How does this recipe sound?

[Guest EMercier]

OK, I still want to try the basic olive oil and castor oil soap. I just don't want to wait forever right now for the olive oil to get hard. I found this somewhere on the net:

16 oz. Olive Oil

8 oz. Shea

8 oz. Mango Butter

12oz. Distilled Water

4.05 oz Lye

The lye and water is what I'm getting from MMS. The recipe does call for coconut oil, but I don't have that. I only have sweet almond, canola, and olive. Could I use canola oil in place of the olive? Do I need to add anything else to this? Thanks in advance!

[Spellkast]

Just wanted to let you know that you can get both the distilled water and coconut oil at your local walmart or grocery store. I found coconut oil in the baking aisle, and distilled water was with the rest of the water...I'm sure it'd be much cheaper especially since you wouldn't have to pay shipping on a gallon if it, ya know? Can't help ya much with the recipe, though- I don't do CP yet... Let us know how it turns out though!!!!

[Rebecca_IA]

I understood you to mean the distilled water and lye numbers were from MMS lye calculator, is that correct? Not that you were buying them from MMS.

50% Olive

25% shea

25% mango

IMO, and keep in mind, this is just my opinion, that's an awful lot of expensive butters in this recipe.

As spellkast stated, you can get coconut oil at Walmart if you have one of those super walmarts near you. They also sell small bottles of safflower oil. At my Walmart, these can be found towards the end of the baking aisle. The safflower is on the top shelf at ours and the coconut oil is on a shelf about waist high, green & white packaging.

You can buy lard at any grocery store and it does make a good bar of soap. Very cheap too. I think the last time I bought it, it was 68 cents a lb.

At our Target, they sell sunflower oil there, in addition to safflower oil. I know the sunflower oil is sold under the wesson brand.

We don't have a costco local, so I don't know what they sell.

If you are looking for some castor oil to purchase locally, I would suggest looking at your local health food store, not a drug store or walmart. I can buy a lb at the health food store for $7.95 plus tax, which is more expensive online, but in a pinch it works out better than about 4.00 for 4 oz of it at our Walmart.

Do you have any experience under your belt with soap making?

Do you have a stick blender? If you do, the olive/castor oil soap will not take forever to trace. I did it with a steep discount and it was about 5 minutes (I do NOT recommend doing this unless you have experience first).