Roxanne

I like Liberty Natural, Camden Grey, and A Garden Eastward. Liberty has a $50 minimum; they also have a huge selection, good prices, and reasonable shipping charges, and I think they still use glass bottles, which are best for EO storage. Camden sometimes has lower prices on smaller quantities, which can be nice; they also have rather high shipping charges and package most sizes in plastic, meaning you should transfer your EOs to glass when you get them. I haven't ordered from A Garden Eastward in a while, but I believe their shipping is reasonable, as are their prices. I've always been happy with the quality of oils I've received from all three places.

I like Liberty Natural, Camden Grey, and A Garden Eastward. Liberty has a $50 minimum; they also have a huge selection, good prices, and reasonable shipping charges, and I think they still use glass bottles, which are best for EO storage. Camden sometimes has lower prices on smaller quantities, which can be nice; they also have rather high shipping charges and package most sizes in plastic, meaning you should transfer your EOs to glass when you get them. I haven't ordered from A Garden Eastward in a while, but I believe their shipping is reasonable, as are their prices. I've always been happy with the quality of oils I've received from all three places.

Actually, I like 415 (EZSoy) just fine. I get nice-looking candles by adding a bit of beeswax and pouring slushy, and I haven't had much trouble finding scents that throw well. Not that I'm trying to sell anyone on 415; I'm just saying different strokes for different folks, I guess.

http://suppliesbystar.com Good prices and great service, plus the owner is a sweetheart.

Monterey Bay (herbco.com) and Camden Grey.

I don't know, either, as I didn't ask her for specifics. The lower end of her test results was a bit extreme, but I've seen a number of posts (and website claims) over the years from different soapers who thought their CP soap was pH 7 or 8 based on using test strips. Absolutely. People can spend their resources as they see fit.

I think the cheap strips are just so innacurate that they give a completely false sense of a soap's pH level. A better test would be washing your hands or, better still, your face with a scrap of the soap in question. On another list a soaper reported that her soaps consistently tested in the range of 5.5 to 7.5 using pH strips. When she sent some bars to a lab for testing, she found out the pH was actually 10.3. If the strips give such low readings for soap that's really 10 or so, what are they going to show for soap that's really 12? Maybe 8? Still looks good on the strip, but probably not what you'd want to use on your skin. The pricy strips that are more accurate for testing soap are available at http://www.soapimpressions.com for $16 per 100. If you really want to know the pH of your soap, though, you'll need a pH meter and calibration solutions at 7 and 10 pH. (Calibrating the meter with only pH 7 solution will give false low readings.) I've done some pH testing in the past but haven't bothered with it for a long time; I just test my soaps by using them. An interesting side note from when I was testing: I bought a bar of a nationally marketed goat milk soap that claimed a neutral pH, just for testing purposes. It tested at something like 10.2 -- not exactly neutral. I guess they tested with pH strips instead of a meter.

To give credit where it's due, the mold instructions came from crabapplesoap.com.

I use up to 1-1/2 teaspoons per pound of oil, also added to the hot lye water, and I don't get chalky soap or diminished lather.

I've used EZSoy in soap at 15% and didn't notice any decrease in lather. I subbed it for palm, as a test in case I decide to phase out palm oil someday. Now if I had subbed it for coconut, I expect I would have seen a serious decrease in lather! I made a 100% soy wax bar as a test once, and I can tell you that by itself it has no lather whatsoever.

Most palm kernel oil sold in the U.S. is partially hydrogenated, presumably to raise the melting point. (Oils By Nature does sell non-hydrogenated PKO.) Hydrogenated palm oil, on the other hand, is hard to come by. Columbus Foods sells homogenized palm, not hydrogenated. Homogenization is a completely different process that does not change the oil chemically. As far as worrying about absorbing trans-fats through the skin, from any product but particularly from soap, count me in the camp that considers it ridiculous.

Yes, when you discount lye you are superfatting. It's just two ways of saying the same thing.

I wouldn't think age would make the candles unsafe, assuming they were properly made in the first place. If you prefer smaller candles, however, or if you just want to play, you can certainly melt the wax down to make your own. I recommend tea lights in metal cups (because of the hot burn factor Henryk mentioned) and square braid wicks. The wick size needed will vary depending on how light or dark the wax is; darker beeswax generally contains more "stuff" (propolis or whatever) and needs a bigger wick. I have some nice, golden beeswax that does well in a tea light with a 1/0 square braid wick, and some darker stuff that barely makes it with a #2 square braid. Even lighter wax might work with 2/0. Square braid wick numbers are rather confusing. If it's a single number with a # in front of it, larger numbers mean larger wicks, as you would expect. But if it's a number followed by /0, it's the opposite: larger numbers mean smaller wicks. So from smallest to largest, the sizes are 6/0, 5/0, 4/0, 3/0, 2/0, 1/0, #1, #2, #3, etc. For tea lights, without knowing anything about the wax you have, I would suggest buying square braid wicking in sizes 2/0, 1/0, #1, and #2. Sources for small quantities of square braid in the U.S. include peakcandle.com, swanscandles.com, and onestopcandle.com. (Sorry, I'm not familiar with Canadian suppliers.) Buy some wick tabs, too, so the wicks will stand up when the wax melts. Or you could decide this is all way too complicated, and just burn the candles as they are. Either way, I hope you enjoy them. I really like beeswax candles myself. BTW, the best way to melt beeswax is in a double boiler. A well-washed empty tin can in a pan of water works well, and you can bend one side of the can a bit to make a pouring spout.

I use their Magnolio FO in soap and soy candles. I've read comments from others who think it doesn't smell realistic, but it smells right to me (and I grew up with two big southern magnolia trees in the front yard).

I second the recommendation for Aroma Haven's French Vanilla & Oak in soy candles. Great fragrance, great throw.

Yes, HTP wicks are great for soy. I think the point Kristi was making is that unless a company specializes in soy wax and supplies, the wick size recommendations are usually for paraffin, not soy (even if the company sells soy wax, too). For example, Peak says HTP-104 is good for candles 3.25-3.75" in diameter, but in my tests that wick is too small for a 3.125" tin. You'll probably need a wick a size or two larger than their recommendations. What is the inside diameter of your jar?

If you had tunneling with the HTP-83, I would think you need to use a larger wick, not smaller. I use 83 in flowerpot votives, and it seems a 9-ounce balmoral jar would have a larger diameter. Maybe try HTP-104?

I use 8-ounce tins, diameter ~3-1/8 inches, with EZ-Soy and a bit of beeswax. CD-14 wicks work with some scents, and CD-16s work with some. (Some scents need a CD-18 or bigger ... or have to be double-wicked.)

Four pounds of water to two pounds of lye does equal a 33% solution (technically 33.33%, but close enough), so that part is right. That's also a 2:1 ratio, so it seems like that's the right setting for Soapmaker; I'm not really familiar with the program, though, so I can't say for sure. If you're thinking the problem may be with the lye, why not try a batch figured the way you used to do it, mixing the lye just for that batch instead of using pre-mixed? If that batch comes out OK, you can figure that the problem is with the calculations on the pre-mixed lye. If it also takes a long time to trace and comes out soft, you'll know it wasn't the pre-mix calculations messing up your batches.

Colorado Organics is in Littleton, a suburb on the south side of Denver. http://coloradoorganics.net/ There's a cool spice shop near downtown Denver called Savory Spice Shop, if you're down that way. They have a website at http://www.savoryspiceshop.com.

Thank you so much for posting about the palm-oil shortening at HEB! I just picked up a can tonight to try in some test batches.

I don't think FOs cause DOS. I do believe, though, that most FOs and EOs contain ingredients that act as antioxidants and help prevent DOS, and some don't. I say this because in my experience, unscented soap is far more likely to develop DOS than any scented soap. Next most likely for me is lavender EO soap, followed by the magnolia FO I use. I use ROE as an antioxidant in my soaps, and it really helps control DOS (although it isn't a sure-fire cure). I agree with Chris about heat and humidity, and I think humidity is worse than heat.

Dejae, has it changed any yet? If it's become a soft soap, it may firm up enough with time. If it's still like it was when you poured it, though, it seems likely that it was short on lye and will never turn into soap. The problem in that case is that you don't know how short you were on lye, so any kind of fix would be based on guesswork.

It sounds like the supplier may be confused, too. Do you feel comfortable giving their name?

So what exactly is it? The only coconut oil I know of that's liquid below 76 degrees is fractionated.