Jo Ann

i am thinking i will save my shea for cream and use mowrah for cream and soap....

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What give an oil its special properties for B&B purposes can include things that Soapcalc takes no account of at all. Whether those properties come through in CP soap is debatable. Probably a little bit, or it might depend on the oil. If you can do hot process or rebatch then you can get those oils in there unchanged.

yeah, i was going by soapcalc. I use HP, not cp. i found sites that say what properties oils should have, just wish i knew where to look to see what is actually left in the soap after curing

yeah, i did mean after trace, thanx. I was surpised to see that shea doesn't have as high a conditioning factor as say, canola oil or olive oil, so i am not sure what real use it has in soap if you want it to be conditioning. i did make a cream of it for my friend's feet who is diabetic. she loves it. she puts it on at bedtime with socks.

when using butters like shea or mowrah, does saponification ruin their attributes? or should they be added after saponification?

hoooooorrraaaayyyyyyyy.....at least now i can get ok palm oil....cuz i kinda like what it contributes to the soap.

I don't mean to be nosey or even to hijack this post, but I am an RT and I was just having this conversation with a DR last night at work. Are you using a spacer with your puffs? The blue corrugated tubing works, but I would ask your doc to prescribe you a proper spacer. Spacers improve particle deposition up to 80% and you get 80-90% MORE medicine in your lungs when you use them. PM me and I can give you a few names of them you can ask about. You shouldn't have to live feeling afraid that you won't be able to breath!

i am an RN and I specialize in home pulmonary education so no you are not being nosey. when i butt iin i don't feel nosey, cuz its just a need to teach i have LOL

the spiriva doesn't use a spacer and my flovent gunks up the spacer.....so i just use it straight...but the spiriva gunks up at the back of my thoat too. i used to use asthmacort and didn't need a spacer for that and i can't always use a spacer with my albuterol, cuz i can't always carry one with me....but i have no problem with my aeresol albuteral. and its costly to buy spacers especially if your insurance doesn't cover them. they kinda treat them like dm testing supplies. alot of my patients on powedered albuterol are freakin cuz its not as effective and doesn't work as fast.

its shame that we have to lose our aeresol inhalers but there are plenty of trucks cars trains and planes out there. sigh

i like the lard bars too. it just feels better.

I would say rainforests are probably being detroyed more in order to make Palm wax

funny thing, in south america and mexico, its sugar and tequila that are in danger because of people switching to corn. who knows, maybe corn will help cut back on cocaine growth as well

At least two soaping boards I know of have hosted "single oil soap" swaps in the past. Results were reviewed and posted here for one of them.

The other board appears to have lost its results but members there will still post about their favorites. Sesame (non-toasted), avacado, canola, almond, PKO and lard are all mentioned as good bars, though you need to compensate for the softer oils tendencies toward DOS.

HTH!

great site, helps alot to make decisions.

i reformulated the batch i am making today. actually i loved my first bar the best and it had no palm, a little to much coconut, but hey i can fix that. i can get lard by the bucket at walmart for a reasonable price.....and canola as well at sam's club....now i heard canola will go rancid, any opinions on this. i like it cuz its cheap and has omega 3 oils in it.

good grief, wish i knew this before i bought the palm oil. sigh.

soap box! i have asthma and copd, but because of the ozone they are taking away our aeresol inhalers cuz of the ozone. well the powders they are replacing them with don't work as well, (they can glop up at the back of the throat and not go all the way into the lungs) but i can live with that EXCEPT in my rescue inhaler, the powder doesn't work well in a full blown attack. soooooo i am a bit scared about switching to powder when that becomes law for albuterol. so far, my doctor marks the scripts so i get the aeresol...but when that is gone, not sure what i am gonna do.

i was just gonna ask about a good replacement, but lard isn't all that hard. what is another good hard oil...i don't want to use more than 20 percent of coconut, cuz its a bit harsh on my skin....and i am selling some of it, so another incentive to keep coconut down a bit. i like the soft soap, but not everyone does....

i try to be green, but next we won't be allowed to exhale cuz of the CO2 in our exhalations.

yeah, i know what ya mean. it was surprise to find out palm oil was in such demand, i knew corm was....

i finally was able to get palm oil and start making soap with it only to find out today, its not considered green to use palm oil because the rain forest is being destroyed to produce it.

sigh..i just bought a gallon of it.

i suppose i can rationalize that i don't use much of it and its to make healthy skin products......and for as much soap as i make, it shouldn't even make a dent....but heck.

what i am doing right now is using my graphics program to capture soapcalc in two pix and then putting them together as one pix and then saving them as a jpg. so far so good. they print out nice and clear.

So if you feel comfortable with Excel, you might want to try your hand at a lye calculator. Over time you can add things according to how you work. I've been doing this for a long time for my candlemaking and I wouldn't trade those spreadsheet for any software on the market.

i was thinking of it...set it up and have my husband do the calc's i am no good at math whats so ever and i can never get calcs in excel right sigh

drats, i am not able to send the file to pdf via printer, only vista supplied one note that i have to buy. sheese. try to add something to the printer but it didn't work. sigh

i am very puter savy, been messing with them since 1978 in college. and only moved to windows out of necessity...software. i prefered OS2 from IBM and Linus...but all the programs i liked where windows compatible..sigh

but i am definitly gonna try the print and save thing. soapsheet 3 calculates cost and you can add oils. which is nice.

thanx Taz...my next puter (when i can actually afford it) will be a mac. I hate Vista...and my puter only came with the bare bone vista and i am not paying a hundred bucks to upgrade it to the home version.

well i messed with it a bit and i think that the section for superfatting was for fyi. it didn't really change anything. i pretty much have it set up to come to the same results as soapcalc

i think i will try a few more of my other recipes in it to see how close they come out

well for the new soapsheet3 to come close to soap calc, you have to make the DWCP% at 27%

i am not sure what to do with the superfatted oil section, cuz if you put oils in there it changes everything...so i ignored it and put all oils under the regular oil list. i am not sure if its supposed to be in both places.

i think i will just have to make an excel sheet just to keep track of my recipes....i will stick with soapcalc and copy my info in to excel for saving.

also soapcalc allows you to go by percentages....

hmmmm....the newer one is nice EXCEPT the water amount is way off. instead of around 18.2 oz, its 9 oz

yeah, i really like soapcalc, except it doen't save everything on the soap, and you can only save 4 recipes at a time. but i just found a newer version of the soapsheet and will check it out. i just wish there was a way to be able to save soapcalc better.