Soap Making 101

[aggieterpkatie]

BTW, I LOVE my wooden molds!!!! They made slicing the soap so darn easy and the soap was nice and light colored, not darkening or anything. I'll post pics tomorrow!

 

[hillfarm]

im lazy at heart, so I tend to just use the plastic loaf molds cus its easier to spray them with pam. I didnt want to have to line a wooden box.

See I'm totally lazy.

 

[krisac]

I used: 16 oz crisco, 12oz goats milk, 3oz lye, 4.8 oz water distilled. I melted the crisco then just left it on warm. my thermometers disappeared. i put the room temp water and room temp evap GM in the Crock pot (stove cannot reach an outlet for blender) with pot off. mixed until everything was smooth and creamy. Added the oils (they felt about the same temp holding my hand over them)and began mixing. Mixed alternating with the stainless steel whisk and the stick blender until to me it looked like batterif I ran the whisk through it or dripped it over it there was a ripple pattern. So I added the 0.5oz of lavender EO. started stirring and it became oatmeal oily gross oat,meal. it would not mix the oil to the rest of the mix. At that point I decided I had nothing to lose and turned the crock pot to low and let it sit stirring occasssionally. after an hour I stirred it and pour the muck into a mold where it is hardening and looks like pumpkin orange lumpy goo. If I saw a bar of that in a store I wouldn't wash any part of my body with it to save my life.

 

[krisac]

Okay I put the soap away tonight and tried a lotion. it came out like a butter which is almost what I wanted. it's a little greasier than I wanted. Any suggestions for modifications? decrease oil?
Dear god please don't ask details I'm not up to it.
it was hard enough finding a recipe that didn't have five million ingredients.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but your ratios are WAY off. You can't just make up the numbers to use. You posted this:

okay this is going to sound stupid as most things I post do.. Hillfarms recipe was 3lbs crisco 12oz water and 6oz lye and she said OR I could replace water with goats milk
can I take this divide by three and still have good numbers? the lye calc says I need 5ish oz of water

And then you got this response:

I ran it through the lye calc on MMS using 16 oz soybean oil (crisco) and got a recommendation of 4 to 6 fluid oz water and 2.06 oz of lye for a 5% superfat ( I use 5% for everything except laundry bars)

But then you went and used 16 oz crisco, 12 oz GM, 4.8 oz water, and 3 oz of lye. Where did you get those numbers? You really need to find a recipe and stick exactly to those numbers, to the tenth of an ounce.

I put 16 ounces of Crisco into Soap Calc and got 6.08 oz of water and 2.09 oz lye. Try it with those amounts and NO oils and see how it turns out.

 

[krisac]

I plugged it into this calculator
http://summerbeemeadow.com/content/lye-calculator-and-recipe-resizer
I didn't just thow things in willy nilly,.

 

[krisac]

forgot soap calc hates me it makes no sense to me and I can't make it work.
and you didn't put any goats milk in your calculation so you would come up with different numbers

 

[Bettacreek]

When I get back from school, I'll help run you through soapcalc. I couldn't figure that silly thing out for the life of me until someone else ran me through it. Once I was shown how to use it, I won't touch any other calculator.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

The soap calc page I linked was blank, you enter the data. Click on the numbers for instructions on how to use it.

 

[calendula]

You really need to find a recipe and stick exactly to those numbers, to the tenth of an ounce.

I think this is good advice. I wouldn't mess around trying to change amounts and proportions. Just find a recipe that is tried and true and stick to it. Once you are more experienced and get the hang of it, then start experimenting.