Newbie Needs Recipe Check Please

[bjsalas]

I'm a total newbie when it comes to CP soap making and need some input on the following recipe. It's for a 2 pound batch.

Olive Oil 45%

Coconut Oil 31%

Palm Oil 19%

Castor Oil 5%

After running it through the soap calc I get this:

Olive Oil 14.4 oz

Coconut Oil 9.92 oz

Palm Oil 6.08

Castor Oil 1.6

Water 12.16 oz

Lye 4.837 oz (this is without any discount)

with 5% discount lye is 4.595 oz

This is my first time using the soap calc and wonder if things look right. Also, as a newbie should I discount or not? Any other comments, suggestions would be appreciated.

[Angel91805]

It doesn't look too bad at all.

Personally, I would round the coconut to 30% and the palm to 20%, just so you don't get totally funky weights (like 9.92oz!).

Or even better....I'd drop the coconut to 25% and up the castor to 10%. The bar isn't as hard (Still hard enough), but the conditioning and lather qualities goes up.

With 45% olive, it will be slower to trace....which is a good thing! Especially for a newbie. You may need to give it a bit more time in the mold w/ that much olive oil. I would not worry about discounting yet, not until you get much more comfortable with how the lye will react and just the whole soaping processing in general. (JMHO, of course!)

Looks like you have the hang of it. I can lose hours playing in Soapcalc.

Have fun! And remember.....we all *need* to see pictures. It's what feeds us all. HAHA.

Donna

[bjsalas]

Thanks for the help Donna. I did what you said about upping the castor oil to 10%, decreasing the coconut oil to 25% and changing the palm oil from 19 to 20%. The numbers look much better now. Will be easier to measure.

My question now is about the lye. It is 4.736%. Do I round that up or leave exactly as is?

Thanks

Bobbi Jo

[Angel91805]

Depends. How good is your scale? Mine won't go out to 4.736. With my scale, I would round it to 4.74 oz. The 5% superfat gives you a little bit of fudge room.

Donna