MarieJeanette

What I do with salt batches that get messed up is to grate them down with a fine grater and then add the gratings to a brand new batch of CP just as you would add salt to a regular salt bar batch, but instead of adding straight salt to the new CP batch, you are adding the salt bar gratings in the salt's place. HTH!

MarieJeanette

Regular table salt is perfectly fine, and so is silk. I've used Dead Sea Mud in one my salt bar batches and it looks awesome, but it cut down too much of the lather for my own personal tastes. For others who add mud it might be perfectly fine, but I'm so used to using my 100% coconut oil salt bar recipe with no other additives except the salt, fragrance, and color that bubbles so profusely for me that I'm extra sensitive to noticing anything that would lessen my usual bubbleage. Although the one with the mud does bubble, it takes a lot of friction to get it to do so, unlike my mud-less batches. I've never tried pumice, so I can't give yo any advice there, but it's worth a try. Don't ever be afraid to experiment to see what works for you and what you're happy with.

MarieJeanette

You could try substituting salt for the sugar instead. I've used medium grained Hawaiian Red Sea Salt in soap with really good results. I bought it from FNWL (From Nature With Love). The salt didn't melt or morph at all, and from the looks of it, one can't really tell if it's salt or sugar. Also, if you sprinkle silver mica on top, it adds a wonderful extra oomph of a sugar encrusted look. I love to sprinkle my soap tops with either silver mica or diamond dust mica because they give my soap a really cool sugary/sparkley look.

MarieJeanette

We didn't use any soap on our son until he was about 3 months old. His first soap at 3 months was Aveeno Colloidal Oatmeal soap. That was 13 years ago - way before I knew anything about soap or soap making. Nowadays, I'd still hold off on using soap on babies younger than 3 months, but the first soap I'd choose to use would definitely be a Castile. They are awesome!

MarieJeanette

Have to disagree here. Many of you have tried my "break the rules" soap (got the recipe off the web) that's 75% CO (25% shea or cocoa butter, forget which) that is mild and wonderful even on my aging skin. And I have other recipes that exceed the limit that are also mild and lovely.

There is a synergy between oils that cannot easily be calculated and doesn't show up in the numbers. Go with your gut - try small batches, and modify based on what you experience. Use the numbers as a guide but don't count on them or any other rules.

Very good post with excellent advice that I agree with 100% and that I practice wholeheartedly. I've tried the 'Break the Rules' soap, too, and can personally vouch that is it is quite lovely.

MarieJeanette

I use 100% Coconut Oil in my salt bars and don't find them dying at all. They lather great, too.

MarieJeanette

I've recently discovered how wonderful and economic French Fry bags can be for packaging up any kind of soap. I bought a box of 2,000 French Fry bags for $12.00-$13.00 down at Smart & Final. They came in three different sizes. I bought the 5" X 4.5" X 1.5" bags. My soaps fit inside beautifully. I fold over the top, use a hole punch to punch 2 side by side holes in the fold, reinforce the punched holes with those round, sticky reinforcent stickers and thread a strand of pretty ribbon through the holes and tie it off in a bow. You can even punch a single hole in each of the 1.5" sides of the bag for ventilation purposes and to sniff the scent through. To see a sample, you can click on the following link and scroll all the way down to the very bottom of the page:

http://members.cox.net/ssfkjfalf/AllMySoap/Start.htm

HTH!

MarieJeanette

This is just my opinion base on my own soaping experiences, but since there are a lot of hard oils in your recipe, I think your level of castor oil looks just fine. I use castor oil as high as 24% in some of my recipes with 60%-65% hard oils and they always come out beautifully hard with not even a hint of softness or stickiness in them. I think the so called 'castor % rule' can be broken in such instances. With that being said, though, I wouldn't try it in a soap with high percentage of soft oils.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm bad with certain rules. When someone says to me that it can't be done, I'm usually one of the first ones that sets out to test it to see whether it is really true or not (provided it's not something that's illegal or involves pain or death, that is ). I'm such a rebel in that way, and that's how I came to the conclusion that the 'castor rule' could be broken.

It's also how I learned that the 'coconut rule' is not a hard and fast rule for everyone either, and/or in every instance. I've found that it really comes down to people's individual sensitivities and/or skin types. Some people are sensitive to coconut and can't handle it over a certain percentage, while others do quite fantastic with it at even very high percentages. I do salt bars all the time with 100% coconut and my family and friends love them. To us they are not drying at all. I also recently did a 100% coconut batch without salt at a 20% super-fat and it feels just as luxurious and moisturizing to me as my Castiles.

To me, I would have no qualms about making your recipe as is. The numbers are actualy pretty close to one of my own personal favorite recipes. My conditioning numbers were a little higher (55), but a proper superfat around 7 would compensate for that if you didn't want to reformulate for a higher conditioning number.

The best advice I would to you is to experiment experiment, experiment and see what you like and what those around you like. Books, people, soap calculators (and even I) can say all they/we want, but until you actually make the soap recipe and try it out for yourself, you'll never know what you are missing and/or how to tweak it if need be for the next time. I say give it a shot!

MarieJeanette

so if you do that... are you still calling them a salt bar... ?

...

Hi TeriM,

This is just me and what I do, but if I added enough grated salt bar flakes to my new, regular CP batch in order to equal the same weight in oils that my new CP batch has, then yes, I have no problem calling them a salt bar. On the other hand, if I only add a little bit of my salt bar gratings to a batch in order to give it a confetti-type look, then I don't call them salt bars. HTH!

MarieJeanette

I've rebatched salt soap by finely grating it down and adding the gratings to a new, regular CP batch. I didn't add more salt since there was plenty of salt in the gratings. My gratings were colored light pink and so my new soap ended up looking pretty cool. It's even more cool if the cp batch you are adding the gratings to is scented with a different, but complimentary F/O. My gratings were scented with Salty Mariner from AGE, and the regular CP batch I added them to was scented with Jasmine from MMS, It smells really good!

MarieJeanette

I would say that you experienced some morphing. BCN says the fragrance is soap safe but that it has not been tested in CP yet. I've heard of different people having trouble with certain strawberry fragrance oils morphing in their CP soap into yucky scents. A strawberry fragrance oil that I had tried myself from a different vendor did the same yucky scent morphing. I won't buy any strawberry fragrances to use in CP anymore without checking things out over at the Scent Review Board site first. HTH!

http://scentreviewboard.obisoap.ca/index.php

MarieJeanette

Congratulations! It's looking great!

I usually do a roughly 60/40 Aloe/Goat Milk mixture, too, (I was one of those that responded to your earlier GM post).

Anyway, here's another idea (if you can stand one more ): I just did a 100% GM batch using pretty much the same method I usually do- i.e., mixing my lye with about 60% or so of aloe juice and stickblending the 40% of refigerated, fresh goat milk in with my oils before adding my lye- but then I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I also had some goat milk powder sitting in my cupboard.

Hmmmm... Well, my wheels started turning and an idea popped into my head to add as much goat milk powder to the fresh goat milk (not to the aloe juice part), which would be enough to reconstitute the amount of aloe I had already mixed in with the lye beforehand, thereby turning my 40% GM batch into a 100% GM batch, but without the bugger of having to mix any of my GM directy with the lye!

I then stickblended this newly 'enriched' goat milk mixture in with my oils before adding the lye as I normally do with great success, and Yippie! This one acted just as great as my 40% GM always does for me- no ammonia smell, and no orange discoloration at all.

Unfortunately (colorwise, that is), I added a discoloring Vanilla fragrance to it and so I can't tell what the true color of this soap would be normally. :embarasse I'm assuming, though, that it would turn out to be the nice creamy/light beige color my 40% GM always turns out to be based on how it was looking before the fragrance was added to the mix.

Well, anyway, I can hardly wait to try this one when it's cured to see how much difference there is between a 40% and a 100%.

MarieJeanette

I have the TOG mold and foam liners that Soapmaker Man sells (pictured in the previous post) and I can't say enough good things about them. I really, really love them. My soap comes out nice and smooth and the foam has never, ever stained my soap. I've been using the same ones for 6 months now, and they are still going strong . I bought some extra sheets of the lime green foam at Michael's Craft Store just as a back-up, but I haven't had the need to use them yet. I must say that since using the foam liners, I will never go back to freezer paper. You couldn't pay me enough to do so. They're awesome in my book.

MarieJeanette

I don't know what everyone else does, but what I do is pour at a medium trace, then I wait a few minutes, and then I drizzle any left-over thickening soap in my soaping pot over the top of the soap that is siiting in the mold in a haphazard manner, along with any left-over colored soap for swirling that's still sitting in my measuring cups. After that, I move my rubber spatula around a bit to texture, causing hills and dips on the surface, somewhat like how one would frost a cake I guess you might say. Sometimes I'll even sprinkle some finely grated soap flakes on top just for an added flair.

MarieJeanette

Ok, I need to ask...

How do you figure out Lye solutions, for example, lets say I'm using soap calc...how would I put in a 33% lye solution?

And what makes castilles a better soap?

Sorry to hijack your thread :embarasse

Christina

What CareBear said. You do have to click the little white box in the lye concentration section that says "set" first, though, before you can type in your own number.

Castille's are my favorite soap for their gentleness and high conditioning qualities. I don't make a true 100% olive oil Castile, but to me, my bastiles or Castile-types, are awesome just the same. I add 10% castor oil and 10% Babassu to my 80% olive oil Castile-type for a little extra bubbliness and hardness. I also add sugar and silk to them and they lather up real nice.

I've also been experimenting with 70%, 60% and 50% olive oil amounts to see how I like it, and also making other batches where I've been substituting some of the olive out with rice bran oil to cut down on the 'sliminess' factor that some don't seem to like (I personally like that slickery feel). My personal favorite so far is the 80% Castile-type with goat milk a part of my liquid amount. Can you tell I just love experimenting?

MarieJeanette

I would just go ahead and try it, see how the finished soap behaves, how your skin likes it, and then tweak your next recipe from there, because everybody's skin is different in what it likes and dislikes.

As far as the numbers go, they are not all that bad, actually. I personally like my soap hardness number to be at least a 38, but that's just my own personal preference. Soap cures out to a nice hardness over enough time anyway.

Also, I'm different than some of the other posters here in that I actually lke a high castor oil percentage. To me, 15% is just fine and wouldn't make me bat an eyelid at all. My favorite recipe uses 23% castor. I use it in my very high tallow% recipe and it's awesome in that. That soap is as hard as a rock, too, and it feels to me somewhat like a Castile, but without the softness and sliminess that some people complain about with Castile's.

Just go for it! The only thing I would maybe change for the next time you make soap (and there will be a next time ) is using 76 coconut oil instead of FCO. FCO is just too precious and expensive for me to put in soap when the cheaper 76 coconut oil does just fine. You're not actually using a very high percentage of it in this recipe, so I don't see anything wrong with sticking with it for this batch if you want to.

Have fun! :smiley2:

MarieJeanette

I make my salt bars with a 15% superfat. They are made with 100% coconut oil, and it's easy to figure out if you use the SoapCalc (I love the SoapCalc, especially the part about it being free! ). In the box located in the upper right section of their webpage where it says 'Superfat/Discount %, delete the '5' that they have there as default and just type in '15' instead. It will calculate the proper lye amount for you to use in your recipe. :smiley2:

I don't find my salt bars drying at all, and my DH and DS use them on their faces every shower they take, but some people I've given them away to are more sensitive to them and say the bars sting their skin when they shave with them. I put it all down to the fact that people have diferent skin likes and dislikes and so I give those particular people my Castile's instead, which they love and drool over.

MarieJeanette

Ever since I discovered the joys of using either a 33% or 40% lye solution with my CP soaps, my Castile's set up in no time. I remember the first Castile batch I ever made. I used a full water amount and it took about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours to come to trace, almost a week to unmold it, and then even more time on top of that to even be able to cut it. It was just so soft for what seemed like forever. Things are so much better now with the lye solution percentages that I use. I can unmold and cut my Castile's within 18 hours and they are good and hard. I still let them cure for at least 4 weeks before using, though, which is what I do with all my soaps anyway. My Castile's are my favorite soaps to use and also the hands-down favorite of my guinea pi- oops, I mean testers.

MarieJeanette

I just CP'd WSP's Sun And Sand in a tallow blend this weekend at a 33% lye solution, and, oh, my goodness, it smells so good! It did accelerate on me a little bit, but it was very manageable and I was able to get a lovely blue swirl in it.

WSP is one of my favorite suppliers. I've loved everything I've ever bought from them. I also love reading the reviews on their site, and have even written a few of them myself.

MarieJeanette

I spray alcohol on mine and rub dry with a old pair of panty hose. Shines them up real nice.

MarieJeanette

I try to stick to buying what I can locally, and the rest I order out for.

I can get these locally:

Coconut Oil (Walmart)

Lard (Walmart)

Tallow (Smart & Final)

Olive Oil (Costco)

Castor Oil (health food store)

Rice Bran Oil (health food store)

Jojoba Oil (health food store)

Palm Oil (health food store)

Grapeseed (grocery store, Walmart and health food store)

These I order out for:

Palm Kernel Oil

Babassu Oil

Cocoa butter (I can get it locally, but not in big enough quantities)

Kokum butter

Shea butter

After many months of experimenting with many different recipes and using SoapCalc as a plumb line, I think I've finally come up with 3 base recipes that I'm very pleased with. I will mainly stick to those, but since I really love the experimenting aspect of soaping, I'll do some experimenting every so often, here and there, just to spice things up a bit.

MarieJeanette

I use those kinds of molds quite often for CP with no problems (I always soap at room temperature, though). What I do is that I usually pour the majority of my batch into a log mold and then pour any excess into the individual molds with the pretty designs. The soaps pop out pretty easy for me after a stint in the freezer.

MarieJeanette

My personal and most favorite soap to use that feels very moisturizing to me is my homemade Castile-type recipe (or Bastile) made with 80% Oilive Oil. I use some bubbly oils to make up the rest of the 20%, use fresh goat milk as part of my liquid amount, and superfat it at 7%.

Some people may not like slickery feel of it, and it does get goopy if you let it sit in water (which I avoid by using a soap dish), but I must say that I never, ever feel like I have to use lotion when I use this soap.

While I love all my soaps and each one of them is so much better than store-bought soap, this particular soap is my own personal and special treasure above all the rest. It makes my skin feel so soft, silky and moist.

MarieJeanette

I always like to have these oils/fats on hand:

Olive oil

Coconut Oil

Palm Kernel Oil

Castor Oil

Tallow

Lard

Cocoa Butter

Babassu Oil

Rice Bran Oil

I don't use all of them in every batch, but they are all a vital part of my 3 main base recipes.

MarieJeanette

Depending on where you live, you can get Roebic lye at Lowes, too. It's in the plumbing section, and it's 100% soduim hydroxide (lye). I use it all the time with excellent results. I was getting a little low on it and just bought 4 pounds at my local Lowe's today.

MarieJeanette