Soap Making 101

[Farmfresh]

My favorite mold will have to be a 12 inch length of 3 inch white PVC pipe with removable ends and well greased with Vaseline. I sometimes have to freeze it to get the soap loosened up, but it is so easy to slice with a homemade jewelry wire cutter and makes such nice uniform bars.

 

[gettinaclue]

I used a PVC pipe with removable ends for my first batch of soap (traditional castile) and it took forever for me to get the soap out of the mold. I think my problems were: I poured at a light trace and I made a huge batch. I wanted to do a big batch first since I had read you don't have to stress about weight so much.

I made 5 pounds and poured it down the PVC tube to cure. Bad idea LOL.

I do like the PVC mold though. I really like the shape and the bars can easily be trimmed and wrapped (if you so desire) in coffee filters sealed with tape (or a sticker or whatever) for gift giving. The ruffle of the coffee filters looks nice. You can even dye them if you don't want to wrap cream colored bars in a white wrapper. It's cheaper than buying card stock or using construction paper. It allows the soap to breath (I haven't had any problems with sweating) and people like their soap to be wrapped - but they can still smell it when they get it.

I also use the bottoms of pencil boxes. I wanted to see if I would like it. They are perfect for making 1lb batches - and 1 lb batches are perfect for the sample size scents I got from Brambleberry. I get 4 small squares and 2 small slivers of soap for the pencil box bottoms. I kinda like that. DD and I like to use the slivers as "the test run" for that batch of soap. I also like the small squares. They fit better in my hand. I took Free's advice and beveled them and they look pretty good. (I'm a beginner so they don't look great LOL)

I've tried the fancy molds you get from Michael's and I didn't like them (I had bought them for my melt and pour when I first started delving into the soap world). My soap ashed on me and I couldn't trim them with out ruining the design. They were also pretty small. I would think they would be great samples if you can figure out a way to keep it from ashing.

I agree with you that there is NO WAY I'm paying all that money for a slab mold. I went to Home Depot and bought a board for DH to cut up and make a mold. I'm just waiting on him to get to it. At this rate though...I'll be waiting forever. LOL

I will probably pick up a dishpan when I start making larger batches again.

 

[krisac]

HI y'all,
I've been working my way through the 9,000 pages of this subject. Great information! Only now I think I'm more confused that when I started. There is a lot of mention about putting your ingredients into the calculator or Lye calculator and it gives you the percentages you need. So where is this mysterious calculator? I'm starting to think it's somewhere with Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver. and when you find it do you just put what you want to make your soap out of into it? For jolly sake here's a made up recipe (lord knows I don't have one yet)

16oz goats milk
8ox coconut oil
8oz olive oil
2 oz jojoba oil
4ox shea butter
lavender for scent
??? lye
Now this recipe looks totally daft to me. I read about percentages and such, and then that each oil has all the different saponification levels. So does the calculator tell me how much I need of what I want to use? Or do I just keep guessing until it says I got it right.
Lost I feel like Dorothy in Munchkin Land
Kristina

 

[freemotion]

Go to the Summer Bee Meadow site and there you will find an easy calculator. Also soapcalc.com or something like that is another common one. Put in each of your oils and the amounts you will be using, and it will tell you how much lye you need for that recipe. The calculator takes into account the sap value of each oil (at least the common sap value.)

 

[Bettacreek]

You'd need 83 grams of lye for that recipe for a 8% superfat soap, however, the % of goat milk is insane in that recipe. 73% of the oils is "water", so it's almost half oil, half "water". If it ever even set, you'd be waiting a year before it was ever usable. I'm pretty sure it'd separate and be garbage without ever becoming soap to be honest with you. Definately whack that GM down by a LOT, at least cut it in half since you're a beginner. You can cut it a little more as you gain more experience.

Personally, I think people need to make their own recipes. To start out, just try some cheapy oils to make your first soap to see if you like making soap. Then start research on what the different oils add. Use Soapcalc to help you out, it tells you how moisturizing, how cleansing, etc each oil is and what your final recipe will be like when made into a soap. Never go above 5% castor oil or 22% "cleansing" on the soap calc in your final bar. But, if people insist on "ready-made" recipes, make sure you get a good one. I'd never trust a source that expected you to add THAT much goats milk. Seems to me like they pulled numbers and oils out of their ass and typed it up without ever doing their research or even attempting to make the recipe they're promoting. :/

ETA again: The soap calculators are tools, not miracle workers. You need to know how to use them to your benefit. Very, very basically, you punch in whatever percents/oz/grams/lbs of each oil you want, how much fluid you want (by percent of oils or by ratio to lye), and how much you want it superfatted and it tells you exactly how much fluid to use and how much lye to use. You need to know how to use it to figure out what qualities each oil brings to the soap and what that means in a finished bar. Like I said before, never go above 5% for castor oil (calculators never tell you this, this is learned through experience or research, or by me telling you so, lol), and never go above 22% cleansing to start out. Again, calculators never tell you this, you have to learn it from somewhere. There are also variances to those rules, because you can increase your cleansing percent if you do a major superfat, but you need to have experience or research it to know how high you can take it without making greasy gloop. I haven't done the research on it, because it's simply not something I have ever cared to know (just don't see the need to ever make such a thing).

 

[Bettacreek]

Forgot to say that I use my soaping supplies for food. They're washed, and so long as it's not permeable or porous, you're fine. Just wash it good.

 

[freemotion]

The Summerbee Meadow soap calculator puts the lye at 3.2 oz and the water/milk at 7.46 oz. Of course, there were several types of the oils you mentioned, so you'd have to do your own calculation since I didn't know what type of oils you had of each kind. But this gives you an idea. And I agree with Bettacreek, forget any recipe from a source that gives you such a grossly flawed recipe. There are lots of good recipes out there. Or just run this one through a calculator and go with it. But I'd suggest making a test batch first without the fancy oils.

You will enjoy the process more if you include at least one oil that makes your soap achieve trace in a reasonable amount of time, such as lard, tallow, palm oil, or coconut oil. I'd save the lavender oil for a second batch, too, when you have a little experience.

 

[Bettacreek]

What Free said, lol. Start out simple. I haven't even touched jojoba oil yet. It's too damned expensive to be tossing down the drain in a crummy recipe or on a newbie (absolutely no offense meant there, but "**** happens"). Free used a lower superfatting level, hence why there would be slightly more lye in her calculations. But to be honest with you, I use an 8% superfat in my soap, I just like the safety net it brings in case of minor scale issues, plus it's more moisturizing. The recipe provided has a 24% cleansing factor, so I definately wouldn't go lower on the superfatting. I would possibly even jack that one up to 9% or 10% superfat simply because the cleansing factor is so high. Another rule of thumb... don't go above 10% superfat in a recipe, unless you're experienced and experimenting with high cleansing/high superfatting (I've seen people experiment as high as 22% superfat in a pure coconut oil bar, but they also had much more experience than even I do).

ETA: I also wouldn't recommend using oz calculations for lye. It simply leaves too much "wiggle room" for errors with the scales. I do my oils in oz and my fluids and lye in grams only. If something goes wrong, you may never know if it was an error in recipe or if your scale was off enough to mess up your recipe.

 

[krisac]

The "recipe" I posted was completely made up. and not in any way intended to be used. just sort of an example of how "duck out of water" I am feeling. Part of the reason for makeinf soaps and lotions arises from my other new hobby as a civil War reenactor. The Sutlers or shop keepers would love to have homemade products to sell and since I am already making clothing for them and the gal who made the natural soap at my shop just moved out it seemed like good timing. Everything I am reading is making me go blind with confusion. % of this, and % of that, and % of this. and dont forget the these two percentages combine...hot process, cold process, molds (all the recipes say pour into mold but info on that is few and far between. Don't even start me on lotion...to sell it it has to have self life so it has to have preservative....germaben and phenonip have been suggested. Lord know what combinations I'll run into there. I am a lost little lamb in a huge world. Thank you for all your advice. I will look into the site you suggested. and Start small. What are the best molds to use?
Kristina

 

[krisac]

I forgot What on earth is superfatting???
Krsitna