TallTayl

The Paisley's Woods accelerated from the Earth Musk. I was happily surprised to see the fine lines of the blob glop swirl!

For some reason my KOH never properly dissolves in just glycerin, so i end up using part water. I have to look at my notes, but at least half water IIRC. With some fragrances, adding glycerin helps thin it out if it globs. Thick undiluted paste with baking soda makes a really nice solid surface scrub!

What i like about the glycerin method is that is is quick. What i dislike is the soap paste seems to not last as long. Which makes sense, since the glycerin method was used by pharmacists to have liquid soap readily at hand without needing to sequester for months on end. When diluting it takes me often 24 hours to know what i am going to end up with. Frustrating!

Typically, yes. Palm. Trle pressed palm is what SC has every time i am ready to buy.

There's a yahoo liquid soap group and a facebook group. If you can HP you can make liquid soap. The first thing i did was make a lb of single oil LS pastes. Then blended them as i diluted to see which blends i liked best. Coconut is fab for laundry and surface cleaning all by itself. Hard as heck to thicken, but works like a powerhouse. Olive is thick and takes a lot to thin, and is very reactive to fragrances and EO. I love sunflower oil. Over all, i don't like the squeaky clean feeling with LS, but it is great to have around! I was thinking about doing a short blog series on liquid soap. There are so many things to do with it. Some facebook peeps are making clear LS using NaOH! I have to try because i am still in a total state of disbelief.

Not always. The one from soapers choice, mountain rise, etc are specified as palm, but some sources use animal.

Faire season is almost here! Time to get in gear and stock up on the 60 some odd soap varieties. Here are a few from last night fresh from the mold. Barely cut, still warm and waiting for a little cleaning up before packaging. Cantaloupe is a fresh melon with the rind and seed notes. Hawaiian Honeybee is a mouth watering blend of orchid, mango and pineapple. Paisley's Woods is a custom blend inspired by my daily run with Miss Paisley. White Oak, Fir Needle, Leaves, Sweet Grass, Humus, Dirt... smells just like our woods. Edited: Spelling error of my dog's name of all things!

I used imprecise wording on my posts above. I won't bother clarifying in this post, but wanted to show the example IFRA certificate (current amendment) i was referring to. This is an example of what a few forward thinking suppliers provide. It does not state here HOW to apply the limit for general Cat 9 for example, just that the suggested limit is 0.5%. Within each category are many sub categories for format of the product, but not listed here. Not all suppliers use the same stick to measure how the limit should be calculated. The vast majority suggest PPO so that the math is consistent, simple and reliable enough to be used correctly, and to provide a nice margin of error. A few suggest all ingredients in final product (without accounting for evaporation in soap curing process). Not one of the common suppliers offers a CoA for the specific small lot of oils provided at purchase, so we are all working within historical averages. That alone makes calculations impossible for the average soap maker to be scientifically precise. Various SAP calculators all work within ranges. Not many people have systems designed to quickly calculate based on figures from the actual CoA for every ingredient in the pot, so the tenths and hundredths of a decimal point are not easy to agree upon for a wash off product. I am just very happy to accept that people at least understand that 0.5% is not the same as 5% or an oz PPO. Natures Garden Candle Supplies 42109 State Route 18 Wellington, OH 44090 1-866-647-2368 or 1-440-647-0100 www.candlepro.com This is to confirm that the subject essential oil is composed of the single natural essential oil mentioned in compliance with the most recent guidelines published by I.F.R.A . (International Fragrance Association). The IFRA standards are based on safety assessments from RIFM. (Research Institute for Fragrance Materials). Essential Oil Name: 100% Pure and All-Natural Clove Buds FCC (Native Distilled) Essential Oil APPLICATION MAXIMUM USE LEVEL CATEGORY 1 .2% CATEGORY 2 .2% CATEGORY 3 .5% CATEGORY 4 .5% CATEGORY 5 .5% CATEGORY 6 4% CATEGORY 7 .4% CATEGORY 8 .5% CATEGORY 9 .5% CATEGORY 10 .5% CATEGORY 11. No restriction

actually the IFRA guideline is for the whole clove bud essential oil, not just the eugenol fraction. Makes the math a little easier for sure! You're spot on track with the 0.5% of Clove EO guideline as a percent of "finished product" inclusive of lye and water. The hard math comes from figuring out what the 'finished product' for soap will be since quite a bit of the water will evaporate out over time, but 5% seems very conservative. With something like Clove, conservative is pretty smart. I typically use PPO (per pound of oils) for all scent additive measurements since that number does not fluctuate whereas water and lye measurements can depending on solution strength and superfat of a given batch. Makes batch tracking easier to fit into my SOP's and reduces my chances for error, especially on really busy soap making days. It's really great that the IFRA certificates are becoming so readily available. Hopefully people see that eugenol is the main culprit for the low usage rate, and take that into consideration when blending with other eugenol containing essences. If only the process to read IFRA limits was not so arse backwards.

Clove is usable. The Eugenol in it is a known accelerator, and heater. Steps that help: Keep the clove to a minimum and use in a blend. The IFRA limitation for clove bud EO, for instance, in category 9 (soap) is only 0.5%, so REALLY low. Keep working temps low. Don't short water as much in the lye solution. Combine with other essences known to decrease acceleration, such as citruses, pine, etc.

I have heard some people use electric blankets. A heating pad, the right one, may get things melted after a while. My fear is using the wrong tool for the job. If you live in a warm area, pails on the patio on a hot afternoon get things really flowy really fast.

I didn't love Palm with soy. Mine looked odd and burned not so great. How about adding Pillar blend? I have decent luck with that.

The belt style pail heater i bought from Duda Diesel heats 6 gallon plastic pails no problemo. The $100 was well worth the investment.

I don't cater to the fringes. Out of the gate, like most, i thought i wanted to go all natural (whatever that even means). I learned that the customer in that narrow range is fickle. Now i make what I like: colorful, uniquely scented products that make me feel good to make and to use. I have a few people ask here and there about various things Dr. oz recommends or that they read on some fly by night blog, but for the most part people attracted to my displays are not that high maintenance of a crowd. We magpies tend to flock together. I make veggie soap because it is what I like. I won't pander to the anti-palm crowd. My palm is sourced through the RSPO members. I have used tallow in bar soap, but now use it in only in a specialized shaving soap. I have used lard. I have even rendered tallow, lard and deer, but just don't care for them in my soap personally. Nothing wrong with them, i just found my personal choice blend and stick with it. I don't cater to the vegan crowd, but where i am it would be silly for me to omit that customer pool. It all works out in the end.

Ginger Fish was a Primal Elements dupe. HUGELY popular. The original is a citrus ginger ale.

There's still plenty of market for animal fat soap. My main summer faire has a seller of tallow soap and they "clean up".

Have you tried ButterEz (INCI Caprylic/Capric/Stearic Glycerides)? I use it with high stearic butters like palm, mango, cocoa, shea, etc and don't get grains.

I use the high temp metal tape. Someone mentioned plumbers putty once, but I have never tried it. The metal tape does the trick on my molds.

Kansas City Here I come. Will be speaking about formulating hair care products at the Central Soapers Workshop. Looking forward to all except the 6 am flight out of Chicago.

Many waxes are "two pour" (or more). While the wax is hot, it expands, shrinking as it cools. Sometimes it creates air pockets inside around the wick. Nearly always it leaves a depression in the top finished candle unless it is topped off. What i have to do with my waxes is poke relief holes as candles cools, then fill those holes and top off with more wax. Back when i started with containers and pillars I read a lot about "caverns", "air pockets", and such in the archives and in recent threads. The process to prevent holes and to make the finished candle pretty is very similar between most waxes.

Not really. I have both. Champagne is super sweet and quite a bit more aldehylic than Ginger ale. Ginger ale is more fresh gingery. There's still some sparkle, but not nearly as much as champagne. IN CP soap the ginger ale loses the sparkle.

I like it in non-soap shampoo and conditioner. In cold process soap it loses its sparkle and flattens some. Have not yet tried it in candles.

Aww, thanks Bel. ((Hugs))

For the embeds i use 100% PB so i don't have to worry about them being to squishy to remove from the molds cleanly. The embeds are about 10% (roughly) of the whole candle by weight. Sometimes i end up with more, sometimes a little less depending on how they cut and come together, but right about there. I like the CDN's, but not how difficult they have become to find. I tried them on Stella's recommendation after nearly giving up on soy after not being satisfied with other series wicks. Loving that the CDN work well for other waxes, like palm. I have even tested out square braid and wood, but always seem to fall back into the CDN's. In that big tin i didn't want to go up wick size and mess with melt pools. In this batch of wax the two CD6 are hot enough to throw really well without a full MP. The flames are a nice height. The container is cool enough to handle and carry around. That is a big plus for me. I double wick other containers and just love the effect. My customers dig double wicks too.

Thanks for the kind words Trappeur. The style has evolved over the last decade. I finally like how the style of everything i make finally pulled together. The soy tin in the pic in the prior post is an 8 oz C3 with PB embeds single wicked with a CDN 14. Without the embeds a CDN12 burns well with that particular FO. With the embeds the MP doesn't make it to the edges until past the 1/2 way point, even with burn times of 6-8 hours. I would not have thought the difference would have been that dramatic either! Could also be that my PB is getting dry. Will work in my favor in the summer, but in my igloo right now it's not I also make a 16 oz tin. I double wick with two CD6. Two CD7 were way too hot. The embeds in this tin were over poured a little too much to make my eye happy, but you get the idea. A side benefit of these tins is i don't worry about tops any more! I pour these tins about 2/3 and let them cool to a thick slurry. Poke relief holes and add the embeds, pushing them in to fill any voids i missed. Over pour the base wax to seal it all together. It ends up taking slightly more time in total because i have to pre-make embeds, but i no longer stand around with a heat gun smoothing tops after filling air voids. Well worth it to me