Roxanne

Tony's does have it, and it behaves well in CP soap. It smells good in the bottle and good in soap, and even better on the skin.

Patka, check hobbylobby.com before you go to see if they have a coupon you can print out for a discount. They usually do. Top, the no-melt definitely makes a difference. I bought some other stuff once (great deal, I thought -- half the price of the no-melt), and it warped the first time I used it.

I have a few (state of Texas, embedded star, and peace sign), and they're great. You can practically turn them inside out if needed, and I've never sprayed them with anything. I don't use them often, since I usually use log molds, but they're cool when I want to make a special soap.

Hobby Lobby sells the 12x18 sheets of no-melt mylar. If they don't have a store near you, you can order from their online store, www.craftsetc.com .

Your options are to list either all the ingredients that go into the soap, or all the ingredients in the finished soap, in descending order by weight (down to 1%; multiple ingredients at less than 1% can be in any order, I believe). Since I don't know just how much of each oil remains unsaponified, and I don't know just how much glycerine is released, and the amount of water remaining in the bars changes with time, I prefer to list all the ingredients that go into the soap so that I know the order is correct. Plus I don't want to nearly double the list of ingredients by listing the soap of each oil plus the unsapped oil (sodium olivate and olive oil, sodium cocoate and coconut oil, sodium palmate and palm oil, etc.), which I would have to do for a truly accurate listing of all the ingredients in the finished soap.

You've probably already come across info about the best way to melt and combine beeswax with your oils, but just in case you can use more advice, here's what worked best for me when I used it. I melted the beeswax in a double-boiler first (a clean can in a small pot of water works great), because I read that too much direct heat can damage it. Then I melted my solid fats to ~150 degrees, added the melted beeswax, and mixed well. The melting point of beeswax is around 146, and if you add the melted wax to cooler oils, it will solidify in clumps. (Ask me how I know.) After making sure the melted wax was thoroughly mixed with the hot melted fats, I could add my cooler liquid oils and let the whole pot cool down to 80 degrees without the wax separating. This was with only 2% beeswax, though; I'd keep an eye on it to see if it starts setting up sooner with the higher percentage. I agree with Top about soaping when the oils are clear. For my formula, that means at least 90 degrees, and I prefer 95 or so. I use palm, which seems to start clouding when it drops much below 90. The stearic in your batch may do the same. I can't wait to hear how your experiment goes!

I like this one, too.

I don't think that being confused by SoapCalc's "water as % of oils" versus lye concentration means you aren't ready to try less water/stronger lye solutions. I was using a 33% solution by my third batch of soap, although I didn't know it at the time. I just read on the old Latherings board about some soapers who used water at 25% of their oils instead of MMS "full water," and I tried it and liked it. It wasn't until years later that I came across the concept of lye solution strength. I did a presentation a few years ago on calculating water and lye solutions. The PDF file from that presentation, plus a solution strength calculator, are available at http://rivercitysoaps.com/dwcp/ , in case you might find them helpful.

I would just leave out the castor and recalculate the lye based on the other oils. I'm a heretic in the soaping world, though, as I don't believe castor contributes much to lather, and nothing to bubbly lather at all. If you make a bar of soap using only coconut oil, you get big, fluffy bubbles. You even get pretty decent bubbles from a bar made using only sunflower oil, even though SoapCalc gives sunflower a zero for bubbly lather. If you make a bar using only castor, you get no lather at all. My fella joked that he got more bubbles just rubbing his hands together under running water than with the all-castor soap. I do understand the concept of synergy, and I can see that castor might contribute a creaminess to lather by counteracting the big bubbles from other oils. I just don't see how an oil that makes no lather on its on can magically make big bubbles when combined with others. Several years ago I did a couple of test batches, one with 5 percent castor and the other with no castor. (I think I bumped the olive up 5 percent to make up the difference, although I don't remember for sure.) I had several people, including some soapmaker friends, do blind tests, and nobody could tell any real difference between the two batches -- certainly no significant difference in lather. Top, SoapCalc appears to count the full ricinoleic content of castor in both the bubbly lather and conditioning categories. That would be a pretty good trick if it were true, since the other fatty acids it counts toward bubbly lather all tend to clean so well they can be drying. I thought the idea that ricineolic acid = bubbles came from Cavitch, but I just read through her comments on castor and don't see anything about lather. So I don't know where the idea got started.

Yellower FOs can definitely give UM blue a greenish cast in soap, and I have one fragrance that reacts chemically to turn it gray-blue. I've never seen one that made soap with UM blue come out white when unmolded, though. I think that's from not using enough colorant.

I've never had soap colored with UM blue come out white and then turn blue over time. I suggest that you use more, like 1/2 teaspoon per pound of oils, and mix the pigment with a liquid before adding it to the soap batch to make sure you don't get clumps. I generally mix it with a small amount of very hot water, but you could also use oil or glycerin.

Lye solution lasts a long time. If it was covered so you didn't lose water to evaporation, you should be good to go. If it was uncovered, you might want to add a small amount of water to make up for any that might have evaporated.

For containers I use 4% beeswax to 96% soy. I believe many people use 3%, but that wasn't enough to give me smooth tops. For votives I've used 15% beeswax to 85% soy. Scents that work well for me in containers seem to throw just as well in votives with the higher percentage of beeswax.

Yes, I believe the company that makes the EZ-Setter will adjust it free if you send it to them. My guess is the adjustment involves cutting off several of the bottom rings so that the proper one sits on top of the tin. I have an EZ-Setter and want to be able to use it for smaller containers as well, so I jury-rigged an adapter (using a baking soda can and a sponge ) that lets me use it with the 8-ounce tins. It's not pretty and it slows things down, so if I ever get into actual production I'll have to get another setter and have it adjusted. It works for now, though.

I haven't tried Wilton's, but I've played with McCormick's. The yellow works fine, but most of them don't give you the results you want. They're made with FD&C dyes, and many dyes morph and change color in the high pH of CP soap. They're not something I'd use in soap for sale, since there are other ingredients in them like preservatives and propylene glycol, but there's nothing wrong with playing with them for personal use. For example, if I'm testing multiple scents, doing just a bar or two of each, I might want to make some bars yellow to make it easier to tell the tests apart. It's easier to put in a couple of drops of yellow food color than to mix up some Yellow 5. (I use powered dyes for soap instead of the liquids.)