first batch was just left at room temperature (about 78 degrees) and the second batch, (because I remembered what the first batch did), I insulated it and caused the whole loaf to go into full gel. Wonderful soap, hard as obsidian and as long as I cut it while it's still warm it cuts like a dream, after that I need a diamond concrete saw to cut it, and it is as white as your perception of your kid's innocence... I'm kind of concerned about doing a large batch in my wood mold because I have NO way to freeze that mold, or to otherwise chill it. So what gives? Cheers, Sponie the (tired) Executor of (meh...)

OH... This was NICE stuff to unmold... Crisp, clean, EASY... I mean, ya know, once I broke up the clingy love fest between the soap and the rubber it was easy to get out... No stickiness to the soap at all. It feels more "durable" than my other soaps, but it still feels like soap... It's kinda hard to describe... what's the word... Oh, Hard, that's the word. The soap is hard, but not like rock hard or 100% coconut oil soap hard... It's just nice, that is all. It seems to act pretty soapy in the sink when I went to wash up the molds... I dunno about the lather quality yet though.

EDIT: The brine is wrong. It's a 2% overall brine solution 1.98% to be exact, sorry.