Soap recipe help please

[traceyy]

OK my 2nd batch of cphp I used

castor-10%

Coconut Oil 25%

Lard 25%

Olive-30%

Mango 10%

It was a little too drying for me. I dont know if its the coconut oil or what?

Anyway as soon as the ups man arrives, I will be soaping again. He will be bringing me palm oil and rice bran oil. I also picked up some grapseed oil, macadamian nut oil and avocado oil. Of course on hand I have safflower, sweet almond, soy, crisco, lard and probably a few others.

I ahve been playing with the soap calculator trying to figure out how I can take out the drying effect. Any suggestions? Than of course we have tomorrows package that will include a few more oils. You all are definately right, this IS addicting and expensive lol

[traceyy]

One more thing I should have asked. What exactly on the soap calculator is where the drying comes in? Conditioning? The above recipe had a 55 for conditioning. Should I be shooting for higher on that or lower on something else?

[Carriegsxr6]

lower your cleansing number and that should raise your conditioning number

[RobinInOR]

The cleansing comes from the lauric acid in the coconut.

The cleansing/conditioning %s above are all based on the ratios of the different fatty acids... So you can look at the acids as wel.

[eugenia]

Coconut can be drying. Many references state that the posted SAP values for coconut on the calculators are too high. What this means is that the calculator requires too much lye, which exacerbates the drying effect. The solution is to use for values for beef tallow or cherry kernel instead of coconut when you plug your recipe into the calc. If you try it both ways, you will note the lesser amount with the alternatives plugged in.

To make myself clear, do use the coconut, but use the alternatives to calculate the lye.

[TexasBrat]

Add more olive, take away some coconut and castor.

[krazeforsoap]

You could try:

coconut 25%

lard 15%

mango 10%

olive 40%

avocado 10% or grapeseed or macadamia oil etc.

Or you can even do away with the mango ( save for a lotion or cream ) and just use 25% lard.

Happy soaping!

[CareBear]

Coconut can be drying. Many references state that the posted SAP values for coconut on the calculators are too high. What this means is that the calculator requires too much lye, which exacerbates the drying effect. The solution is to use for values for beef tallow or cherry kernel instead of coconut when you plug your recipe into the calc. If you try it both ways, you will note the lesser amount with the alternatives plugged in.

Ah yes - I remember now. Must have deleted it from my memory cause it didn't make sense to me considering that my 100% coconut soap with a 0% superfat (made as a laundry stain stick) was not zappy at all so I believed the SAP I was working with was on target). So I saw this technique as simply increasing the superfat resulting in a less drying soap, I guess.

But back to the topic.

[asheebeans]

Anything over 15% coconut dries me out something terrible! Have you tried dropping the coconut a bit? Up that lard, too! You would be amazed how lard makes your soap more conditioning! I do around 30-35% lard and love it! I use it in just about every batch.