soaps made with Olive Oil

[kayearthgrown]

Are soaps made with Olive Oil more conditioning than soaps with Rice Bran oil.

TIA

[Rebecca_IA]

If you have a good scale, this would be very easy to find out on your own by making two 1 lb batches of soap, 1 with Olive Oil only and the other with RBO only. Let them cure and try them out so you can see what the differences are between those 2 oils.

If you use a lye calculator that has the fatty acid profiles for these 2 oils, you can compare the 2 of them that way also. soapcalc.com has them and they also give additional info on other pages of that site.

[Meridith]

There really is not much difference on the conditioning properties of the two when you plug it into the soap calc. I also personally can not tell a differenct in my soap when making a recipe with OO as opposed to one that has the OO subbed out for RBO. Because they are so similiar, that is why some folks like to sub the OO for RBO since it is cheaper.

[RobinInOR]

Here's some numbers for ya

RBO contains 43% oleic acid while olive oil contains 72%. So if you're one that really likes oleic acid as a conditioner, you'll probably find that RBO isn't as conditioning. But I seem to be sensitive to olive oil, I don't like high oleic.

RBO has 22% palmitic while olive has 11%. Probably why olive takes longer to harden.

Those are the main differences between the oils.

[Meridith]

That is funny that you are sensitive to OO since castile soaps are supposed to be so mild. But to me, they seem to make my skin feel really dry unless cured for months and months. But with OO in a recipe with other oils and buttes, I don't seem to be bothered by it and can't tell a difference.