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LMAO! I know!!! Not cheap but so many great reviews. One day!

Wow! You really outdid yourself and I didn't think it was possible. Perfection.

I was fortunate enough to buy a whole bunch of Peak's fo's and I have yet to not love one in cp and C-3. I also am very pleased with the fo's I've purchased from Bert. I've found the samples I had from Flickers and The Scent Works to be perfect as well, but I did my homework really with all of them, before I bought them. You really are best just reading around all over the place and hoping to hit on a great fo that's not costly and works great, then try that one to test yourself. Or talk to people who use your wax and see what they're having success with, then test that as well. I really have to say though, I'm very lucky I don't live near Peak's, Bert, or The Scent Works because I'd be shopping a lot more than I have shopped for this stuff if I could pick it up in person. LOL I think I'd be in trouble if I lived near Southern Soapers as well, from all I read. Can't wait to try their stuff, or Tony's, one day.

Another vote here for Bert's Christmas Pear which really isn't Christmassy at all. It's an all year round perfect pear scent. Mouth watering. I use soy though. C-3.

LOL that's great you have someone interested in making it too. I can't wait till I can teach my daughter this stuff one day. She's interested in it now, but no way she's playing with any lye yet at almost 8! LOL Those pops are the best. I'm loving them. Definately will be buying more when my 1 oz sampler kit is gone.

Gorgeous looking swirling and blend with the colors!!! Was that hp or cp? Looks very oceany. Like ocean water type something. What does hummingbird smell like? A floral? Gorgeous soap!!!! You just couldn't wait huh?

I thought the same as CareBear with the checkered ones. Like the animal area needs to be polished a bit. Unbelievable soaps though. Anything your mom does blows me away, and it looks like you have the knack as well!

Oh yeah testing is fun. LOL People think I'm nuts when they come here and see all my testers around the house. LOL I've got partially burned 12 oz madisons coming out the whazoo!

Yeah thanks to you Dawn, I'm loving them as well. Best part is that they don't curl. OMG it makes things just that much more easy!

Well I do this with new fo's so for me, it's much more easy than to melt down a candle and pour into a new jar when you're not sure about what wick might work. When I get a general sense of what wick is doing somewhat well, then I do a new tester with an anchored wick. They flop over about 1/2 inch or less from bottom if you get them all the way in there. Gives me an idea up top though really, of where I need to possibly be with size if I don't know the fo or am testing new wicks or mix.

What people told me to do to test here, is to cut the tab off the wicks while testing. Pour your wax, then when it's somewhat set up, use something like a skewer to poke into it to bottom, then stick the wick in there and let it set. This way, you can swap out wicks if the one you're testing isn't working. It's a great system for testing and saves a lot of time and no wasted wax. Even if your prepared wax is not burning well enough and you want to change the formula, you can stick a wick in that works for now to burn it and not have to waste it. Good luck on wicking. LOL That's the fun part!

Cure times are a factor with some waxes. Longer cure leads to better throw. Why did you add co to it? UA...is that one you bought for veggie wax? Really you should get to know how the wax behaves before trying things like co. I can see using universal additive if you see enough on the wax to make you think you might need it, but the coconut oil, well you don't really know yet. I don't use your wax, but I read here often enough to know some waxes need that cure time to get best scent, and yours might be one of them. Search cb135 up top in the search this forum, in this forum. You might find more mention on additives and cure times needed. Good luck. Oh and the wicking varies with just about anything. Many variables with candles. Even the season makes candles behave differently. Room temps. Fun fun fun.

That's the default water amount without a discount, I believe that's how you put it. The lye stays the same as it's based on the oils used, but the water used may vary. It can also get more complicated to stir soap properly with too high a water discount so it's best to do it full water for beginner with certain recipes. Bacon grease used there, you'd have to ask someone who's done it if they ever took a water discount and if it behaved well. I wouldn't know sorry. Full water, it will trace slower and set up slower and need to cure longer.

Start off with putting in your oil weight up top. 6.5 pounds or convert it to ounces or grams for small batches. Then add your oil in the list with the drop down and hit the add button, then add the percent. Yours would be 100%. Change the superfat to 0 for your grandmother's recipe only since it's laundry, unless you know you want excess oils in it. Usually you use 5 or if expert, adjust to your needs. Then hit the calculate and take down what you need in ingredients amounts. The oils have to equal 100%. Use the soapcalc9 one.

Pretty cool link! Nice to see this kind of stuff. It's really interesting to read about the ash lye methods people used.

It's going to be strong on the caustic side, kids is saying. The lye has the ability to break things down and it will like be lye heavy soap, meaning it will be strong on the not so gentle side. It won't be gentle at all and can harm skin if used so you would need to be sure no one used it on their skin. Another thing you might want to know, is what scale your gram used or if she used a liquid measuring cup of some kind to measure her bacon grease. If she used a bathroom scale, well that might mean the bacon grease was really heavier or something, so it might have been more gentle. Find out if they know what scale she used. The type. Spring scale, etc. Or did she use cups or something. Like a coffee mug or measuring cup to measure the fat. It's about 3.32 ounces over on what's needed to saponify lard of that amount, on the lye. That's where lye heavy comes in there. That's with calculating that there's no added fat left in the soap to superfat it for residual oil qualities. Even if you add more water, the lye can only go away if the oils react with it, so your Gram's is lye heavy. Just be careful no one uses it on their skin. She might have done something that was safer because she weighed her oils on an old scale that was off, but if you do it on your candle scale, you're gonna have a lye heavy soap. Here's a picture of the soapcalc if you want to print it out with your recipe as calculated with the exact amount of lye needed for the oils. If you decide to use the full 18 oz, just use caution with skin.

Well it's a good thing I bought a roll of that stuff then thank you! LOL I'm also going to try just to play with it, using a soldering iron and running it across down a yardstick, on glass fairly fast, so see if it will seal it. Can't hurt to play and see how it works! LOL

Well I'm glad I could help in some way. LOL Still, ask for input on the superfat thing. I don't believe you use one with laundry stuff, but I don't know for sure. I'm like 95% on it, but that 5 percent is like, well wait for more to see if you need any superfat in there. I doubt it but just check.

Well hp soap can be molded too so not really. Look at the bar and see if it looks like, well chunky maybe? HP tops have a texture and are more rough it seems, than cold process that's poured in liquidy and left to set. That is, if she poured it at medium trace, it would be like smooth on top. If it looks like more textury and not design like, from all I've seen, that could be hp. If she left it a long time though, she was probably allowing curing time, and if it was for like 6 weeks, I'd think that's cp maybe. HP supposedly needs a little shorter to cure. But she probably just did it like she thought was hard enough to use on clothes. Would be really cool if you had her mold. Or knew what it looked like. Good luck with it and remember only stainless steel to make this, or glass, or plastic that will only be for soaping. Lye into water, never water into lye. Wear safety glasses and long sleaves and shoes. Long handled spoon to mix lye water while pouring lye into it slowly. I buy my cheapie plastic spoons from walmart. Like plastic wooden style for a buck and they have like 4 in the pack all handle lengths, and use longest. Have white vinegar on hand in case you splash lye water on yourself to neutralize it immediately. I do my lye water in my sink because I still get nervous with it, and wear a mask so you're not inhaling the fumes if you do it that way. Better to do it outside but you have to walk with it after. As mentioned above, clean that grease properly or you'll have rotting pieces possibly in the soap after which would be yukky. LOL Roebic Lye (100% sodium hydroxide) from Lowes. Careful with little ones and animals. Keep them away. I lock them out of the kitchen even when they're asleep. I put up gates and do it late at night with the lye stuff.

Oh cool thank you! I see the tool online to use the rolled film, and it doesn't seem to need heat. It must just mush the stuff enough to get it to stay together. I'll experiment with it a little. Thank you!!!

Since it's soap related, I figured what batter place to ask? LOL I'm making up a basket for my mom for mother's day. I have a tall basket and am putting soaps and other things non soap related in it for a gift for her. I bought some rolled shrink wrap stuff from Walmart to wrap the basket in, and some double sided tape to make things stay in place. Now, is there a way I can make the rolled shrink wrap work on the basket? Like tape it together then do the heat? Or even run a hot metal something on it to seal it or something? What I originally thought, was that I could go around the basket and gather on top, and use a bow to hold the wrap up there, so it would connect at one point. If I overlap, it would shrink to still cover with no slits, I was hoping.

I'd think she probably was using the old fashioned and now not available, red devil pure lye. Had to be. It used to come in a short can, probably like 16 oz's or less for that sized can, but really you know the base of it, just run it through a calc to get the right amount. Since it's for stained laundry, I'm guessing here, but it's along the lines of less superfat so check for a recipe already out somewhere, to see how little sf they usually use for it. Here's read this on the stain stick recipe to get some info. http://www.soapnuts.com/cp7.html Check me on this, but I believe lard would be the thing you'd need to input on the soap calc. There's no bacon grease, but from what I'm reading, people say it's like lard. From what I can see on soapcalc, if you put in 104 oucnes of lard, and use a 0% superfat, you get 14.68 ounces of lye so that makes me think she used a 16 oz can for laundry stain stick. Her water comes up to 32 oz's and soap calc says default water should be 39.52 oz's. It sound like she had it down with her recipe for stain stick. Run it through http://www.soapcalc.com/calc/soapcalc.asp using 104 ounces for oil amount, 100% lard unless someone knows of a calc with bacon grease listed, and 0% superfat unless someone has input on why that shouldn't be done for stain stick. From all I've seen, laundry soap benefits from less excess fat of course, since oils in laundry would be bad. But have someone double check me. Just make sure no one ever uses it on their skin. Try a small amount first, run through soapcalc with that info to test the ability to remove stains and safety for clothing, first. HTH For the lye, you can get roebic (spelling might be wrong) lye, from Lowes. In plumming department.

How do they get the oil from those things? They milk them or something? Really, like is it something they cook off, or from their feathers or something? I guess what I want to know really is, does the bird have to die to give the oil?

I've used premier's in them and am testing the ultra core's as well with C-3. HTP 105's are good if your fo and wax work with them. Premier 775's work but they self trim so they need to be spun to work at getting a centered melt pool.

I was reading more on shampoo bars and it seems castor is a key ingredient. The one I use on my hair had 10% castor in it so that might be why. Jojoba is supposed to be good for hair and not greasy, as well.