Does this sound OK

[DONNAMAC]

I ran a recipe through the soap calc and got these#s. Do you think it is ok?

Hardness-37 Cleansing- 24 Condition-58 Bubbly lather-24

Creamy Lather-13

Iodine-75

INS-149

I am fairly new to this and just not sure about the Iodine and INS

[Crafty1_AJ]

Soapcalc has benchmarks. Ranges for values. You might want to check into those if you're aiming for a well-balanced bar of soap.

IMO, offhand I'd say your cleansing is too high and your creamy lather too low. JMO

[CareBear]

there are also synergies between some oils, so it's hard to predict based only on numbers. I agree with AJ, but would also say that if something really appeals to you then your best bet is to give it a shot.

[DONNAMAC]

Thank you both, What I am actually trying to do is make quiet girls recipe without the PKO, simply because I do not have any right now. I substituted it with coconut oil, and that was already in there, so I guess that is just too much. When you say too cleansing, do you mean it would be drying? Thank You, I'm thinking maybe stick with the candles, huh. I have made 4 batches of soap and pretty pleased with them, so after hearing so much good about this particular recipe, I just wanted to give it a shot.

[Meridith]

Sometimes cleansing can mean too drying but not always - for me and my skin it usually does equate to being too dry. The other butters and oils can come into play to help it not have such a drying feeling to the soap. These numbers are not written in stone either and are just a guideline to follow. Once you get more comfortable with soaping, you will learn which numbers you prefer and what you are trying to achieve in your soap.

Since you don't have any PKO, try upping your OO amounts to see what that does. that is what I would do. It will give you a lower number for hardness but OO really does makes for a very hard bar with great conditioning qualities if cured long enough I personally never use over 15% of CO in my recipes - over that amount is too drying IMO.

[topofmurrayhill]

If you're referring to QuietGirl's basic soap recipe, I ran the numbers and they're different from what you got. There are things you can do that will freak out SoapCalc and cause it to give the wrong results until you reset. I selected Shea Butter, Crisco for the shortening, left out the PKO and doubled up on the CO. Here's what I got:

Hardness 35

Cleansing 20

Condition 59

Bubbly 20

Creamy 15

Iodine 77

INS 139

Some people say that 30% CO would be drying and others have favorite recipes with that amount. If you're not afraid of the CO, it's a reasonable sub and a plausible looking recipe.

Backing off to 25% CO and doubling up on the Shea Butter, I'm kind of intrigued by the mild-looking recipe. Might be interesting to see how it comes out.

Hardness 34

Cleansing 17

Condition 62

Bubbly 17

Creamy 17

Iodine 79

INS 132

[DONNAMAC]

Yes Top, that was the recipe I was referring to.I think I am more apprehensive about the calculater than I am about the actual lye. If you got different #s than me, using the same recipe, whats to say the lye you put in this according to the soap calc, isn't too much For a 4 lb. recipe with this its says to use 9,46 oz of lye. To me, that sounds like a lot. Guess I better sit tight until I figure this all out. Thank you all for your input. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I am doing wrong with the calculater.

[topofmurrayhill]

There's a Reset link at the bottom of the oils list to the left. If you want to be absolutely sure everything is cool, reset the calculator and put in all your oils and percentages, then click Compute Recipe.

You can also save your recipe at the upper left. Any time you load a saved recipe and click Compute Recipe the numbers will be right.

You don't really have to be apprehensive about the calculator. It has only gone slightly haywire for me occasionally while playing with a recipe and changing things around a lot. It seems to happen when you delete oils from the middle of the list and/or when you enter zero percentages for oils.

[DONNAMAC]

Thank You, that is very helpful. I am off to play with it now.