additives in goats milk base

[tamese]

I ordered 25lb of base yesterday and some butters and oils. I'm wondering if this is two many to put in or if some of the additives do the same thing in the soap. I got Shea butter, cocoa butter, olive oil, castor oil, glycerin. I was thinking maybe 1 teaspoon or 1 tablespoon of each. Would that be to many? Any help will be appreciated. And does anyone know where I can get a good Shea butter scent?

[tamese]

Oh andI forgot coconut oil.

[JanetsCandles]

One problem with the oil/butter additives is that if you add too many to the M&P soap bases, the lather dwindles down to nothing, and if you use way too much, I'm not sure the soap would set up.

[mzphee]

there is alot of recipes in the m&p section, it will tell you exactly how much you need. I am just getting comfortable with tweaking recipes and adding different additives. its very fun honestly I kind of like it better than making candles....lol

[Pam W]

If you added a tablespoon of each, you'd end up with no lather. I'd add 1/2 tbl of each & pour a test bar. When I play around with different additives, I make a fairly small batch to start with - 1 or 2 bars.

The lather will be diminished when adding butters/oils but I compensate by adding a couple squirts of liquid soap. I make DH's shave soap with M&P base adding castor, glycerin, clay & babassu oil. The lather doesn't produce bubbles per se but it does give a thick, creamy lather.

[jeanie353]

I lost my bubbles too by adding too many additives. Putting in 3-4 T of liquid soap to 2# of base did help that problem. I used Dr Bonner's Castile but any would do. The lather did stay for me....In fact, as it cured a few days the lather got better and that I was very happy with. I'd suggest not going over 1T of each of them per 2# of base. The base may have CO in it. If you add more it could cause drying. Play around with it and see how it goes. That's the nice thing about M&P

The other thing is I found that by warming the additives in a double boiler first helps them incorporate into the base when using a lot of them.

Have fun

Edit to add....Castor made a big difference for me in lather. Just 1T per 2# soap was all it needed.

Edited May 4, 2012 by jeanie353

[Candybee]

The amount of additives you can use will depend on the ability of your base to hold them. Some bases hold lots of additives while others don't. Its best to start out with a small amount of additive(s) and adjust from there until you find out just how much your base will hold without compromising the lather.

All the additives you bought work great in M&P so I would give each a try and then try some combinations.

[tamese]

Thanks everyone for all of your great advice. It is greatly appreciated and I cant wait to put it to use.