patka

Katshe, I don't know about the lye calculations for the soap recipe listed here, but it is my understanding that to make good quality liquid soap one needs to formulate a recipe using potassium hydroxide and not sodium hydroxide. I tried to dilute a regular NaOH soap and while it was usable, I would not share the product with anyone else, even as a gift. When I used the liquid soap recipe from the tutorial on this website, I got a very nice soap, using KOH. I just modified the recipe to include a slight superfat, using the summerbee calculator, because the way the tutorial recipe is formulated could, in my opinion, result in a lye heavy soap. So I run the recipe through the summerbeemeadow calculator, put 2-3% superfat and use that as my recipe. It results in a nice clear liquid soap.

3bees, may I ask, do you use 0% superfat and then neutralize any potential excess of lye with citric acid? Or do you leave some superfat in the soap according to the Summerbee calculator? I have been playing with making liquid soap recently and was wondering about this.

Top, thank you for the suggestions and for the link to the article. I may try the rosemary oleoresin since it seems that it could help. I can try to reduce the amount of olive oil as well and then perhaps increase the amount of the hard oils. That will be some new experimenting for me, since I have usually kept the hard oils between 55-59%. I am thinking I can increase the palm perhaps. I agree that the actual superfat in the soap is likely a little higher than we calculate, I have thought about that too, since the calculations assume the lye is at 100%, which it never is, mostly because of moisture. But I understand from the article that reformulating the soap may be more effective in increasing the shelf life of the soaps (and the rosemary oleoresin as well), so I will try to work on that too. Thanks so much!

Thank you for all your replies. I agree that some soap recipes hold up better than others, but ultimately, after a few weeks at 100 F and near 100% humidity, the excess oil will start sweating out of most of them and sooner or later some of the soaps will develop DOS. I am actually not using any of the unstable oils and my oils are usually quite fresh. I think my recipes are fairly balanced, maybe not very hard, but ok, usually around 55%-60% of hard oils. I usually use about 25-27% coconut, 25-27% palm, 5% some type of butter, 5% castor and the rest olive, sometimes olive and high oleic sunflower, (no DOS on the soaps with sunflower oil yet, since they are more recent) The only soap that does not mind the climate is my laundry stick with 0% SF. The salt bars did not get DOS either. One thing that seems to help is wrapping the soap (in cellophane, or cellophane bags, not in paper) before the heat comes. I don't see DOS on ony of the wrapped soap, so that may be a way to go for the future. I understand about the de-humidifier, but it is not an option where I have my soaps now. I am surprised that even 0% superfat soap developed in DOS in the experiment that Top is mentioning. I thought it was the unsaponified fat that would go bad in the soap creating DOS. My thought process about the SF amount was that the less unsaponified fat in the final product, the less fat to go bad in the heat. Maybe it is the glycerin that is produced in the process then? I will still try to make soap with about 3% SF and see if it helps any. I just wondered if the soap will get harsher when there is less fat in the finished soap, but I guess I will find out when I make it. I think 3% SF is enough for the safety margin since I know the exact SAP value of most of my oils.

I would like to know if there is anyone who is using a lower percentage of superfat than 5% in soap. I am having trouble with my soap getting DOS during the hot and humid Georgia summer. I never get DOS any other time, and my soaps that I took abroad into a mild climate have been doing fine for several years, but here during the summer, my soaps start sweating oil and eventually some of them will get DOS, regardless of recipe (there is no airconditioning where I keep my soaps). I will try to manage the issue by making less soap before the summer months hit, but I would like to see if making a soap with lower SF would help increase the shelf-life of my soaps. I am curious to find out if anyone has tried a lower, say 3%, superfat and if yes, what was the soap like, will the soap maybe become too harsh if the SF is lower than 5%? I would be comfortable with 3% from the point of view of soap safety, since I usually make at least 4lb batches and I know the exact SAP value of most of my oils, but is the 5% SF that most people use needed to make the soap milder? Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

It is nice light orange all over (it is not DOS). I used litsea and orange EOs. I have used orange EO before in a number of soaps without any color though. I think I read somewhere on this board that someone's soap with honey turned out orange color. I wonder if natural sugar would do the same.

Greetings! I have come back from a long trip and re-started making soaps. I made a 5-oil recipe: olive, coconut, palm, castor oil and cocoa butter. Scented with essential oils I had used before without any problems. One thing I did differently - I added some sugar to see if I would get more bubbles. I used natural sugar, which has a little tint, not really brown, but not white either. When I made the soap, it was white. When I cut it the next day, it was also white. When I looked at it about a week later, it was a beautiful light orange color. And it has retained that color till now, about another week later. I am not sure what to think of it. The soap seems ok. Has anyone had a similar issue with soap? Could the sugar have reacted in the soap somehow turning it orange? Thanks in advance!

I melt the oils in the container. If it is sunny outside, I put the bottle in my car where it is warm enough or in front of the window where the sun comes in. If it is cold outside, I put the bottle in the kitchen and stand it on the stove when I am cooking (not on the hot surface, of course, but in the middle). The area is warm enough to melt the oil to the point where I can get it out of the bottle.

Thanks Jeana, I think I will try to boil the tea for half an hour or so. I think you can get a lot out of the herb that way. (I think it is called 'decoction' and it is suitable way of processing some herbs and making skin preparations from them. I am not an herbalist, so someone correct me if needed:))

I really appreciate the feedback. It is new info for me that lye could damage glass. I always thought glass was a somehow universally inert material. Well, I have learned my lesson now and will use the suggested plastic for my lye solution. 8-Gran, I had put the glass jug into a stainless steel container and both in my kitchen sink, before I started mixing the solution, so I did not have the lye running loose, thankfully. The jug lasted me a year, but I am done with experimenting with a glass container for lye solution.

Thank you all, I will take your advice and go look for a plastic pitcher. The one I used a while back that did not take the heat was the hard plastic, kind of like plexiglass. It cracked, although it did not leak, so I managed to use the liquid, but did not use it again. I will look for the #5 plastic. I use cold water for the solution, but it still got way too hot I guess for the glass jug. Thanks again:)

Greetings, I wanted to ask what type of container everyone uses for making lye solution? I had a glass container (which was heat resistant, at least to a boiling point) crack today (I had it sat in the sink of course, as a precaution) with a 30% lye solution, which got really hot. I had tried a sturdy plastic, but it got damaged by the heat too. I know stainless steel would be fine temperaturewise, but I was trying to avoid metal, somehow I feel the metal could leach from the stainless steel into the soap (I may be wrong on that). I do use a SS pot for mixing the soap, but not for the straight lye solution. I would love to know what you all use for this purpose. Thanks a lot!

Jeana, that is an interesting information. I may try again, using this way. Did you steep the chamomile flowers in hot water, and let them sit for a few days, or cold water to start with?

I have tried floral/herbal teas and infusions, such as lavender, mint, chamomile etc. Used heaps of herbs and hardly could detect any scent in the final soap. I would say good quality essential oils are the way to go if you would like to scent your soaps naturally.

Thanks. I'll check it out. I guess there is always something new to try!

Thanks Meridith. I will look into this. I have never seen a pine tar soap. I checked the posts and it looks like I can take any recipe I like and use 15% pine tar with it, is that correct? Do they sell this online with soaping supplies?

Thanks for the information. I am not even familiar with the tearless cosmetics, as I only use natural products (now mostly home-made:)). I guess I will just focus on making a nice gentle bar for the skin. I will make it unscented. I hope she will like the castille bar. Thanks so much!

You can use silicone bakeware if you find a shape you like. It works great with soap. Your soap will be smooth and will slide right out. They have those everywhere. Bed Bad & Beyond used to carry a set of a few molds that turned out to be good deal per mold. Especially if you are getting those 20% off coupons.

Greetings, I would like to make a gentle soap that my grandma would use. I noticed that the regular cp soaps using the standard ingredients (coconut, palm olive....) sting if they get in the eyes. I just tried and although I closed my eyes, I still felt it a little. Now, I typically don't use soap on my face, and normally I would not wash around my eyes like that, but I just wanted to try what it would do, because I know some people scrub their faces with soap like that. I was thinking perhaps a castille soap would be more gentle. I have never made one so far. If I do a 90% olive and 10% castor oil, would this be better if it accidentally gets in the eyes? Or is it just the ph of the soap that causes the eye sting and the choice of the oils would not make a difference? Thanks so much in advance.

Louise, I do have a sensitive skin, and I think our differences here may come just from the fact that people have different skin, because based on my understanding, it takes more than 24 hours, even more than a week for all the lye in the soap mixture (that was kept cool - not cooked or gelled) to react with the oils. I am not a chemist, so maybe someone else can say exactly how long an ungelled soap mixture would take to fully saponify, but based on what I have read so far, I am assuming it could be as long as 6 weeks. So a week old soap, while it may not be as harsh as a day-old soap, is likely to contain some lye that has not reacted with the oils. This may bother some people's skin, but not others. So I guess it is individual.

Has your soap gelled? If yes, I think it may be safe to try, although I noticed my soap feels completely different if I let it go through cure, so I don't bother to try my soaps before that. If it has not gelled, I would not use it. I burned my fingers on soap that has not gelled even 2-3 days after it was made. Actually, I gell all my soaps, but I am talking about the soap that stays in the soaping pot or if I spill some out when transferring the soap mixture from soaping pot to my mold. That becomes an ungelled soap and it is still caustic for days, in my opinion, I would not knowingly touch it with bare hands.

Firefly, you are correct with that more water is recommended for beginner soapers, I just found this website and she does consider the 27% lye solution as a "no discount" and best for beginners. http://www.aquasapone.com.au/soapmaking/discountedcp1.html For the recipe I included above, the 27% lye concentration corresponds to the 38% water to oils ratio. Here I would like to mention one thing, perhaps it is clear to most, but it was not to me, when I first started soaping. I had to research the subject to get a good grasp on it. There seem to be two approaches to calculating water. One is what soapcalc uses, water to oil percentage, which is set at 38% default. This formula will give you the same amount of water regardless of the type of oils you use, but a different strength of lye solution. Another approach is a lye concentration, which is the amount of lye divided by lye+water. This will give you a lye solution of consistent strength, but the amount of water will vary depending on the types of oils you use, just as the lye amount does. So if in the above 1000 recipe the amount of water was 380 for a 38% water to oils and 27% lye concentration, if I choose a 100% olive castille soap, the 38% water to lye will still give 380 grams of water, but only a 25% lye concentration. To get the 27% lye concentration, I would have to reduce the water to 348 grams. It is my understanding that what most people use is the lye concentration formula and not the water to oil formula and that the 33% refers to that. In my 3 oil recipe above, that would be 287 grams of water and this is about 29% water to oils. Anyhow, I would like to point to the rest of the article I mentioned above, which is here: http://www.aquasapone.com.au/soapmaking/discountedcpw.html Here the author gives some warnings regarding using a lye solution stronger than 27%. I think this page gives some valuable information. The stronger solution is more caustic, hotter, and can speed up the trace of your soap, etc. if I understand correctly. I hope some experienced soaper will chime in here on the subject.

I had the same problem with my soaps taking forever to harden, when I used the default Soapcalc water amount. I mean, months! I think soapcalc just gives a lot water. The default water amount in Soapcalc is 38% of oils. For example in the following simple recipe at 1000 grams, 50% olive 25% coconut 25% palm oil soapcalc gives 380 grams of water at 38% water to oil ratio. This is only a 27% lye concentration (lye divided by lye+water). I researched this forum to see what people use and it seems that most popular is about 33% lye concentration, although some said they used a range of % depending on recipe. I think that soapcalc gives that much water to make the recipes workable in case someone wants to do a HP soap, but for CP this seems too much, at least from what I have understood about the numbers. I am still pretty new at soaping though compared to others on this forum, it could be I made some mistake in my thinking above, so please correct me if I said something inaccurate.

Wow, 8-Gran, that is beautiful!

Thank you Burned Out, that is good information. I am now travelling, but when I get back I may try this wax.