# Soap recipe's



## plataoplomo (Jul 10, 2016)

Hello,

I support a large bank of Nickel batteries for our solar array.  

As a result I have on hand lots of 95.5% KOH.

A pretty wide variety of glass and stainless implements.

Fair experience with precision measurements of different liquids and solids.

We live in the Philippines and cook daily with pretty good Lauric oil and shortning.

It occurred to me that we have all the elements to make soap.

We have need of two different types of soap.

1.)  Industrial strength soap.  Mainly for cleaning concrete and masonry.  Livestock pens, walkways, that sort of thing.

2.)  Personal soaps.  Bath and shampoo.  The wife has suffered from hives all of her life.  I though it might be the additives in commercial soaps.

To those ends I was hoping for recipe's.

Thank you for your time.


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## Soapmaker145 (Jul 10, 2016)

Make a list of all the oils/fats and butters you have access to.  It'll make it easier to help you put together some recipes to test.  Since you're used to working with lye, you're ready to make soap.  Do you only want to make liquid soap?


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## KristaY (Jul 10, 2016)

Since you have livestock pens, do you render tallow or lard? That would be a great ingredient if you have animals you raise for meat.


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## plataoplomo (Jul 10, 2016)

Soapmaker145 said:


> Do you only want to make liquid soap?



Wow.  I am flabbergasted at the help.  Thank you.

No I intend to experiment with hard soaps.  But later.  I am a very hands on learner.  Gotta do it to really understand it type.

So I figured I start work with what I currently have available.

The list is inbound, just give me a chance to compile and re-key it.


KristaY said:


> render tallow or lard?



Not yet we don't.  One step at a time.

We raise Rabbits, Chickens, Ducks, a Filipino version of Javalina, and have a pet heifer I intend to milk.

The Rabbits give us the most fat.  We butcher 10 -> 15 in batches about once a month. 

I'd say we could gather 5 -> 10 pounds of fat in a session.

Not sure how much usable material that would render down into.
Minola Lauric Oil - 

Well wouldn’t ya know it.  Everyone talks about cooking with it.  No body talks about what is in it.

Company website is down.  I may call them on Monday.

Label says - 

" Refined, bleached, and deodorized coconut oil with vitamin A."

I did find this listing from a competitor.  I'd  be willing to bet the values were very similar.

Exora RBD Cooking oil ( Coconut Oil) - 

FFA (as lauric)               0.07% max.
                                        Moisture & Impurities               0.1% max. 
                                        Iodine Value (WIJS Method)               7.5 - 10.5                                         
Peroxide Value, mEq/Kg               1.0 max.                                         
Saponification Value               245 - 264                                         
Color (5.25 Lovibond cell)               1.0 max. Red
10.00 max Yellow                                         Slip Melting Point               23 - 26°C

http://www.tantuco.com/rbd-coconut-oil-cooking-oil.php


Exora Vegetable Shortening - 

FFA as oleic acid, %               0.4 max. 
                                        Peroxide Value Melting Point (Wiley Method)               46°C                                         
Moisture (KF Method), %               0.1 max.                                         
Iodine Value (WIJS Method)               15 max.                                         
Color (Lovibond, 5 ¼")               3.0 Red max. 
                                        Odor               Clean without chemical or off odor                                         
Taste / Sensory               Bland

http://www.tantuco.com/vegetable-shortening.php


----------------------------------


I can get olive, canola, caster, sunflower, and peanut oils here.  But they are all imported and very expensive.

The only real butter we have found comes from Australia.  It is so expensive we scrimp on buttered bread.  

Everything else is a Margarine.  Which is synonymous with "Mystery petrochemical".

I can get Palm oil here pretty cheaply.


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## Susie (Jul 10, 2016)

KOH makes liquid soap.  NaOH makes bar soap. 

Soap is not good for everyone's hair.  It can be very damaging to some people's hair. 

You need to learn to use a lye calculator.  http://soapee.com/calculator allows you to put in the purity of KOH that you have.  Every recipe, no matter where you get it, needs to be run through a lye calculator by you.  Typos happen.

Can you get castor oil?  It is used as a laxative here, but it helps the lather of soap immensely.

You can make liquid soap with 100% coconut oil (CO), 0% superfat for cleaning.  I don't know if it will be strong enough for what you want to do with it, but it cleans dishes, counters, bathrooms and clothes very well.

I am hesitating to give you a recipe using palm oil because I never use it.


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## lsg (Jul 10, 2016)

I have used Soapcalc to calculate my bar soap recipes.  Here is a sample recipe for a beginner.  I use 5% superfat value.

5% Castor oil
20% coconut oil
25% palm oil
50% olive oil


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## Deemax (Jul 10, 2016)

*Replacing Palm Oil*

Hello,
What are some recipes that do not use palm oil? I have tried to work with some off of the internet but they just don't seem to work well.

Any suggestions?


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## Soapmaker145 (Jul 10, 2016)

It looks like the the Minola and Exora are both coconut oil.  So you have easy access to palm and coconut oil plus whatever animal fat you can render.  You can make very usable soaps with what you have already.  I've used palm in the past before switching to tallow and lard.  It gives what I would describe as a "leaner" soap compared to the richer creamier feel of tallow and lard soaps.  My skin likes the palm soaps better but I can get away with using 40% tallow.  

For butter, I was asking about mango or cocoa butters?  You would never use the butter you put on bread for soap.  It would get saponified but doesn't add anything special to the mix.  You don't have soybean oil?

Start with a small batch of 100% coconut or 50% coconut and 50% palm to learn the process.  Run it through soapcalc to get the correct proportions.  Use 0 to 3% superfat for liquid soap.  The saponification values of oils vary within a small range from season to season and from tree to tree.  Use a stainless pot and not glass.  Over time, lye etches glass and causes accidents nobody needs. Most people start with hard bars because they are easier but making soap paste with KOH is doable too.    

Review the tutorial found at this link if you haven't already: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=57974&highlight=liquid+soap+tutorial&page=11. You'll be using water instead of glycerin to dissolve the KOH and the saponification process will take longer but the process is the same.  Try to understand all the stages that the soap will go through so you're prepared.  Use at least a 3:1 ratio of water to KOH.  Ask questions if you something doesn't make sense before you start. The soap paste can sit for few days/weeks and continue to saponify if you feel that it didn't cook completely or something went wrong.  As long as you starting proportions are correct, you'll be fine.

Once I have the paste made, I dilute it all in a big pot with an appropriate amount of water and heat it gently to dissolve.  You might want to save some as paste to use for scrubbing dirt.  I find that homemade liquid soap works better than any commercial soap I've bought.  I think it'll work for what you want it for.

As Susie said, lye-based soap is not good for all types of hair.  If you want to test it, do it on short hair that gets cut frequently.  If you can find castor at a reasonable price, it can help with bubbles if you like lots of bubbles.  I use it at 5%.  The soap will clean with or without bubbles.


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## dixiedragon (Jul 10, 2016)

Deemax said:


> Hello,
> What are some recipes that do not use palm oil? I have tried to work with some off of the internet but they just don't seem to work well.
> 
> Any suggestions?



You may want to start your own thread, you'll get more and better answers.

Generally, tallow, lard and palm are "interchangeable". You need to put the recipe in a lye calculator if you change oils. There will be a difference and many people have a preference.

If you do not want to use any of those, then you really have to build your recipe in a different way. You can use a butter (shea, mango, cocoa, etc), but that will decrease your lather. You can use beeswax at 5% (10% is too much, IMO). You can increase your coconut, but that will make your recipe more drying.


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## plataoplomo (Jul 10, 2016)

Thank you all very much.

Not to show too much of my ignorance .....  If Lye and KOH are really bad for hair .....  What's in shampoo?

Looks like I got some study to do,  (rolling up sleeves).


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## lsg (Jul 10, 2016)

Shampoo contains surfactants among other ingredients.  There are several mild and eco-friendly surfactants.  Try this blog for a lot of good info.

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/p/hair-care.html


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## doriettefarm (Jul 10, 2016)

Another idea for a liquid oil would be rice bran oil given your location.  Is that something you can source at a decent price?  I've never used palm in a liquid soap but think rice bran, coconut & castor might be nice.


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## Susie (Jul 10, 2016)

Palm is going to make cloudy liquid soap.  If you care about clarity.


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## plataoplomo (Jul 17, 2016)

Thank you for all the suggestions.

"Tonight we make soap.  To make soap you must first render _information_"

Please bear with the delay while I swim through terminology and processes.


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## plataoplomo (Jul 24, 2016)

*Update*

Hello All,

Two days ago I made my first attempt at soap.  My goals were to make an,

"industrial strength" soap for cleaning clothes, dishes, livestock pens, etc.

Using only the materials I had on hand from supporting my pv battery bank.


I used the instructions from here.  

http://curious-soapmaker.com/100-coconut-liquid-soap.html

The cook went pretty much exactly as described with only a few differences.

The soap calculator at http://soapee.com/calculator let me adjust the purity of my KOH up to 95.5%.  

But I fat fingered the calculation and did not remove the weight of fragrance.  That threw my recipe off a little and I produced a soap with a fair amount of excess KOH.

I will say that for the recipe and dilution I used Low Carbon Distilled water.   I know from my pv system that distilled water is an excellent solvent.  It also absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and becomes acidic.

For Nickel batteries this is very bad.  Weaken the electrolyte sorta thing.  So you process distilled water by bringing it to a roiling boil for 30 minutes then sealing it hot in a air tight container.  For us Mason jars that are not good enough for the pressure canner. 

I tested the batch using the method in the instructions.  The only modification was that I added phenol to 100ml of finished soap then neutralized the phenol drop by drop to clear with coconut vinegar to get the measurement on how much vinegar to add to knock out the excess KOH.

For dilution I took the lazy way out and first mixed my finished gel with 1.5 parts of lcdw.  I let that sit, sealed over night.   In the morning it was dissolved completely.  

Then I started washing and testing then diluting some more.  Until I had a mix that gives us a decent, (so far), performance.

Today we are running around washing everything that does not move quick enough for tests.  Basically trying to figure out how much liquid to use wash .... whatever.

1000g of RBD Lauric cooking oil and 270 gKOH yielded me 5.75 liters of finished soap.  The slow cooker consumed  2750 watts that I generated myself.

All in all, I figure I've got about $2.00 invested in 5.75 quarts of soap.

So I am calling this a resounding success.

Next step will be to tune this soap for the different jobs we have for it.

Then make a generic body soap that we can customize with things like Tea Tree, Aloe, Lemon Grass, Basil, etc.  Herbals that we produce ourselves.

The wife and I would like to thank all of you very much for helping with this.

Salamat Po 












View attachment 2016.06.11.100.CO.Soap.Recipe.pdf


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## Cindy2428 (Jul 24, 2016)

Congratulations and well done!


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## plataoplomo (Aug 21, 2016)

*Soap Properties*

Hello All,

The first batch cleaned concrete and Lime mortar really well.  Dishes too.  

Worked so well we used it all up.  So I am back to cooking more soap.  Following the same basic recipe.  Hopefully without fat finger on the calculator mistakes.

I do have one question.

When you use the calculator at 

http://soapee.com/calculator

Down on the bottom is a block called "Soap Properties".

It gives current recipe percentages and recommended values.  That I understand.

What I do not understand is how this scale relates to the real world.  

For example my recipe shows that ...

" Bubbly           67%        Recommended    14-46%"

Is 67% more bubbly than 46%?  or less?

Is there a chart somewhere that explains this?

Thank you


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## Susie (Aug 21, 2016)

67% is theoretically more bubbly than 46%.  The properties are solely determined by the oils you use.  If you are making liquid soap, ignore that whole box, as there is a considerable difference in how the oils affect the soap with KOH as opposed to NaOH.


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## cmzaha (Aug 21, 2016)

100% coconut oil liquid soap is a great cleaner. I do not dilute all of my paste but keep some in paste form to also use for spot cleaning. In reality soap paste can be used as a body soap, by smashing and rubbing some paste of a net body scrubbie, if you have those available, shower mits, washcloths etc. It is not as nice as using a hard bar soap but will work. As for fats, I have used chicken fat as 15% of my oils and it was a very nice bar of soap


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## plataoplomo (Aug 22, 2016)

Thank you.


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## Susie (Aug 22, 2016)

A few things on re-reading your post above.  

1.  Fragrance oils are not saponified, so no need to worry about excess KOH.  The fragrance amount does not change the KOH amount.

2.  Distilled water is not made through boiling water in a closed container.  That will kill germs, but not distill the water to remove impurities. 

3.  Never abbreviate phenolpthalein as phenol.  There is a phenol, and it is poisonous.  You can abbreviate it phph.  I might shorten it phenolph., though. 

4.  To make the body soap, you said you are going to make herbals that you make yourself.  Be sure they get added before the cook.  Herbals added after the cook grow yuckies.   You will also want much less coconut oil in a body soap.


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## plataoplomo (Aug 22, 2016)

Susie said:


> Fragrance oils are not saponified



On my first cook, there was a lot of excess KOH.  I measured it and I felt it.  I am very familiar with alkaline chemical burns.

An excess of KOH is KOH wasted.  So maybe my KOH is more pure than the label says it is.  Maybe I mis measured it.




Susie said:


> Distilled water is not made through boiling water in a closed container.



I use an Aquapure MD4 distiller.  By its nature distilled water will dissolve and absorb carbon from the atmosphere.  It becomes acidic.  You can measure this with a pool PH test kit.

If you boil the distilled water for 15 minutes you will drive off the absorbed carbon.  You can then store it boiling hot, hermetically sealed, and it will be "low carbon distilled water".

That is what I use when I service my batteries.  It is also what I used when I did my first soap cook.

Maybe the lowered acidity of my distilled water attributed to the excess of KOH.



Susie said:


> Never abbreviate phenolpthalein as phenol.



Sorry.  Lazy fingers.




Susie said:


> Be sure they get added before the cook.  Herbals added after the cook grow yuckies.



Thank you very much.  I will keep this in mind.


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