MarieJeanette

Ah yes, Castile's famous colloidal suspension. I learned from a chemist on another soaping site that the 'slime' or 'snot' is known as a 'colloidal suspension', and is caused by the high oleic acid in olive oil. High oleic acid soaps make the most soluble soaps of all. There's nothing wrong with the resulting soap; it's just the nature of the oleic beast.

Since learning what the 'snot' is, I'm personally no longer disturbed by it. Instead, I look at it as something quite beneficial.

If you are inclined to try, though, there are ways to cut down on the suspension without sacrificing any of the emmolient benefits that a high olive oil soap lend. I've found that using less olive oil, or even substituting rice bran oil for some of the olive oil really helps out in that area. HTH! :smiley2:

MarieJeanette

My RBO is a golden color, like the color of corn oil. I buy mine at my local Asian market. I'm thinking that the RBO you found and that is used on horses is not as refined as the cooking kind is (the kind I'm used to buying), and that's why it is darker. I don't know if that's good, bad or otherwise, but you could always try it in a small sample batch to find out.

For a substitute in place of RBO, I don't know for sure since I've never substituted for it, but on the SoapCalc, Avacado Oil seemed fairly close enough in their 'quality' numbers. The SAP is a little bit higher, though- .133 instead of .128. HTH!

MarieJeanette

I second Salty Mariner and Green Irish Tweed, and I'd like to make mention of Masculine Musk from Sweet Cakes as well.

MarieJeanette

Okay I know peeps like weird stuff, but ewwwwww lol!! Arent we supposed to wash the dirt and grass off?

Kinda like the people who like my Bacon candle!

I diddo Peaks

lol! I don't enjoy washing with it personally, but I have a friend who absolutely loves the smell of dirt and freshly cut grass. She covets my soap made from those 2 scents. It's truly amazing how realistic it smells.

MarieJeanette

Wholesale Supplies Plus has a good one. I bought a sample bottle and soaped it in a layered soap with their Dirt F/O. It came out awesome.

MarieJeanette

It could be that you added too much milk or oil to your rebatch. I would just let it cure for longer and see what happens.

Re: lye: I buy lye from my local Lowe's, and also from my local Ace Hardware store. At Lowes' I buy Roebic's brand lye. It comes in a 2 lb. plastic canister for 7.96. At Ace, I can buy Rooto lye in a 1 lb plastic canister for $3 and some odd cents. The both say 100% Sodium Hydroxide (and nothing else) on the label. HTH!

MarieJeanette

Sweet Cakes Green Apple is awesome in CP. Soaps like a dream, doesn't discolor, and the scent sticks like glue.

MarieJeanette

I love these soap dishes too, but the ikea labels with the barcodes are so hard to get off!

I get the Ikea soapdishes from time to time and the best way I've found to get those pesky stickers off is to not wait. I take them off as soon as I get them home. I scrape up one corner with my thumb nail- enough to be able to grab a length of the sticker between my thumb and forefinger- and I verrry sloooowly peel them off, micro inch by micro inch. They pretty much come off in one piece for me about 98% of the time. I don't know what kid of glue they use, but boy is it ever sticky!

MarieJeanette

Hi Melanie!

It took me almost a year of playing on SoapCalc and making gobs of soap to finally figure out which SoapCalc numbers made my skin the happiest, so please read my revised recipe with a grain of salt. Everyone's skin is different, and mine would find a cleansing of 26 and a conditioning of 49 to be way to drying, but for others it might be quite lovely and cause absolutely no problem. I've found through many trials and errors that my skin likes to have a conditioning level that hovers around 52 at the very least (the higher than that, the better), and a cleansing level that is no higher than 20.

If I were to make a soap with the ingredients you posted, here is a recipe that I think would be quite acceptable to me:

Coconut 15%

Olive 30%

Palm Kernel 15%

Lard 25%

Castor 10%

Jojoba 5%

Hardness 37

Cleansing 19

Conditioning 52

Bubbly 28

Creamy 27

Iodine 56

INS 144

You'll notice that my revised recipe has a lower hardness level than yours, but I've found that a soap can have a hardness level in the 30's and still be quite hard depending on the oils/fats used. The 37 for hardness can be decieving in this recipe because I think SoapCalc looks at OO as being a soft oil that contributes no hardness, but this is not true. In soap, OO is quite hard after a proper cure. Many soapers look at OO as being a hard oil as opposed to a soft oil because of how hard OO soaps get after curng. If you take that into consideration, my revised recipe has 85% hard oils, which will make a nice hard bar after curing, much more than the 37 that SoapCalc indicates.

With the 30% of bubbly oils, it will have a very nice lather, too. I like to formulate my recipes so that my creamy and bubbly numbers are very close together (with the bubbly being just a tad higher than the creamy). Even though my revised bubbly number is smaller than yours, when the bubbly and creamy numbers are so close together, it makes for a very nice, fluffy lather with just the right balance of creamy (at least this has been so in my own experience).

Now, bear in mind, this is just my opinion. :smiley2: When all is said and done, it's going to come down to what your skin partcularly likes, but that's how I would formulate it if it wre up to me. HTH!

MarieJeanette:)

Thank you!

MarieJeanette

I hope I'm not intruding, but who does OM stand for? I'm quite familiar with SW and OT, but not OM. TIA!

MarieJeanette

Very nice soap! I just ordered the same model soap cutter from Paul, 'SoapmakerMan', last week. I can hardly wait 'till it gets here!

MarieJeanette

1. When using a stick blender , what I have read is to only use it for 30 second intervals, Is that correct? And just stir for a few minutes in between? Then use it again? .

I use mine for about 10 ten seconds, stir for a few minutes, then stickblend for about 10 seconds more, and then stir again, switching back and forth like that until it traces.

2. Which blade thingy should I use for the blender> It came with three, a whip, a blender for drinks, and the one that grinds meat..

I personally use the blender attachment for drinks that my stick blender comes with. Works great!

HTH!

MarieJeanette

I have Somali Rose and I love it. My brother really likes it, too. I must have a weird sniffer, because I don't smell any kind of a rose, whether it be earthy, spicy or otherwise, and I smell abslutely no chocolate whatsoever. To me, it's just a real nice, pleasant man scent that can double as a fresh, earthy unisex scent. When I smell it, my mind imagines a desert oasis or something, so that's what I call it instead of Somali Rose.

MarieJeanette

True Lilac from Scent Works is awsome to soap with. I get no A, no D, and the scent is true and strong. HTH!

MarieJeanette

Yes, it's called Castile soap.

I've not made a true Castile soap (100% olive oil soap) yet, but I have gone as high as 80% olive oil.

My 80% is absolutely lovely. It's very gentle and leaves my skin feeling so moist. I fragrance it and sometimes color it.

100% oive oil soaps need to cure a long time. Some people even like to cure them for a whole year. They are rather soft in the beginning and can be quite slick or slimey when bathed with, too, but a long cure makes them rock hard ad less slimey.

One of these days I'll get around to making a true Castile, but for now I'm completey satisfied with my 80%, 60% ad 50% oive oil soaps. I like to call those my 'Castile-types. Some people call them 'Bastile's'.

I hope more people will chime in, especially those that have made a true Castile.

HTH!

MarieJeanette

What Crafty1-AJ said. That is a very good method, and it's how I myself used to do my GM soaps before discovering the fresh (instead of canned) Meyenberg GM in the refrigerated section of my grocery store. I eventualy abandoned my beloved canned GM when I saw that the fresh, refigerated GM gave me a lovely creamy-to-light-beige GM soap without any ammonia smell to cure out (what I had been hoping and dreaming of). :whoohoo:

If you want another method to add to your stash of GM tecniques, here's the new GM method that I'm most fond of now. I like it because my soap remains a light, creamy, to light, beige color even if it gels, and there's no ammonia smell at all.

First, I decide whether I want to make either a 100% GM soap, or a 30% GM soap. Believe it or not, even as little as 30% adds a nice & creamy, discernable difference, I've found.

For the 30% GM soap, I split the liquid amount for my batch into two separate parts: 70% water, and 30% fresh, refrigerated GM.

I mix the lye with the water part, and then mix the 30% fresh, refigerated (not frozen) GM directly to the oils and stickblend them in before adding the lye/water. You can stickblend the GM in after the lye is added to the oils, too, if you want to do it that way instead. Either way it works beautifully, and with none of that brown or burnt color, or ammonia smell, but the key is to not mix the bare GM directly with the bare lye or lye/water (ulness you want a permanently brown, but temporarily stinky soap). Then, I just continue soaping my batch as I normally would.

For the 100% GM soap, I do the exact same thing as above for the 30% GM soap, only I dissolve enough GM powder into the 30% fresh, refrgerated GM part of my batch in order to compensate for the 70% water amount that was mixed separately with the lye.

In other words, enough GM powder is added to the fresh, refigerated GM that would be the proper equivalent to turn my water amount into a normal GM dilution, only I don't mix the powder with my water part, but with the fresh GM part instead. I hope that just made sense.

I then add the now thicker & richer GM mixture direcly to my oils and stickblend it in real well before I add the lye/water mixture (or just after, if I want to). Then I just continue soaping as I nomally would.

I do it this way in order to avoid any direct contact between the GM and lye, giving me, (as a happy result), a 100% GM soap without getting the brown color and/or ammonia smell.

It probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but trust me, it's very easy and hassle-free. I hope that all made sense. Sorry for being so long-winded. :embarasse

MarieJeanette

Ok I am going to show how much I don't know..

What is the milk way mold?

Milky Way molds are those plastic, fancy shaped, single (individual) molds. Most people use them for MP soap, but they work just fine for CP, too. At least they do for me.

MarieJeanette

I love my TOG mold with the re-useable funky foam liners. It's set up so you can either use it as a log mold or a slab mold.

I also like those individual 3-D molds. I purposely make my soap batch large enough to fit in my TOG, with enough soap left over to fit in a couple of 3-D molds.

For salt bars, I really like pouring them into those individual, Milky Way-type molds. There's no cutting or gelling to fuss about, and they unmold so beautiful and shiney.

MarieJeanette

Is it possible to find out the ingredients from your sister? I've never heard of them myself, but it could be just as simple as making a regular CP recipe with some cocoa butter or mango butter or shea butter, etc. in it.

MarieJeanette

I have Black Keemun Tea from Scent Works and it smells just like a straight-up black pekoe tea without any additional smells like lemon or anything else in it. I love it!

MarieJeanette

Scentworks is where I buy mine from, too. It has lasted me a long time. I still have half of a bag of it left even though I use it in every batch.

MarieJeanette

WOW! I've got a s### load of coconut oil sitting around. I've been thinking about this. Is it not drying because of the 20% superfatting?

I've done about 3 batches of 100% CO with the really high superfat, and they are not drying at all. They feel awesome.

MarieJeanette

The cure serves two purposes. One is indeed to let the water migrate to the surface and then evaporate from your soap leaving you with a harder and longer-lasting bar. The other is to allow that tiny bit of saponification to continue so you end up with a mellower bar as well. And sometimes better lather as well.</p>

So yes, you do better to cure the bar. With a steep discount some will cut it back to 2 weeks but I've found 4 to be better. 8 minimum with castile.

Humidity is your enemy. Not only does it slow or prevent that evaporation, but it seems to contribute to DOS.

Very good advice! I concur wholeheartedly.

I've always suspected that there's still some kind of chemical reaction going on in my soap, even though it has completely gelled and has sat for a week.

All my soaps get better and milder the longer I let them cure. I let all my soaps cure for a minimum of 4 weeks, because by then, I've noticed that they are harder, milder and bubblier than my week old soap, even if the week old soap went through a complete gel.

MarieJeanette

I have both SW's Lait Sucre and Daystar's Matin Calin. To me they both smell the same oob, but unlike Lait Sucre, Matin Calin does not accelerate or seize in CP (according to the ScentReview board).

I've CP'd Lait Sucre and love the scent, but it was quite a hairy experience soaping it. Not to worry, though, because I went into it with my eyes wide open and I was quite prepared beforehand for the wild ride CP-ing it. I ended up going from CP-ing it to HP-ing it in the end (quite successfully, I might add) in order to save it, but I made a mental note to buy the Matin Calin from Daystar (based on the reviews I've read) for the next time I wanted to CP that kind of scent. I just recently recieved the Matin Calin from Daystar and I can hardly wait to soap it. I hear it soaps like a dream in CP.

Anyway, to me, they both have a sweet, milky scent that is so comforting. I've heard of some people on different threads describing the scent as smelling like buttered popcorn, or even smelly gym socks, but that's not how it smells to my nose at all. To me, it's just a straight, creamy, sweet, milky scent.

MarieJeanette