Rebecca_IA

Anita, you don't need that much to make some really good soap. Do you have a Walmart near you? You can pick up coconut oil there, in addition to soy, corn, canola, safflower and sunflower, oh and don't forget lard. They have the canned coconut milk, goat's milk. Then there is sugar and salt. You can use those as additives. Target sells the Wesson brand of sunflower, bigger bottles and much cheaper than Walmart. Olive oil could be found at both places, but I bet it is cheaper at Walmart. Olive oil is NOT essential to a bar of soap, you can make a good, long lasting hard bar of soap without olive oil. Any boxed lined with saran wrap will make a mold. Might not be the perfect mold, but it will fulfill your desire to soap.

I wouldn't even know where to find a thermometer around here. I go by, room temp, warm, warmer, and hot.

If you are to use regular buttermilk, using the same #'s in above example, you would reduce the water by 3 ounces and at trace at 3 ounces of buttermilk, rather than holding back 3 ounces of water and mixing the powdered buttermilk with that and adding it at trace.

If you use mineral oil to "grease" the molds with before pouring the soap, it will not saponify with the soap. That's what I use in my martha molds (when I remember to do it).

I've never used cucumbers before, but I have added pureed carrots and pumpkin to my soap. Both the carrot and pumpkin soaps are over a year old and there is no rotting or molding taking place. As I said, I have never added the pureed cucumber to soap before, but I have known of other soapers to add it and do so with success. When the soap dish is back up (and if you don't have an answer here) I would do a search over there and/or in their archives. You'll find your answer I am sure with a bit of searching. If you did not use a tried and true FO, it very well may be the FO that is causing the stink. Some FO's morph really bad in CP. If the seller doesn't give you CP results on their website, go to http://scentreviewboard.obisoap.ca/ and do a search there to see if you can find it. Or search here or the soap dish. Unless you are willing to do a test batch all on your own to see how it holds up in CP. Whenever I am testing new FO's in soap that I do not know how they will turn out, I do a small batch, one pound, without any other additives, colorants etc, to see how how it smells after it is soap, to see if it accelerates or discolors.

If it were me, I would shredd it up. If you added the full amount of water the recipe required, I'd lay it out on cookie sheets to dry it out. When it's dried out, sprinkle it with coconut milk and cover in a stainless steel pot with a lid. Leave it sit for about 12 hours covered up and then put it in the oven on low heat, like 150-175. Check it every hour or so, depending on how much you are doing. When it's all melted, add your FO, you won't need as much as you do for CP. If you use 1 oz pp CP, I'd only add .5 oz. I would warm the FO up before you add it too. Place the bottle in warm water for a few minutes and then measure it. Stir FO in carefully so you do not incorporate air, or as little air as possible. How much coconut milk depends on how much soap you are rebatching.

I never knew that was there. I've always done the calculating by hand. TY for posting that. Learn something new everyday. Now that I am thinking about other ways to recalculate, doesn't the soapsaver program have an automatic way to recalculate? It's got a free 30 day trial.

Am I missing something on that website? Those are just trays, no machine that fills them. Right? That's all I see. So you set your tubes up in the trays and then fill them with a measuring cup or pipette? Also, one trick I found out is whenver possible, use plastic, NOT metal or glass, esp. metal. They cool down faster than plastic. IME. The plastic pipettes and funnels make it much easier to fill the lip balm tubes and deoderant tubes.

First step in downsizing a recipe is to figure out what percent of oils each oil is. To do that, total all of your oils together (already done, 70 ounces of oil). Canola 24 oz - (24 / 70) * 100 = 34% (rounded) Castor 6 oz - 8.5% CB 6 oz - 8.5% Coconut - 18 oz - 26% Olive Oil - 16 oz - 23% Once you are done, add your percents together to make sure they total up to 100% (otherwise, you have an error in your math or the rounding didn't work quite right). Second step is to figure out the size you want your batch to be. Let's go with 2 pounds. Third step is to recalculate the number of ounces needed. Your recipe looks like this now. Canola - 26% Castor - 8.5% CB - 8.5% Coconut - 26% Olive Oil - 23% Total - 100% To figure out the new number of ounces: Canola - 32 (oz) * .26 (26%) = 10.88 oz Castor - 32 * .085 = 2.72 CB - 32* .085 = 2.72 Coconut - 32 * .26 = 8.32 Olive Oil - 32 * .23 = 7.36 Add the number of ounces (in bold) together to make sure they total 32 ounces. Forth step - Now you have the "resized" number of ounces for each oil. You can take them and enter them into a lye calculator and get your amount of lye and water for this size batch. According to MMS - you'll want 4.5 ounces of lye and 12 ounces of water for this batch. Don't take my word for it though, always, each and everytime you use someone else's recipe, run it through a lye calculator to make sure you have the correct lye amount. If you are like me, you'll round those ounces off and then figure the amount of lye. Canola - 10.88 - I would change to 11 ounces Castor - 2.72 - I would change to 3 ounces CB - 2.72 - I would change to 3 ounces Coconut - 8.32 - I would change to 8 ounces Olive Oil - 7.36 - I would change to 7 ounces. Still equals 32 ounces. But the lye changes to 4.48 ounces and the water stays the same. I have found it MUCH easier to measure whole or half numbers (like 1 or 1.5), so I formulate recipes in that way. If you can't round up or down for an ingredient, I would convert the ounces to grams and measure in grams, because it's more accurate. Your done. Soap away. Let us know if you have any questions. or if I made something appear confusing, because it's not.

Most FO's are pretty safe to use the first time at .7 ounce per pound of oils. 70 oz is 4.375 lbs. .7 X 4.375 = 3.06 ounces. I'd round it to an even 3 ounces of FO. Some FO's you'll need to go up to 1 ounces per pound of oils, some you can use as low as .5 ounce per pound of oils. Also, you can take the recipe that you have and resize it to a smaller recipe. If you post the recipe, I am sure someone here will be more than happy to help you resize it. That is a big batch to do for your first batch, and IMO, until you have the process down, I wouldn't do more than a two pound batch. Not that it hasn't been done before yet. Good luck with whatever you choose.

Carmen is right, give this a few more days to weeks. You'll be surprised to find out how many FO's morph in CP saponification, but in a few days to weeks to months, it changes to something that smells great. For personal use, I'd wait a few months, business, I think a few weeks is long enough and if it doesn't change back by then, don't use it again and fix that batch up by rebatching it. IME, rebatching doesn't completely get rid of the scent, but it does burn a lot of it off so adding something will cover up the other one. I'd wait until the soap was almost all the way melted and see what it smells like then, and try to use an FO that was complementary to the FO scent left, if that is possible.

Thanks Robin for posting that. I also use bare minerals and really like it, but I've never used any other mineral make-up, so I have nothing to compare it too.

Lisa, You'll need to search for the web address, because I'm at work. There is a woman that has a website, the conservatorie, her name is Jill and she sells all of the additives on her site and has some recipes for mineral makeup. If I am remembering correctly, she explains what the ingredient is for, etc. Even though you don't want to make it, you will be able to learn of the ingredients from her site. Rebecca

The chips won't effect it if it's stainless steel, if not, it will react with the lye. I had no idea how to tell what is under the enamel. Walmart has a selection of stainless steel bowls, varying in range of sizes. Kmart does too, but they are very expensive. Cheap soap mold, empty pringle cans, 1/2 gallon milk containers, martha stewart drawer organizers (one section or 3 section), old sewing machine drawers (yard sales or auctions).

HP soaps should not have zap at all, as soon as finished. CP, depends on (IMO) if you gel or not. Non-gelled soaps take a few days longer than gelled soaps. Gelled soaps within a few days at most. Most of the times this is a good rule of thumb to go by.

If I were using individual molds, I would either prevent gel or use a heating pad underneath the tray of molds to force gel. Keep in mind that if you prevent gel, it takes longer for the soap to no longer have "zap". I'd also experiment with SL to assist in the finished soap coming out of the mold. If they were/are silicone molds, you could pop them out. Most aren't though.

The oils that create more bubbles are coconut, palm kernal oil and babassu. Usually, you will see one or more of these (with coconut and PKO being more popular) being used in recipes. With that said, you can make soap without any of them and still have bubbles, but different than if you used one of those oils. Here are links to oils and their properties. Each one essentially gives you the same information, but in different ways (we all learn/absorb info differently). http://www.millersoap.com/oilproperties.htm http://www.naturesapprentice.com/oilchart.htm There are other additives you can add that will effect your lather aside from the oils and the sugar. Coconut milk, clays, etc. Many additives to experiement with.

That's why some like to do the CPOP. Make the soap up, put in mold and put in the oven for an hour at 175, turn oven off and leave mold in there. There are many variations to CPOP, some heat the oven prior to putting the soap in there and turn it off as soon as they put the mold in, some don't turn the oven on until the mold is in there. Some heat for 2 hours, some only 1 hour, some only until they see complete gel. Or you could lay a towel down, put a heating pad on it, then put the mold on top of the heating pad and leave it on for an hour. If you don't like the route of "forcing" gel, you could go the route of preventing gel. Put your mold in the refrig before using to get it nice and cool, add soap and put back into fridge for several hours. Either way, you don't get the bi-colored look to your soap.

Please keep in mind that I am suffering from a horrible head/chest cold so I just might not be correct on this. I believe the reason she adds the benzoin to her recipes is because of the high discount she takes. I do a 5-8% (highest) and I think some of her recipes are at 10% or a bit higher. If you have a discounted fat that high, you will need to add something or expect DOS and much sooner. No matter where you see the recipe, always run it through a lye calculator and figure the amount of lye you are to add from there. Just because she does steep discounts doesn’t mean you have to, but if you do, follow her recommendations with the additives. Someone please come along and confirm this for me. As for the preservative, I've never added one to my soap that has fruit/veggie additives. As long as you do a range of 5% discount, you should be fine.

e wax won't give you the results or the hardness that you are looking for from beeswax.

Amazon.com has really good deals on the kitchenaid stickblenders and the mixers from time to time. Check them out daily/weekly or keep watch at one of those internet bargain sites (www.slickdeals.net) because they do list them when they show up. If their at 49.00 I'd hold off if you want one and keep watch for a lower price, because it will return, if not at kitchenaid, at amazon.

Superfatting is different for HP, because by the time you add your lanolin to the batch, the lye is completely gone, all you're left with is the soap. Sorry I didn't differenciate between CP and HP and superfatting. My example above is discussing CP only. Lanolin? I am sorry, but I know nothing about that. Hopefully someone with experience with it will come along and answer. If not, I've got some folks I can ask.

I don't think you'd want to add anything that contains water to a lip balm recipe, because it's all butters/oils and unless you add something to incorporate the water, the water wouldn't blend in. Although at one drop per batch. Last I had read about stevia is that it was okayed by the FDA as a food additive, but not sweetener, what effects would that have on adding it to lip balm? Or has the FDA changed it stance on stevia?

I added it with all of the other oils/butters. I included it in with all the other oils/butters when figuring out my lye. I only made one or two batches with it, and the color was more of an orangy, not a red. Not a palm person myself and the color didn't do anything for me, so I sold it off. I'd prefer to add lard to my recipe.

I’ve heard two different versions for superfatting. 1) The oil/butter you are choosing to superfat with you can add to your soap after trace and it will be the predominate oil left free after the lye has completely saponified with the oils and turned into soap. For my example, I am going to superfat with shea butter. I include all of my oils/butters when running my soap recipe through a lye calculator to figure my amount of lye, including my shea butter. The amount of lye I will use is whatever it shows for the 10% excess fat. When I combine my oils/butters, I do not include the shea butter. I melt that separately and set aside. After my lye/water solution is added to the oils/butters and my soap is at trace, I add the melted shea butter and stir until fully blended in. The thought is, at this point in time, the lye has already bonded with the oils/butters and there is no or very little excess fat left, so the shea butter will be all of the excess fat. 2) Melting a butter (or using a warmed oil) separately is a waste of time, because even at trace, the chemical reaction is just starting to take place, the lye is not bonded to the oils/butters just yet. Adding the shea after trace will not make it the predominate excess fat left over after the saponification takes place. It will be an equal portion of fats in the recipe (equal to the proportion they are in the recipe). About 2.5 years ago, I made my normal soap recipe two different ways, one adding the shea at medium trace and the other way, melting all oils/butters together. I did not notice a difference from one batch to the other. After that, I quit “super-fatting” and just figured the % excess fat. For what you are wanting to do, include the 10% of the certain oil that you want to add at trace into your soap recipe. You want a 10% excess fat, so find the lye amount you need to use in that row (if looking at www.the-sage.com lye calculator). 10% is a bit on the high side for a discount too. Make sure you use fresh oils/butters and it might not hurt to add an anti-oxidant to your batch also. It will be more susceptible to DOS.