Search results

Hi All It's been a while since I've done anything soapy or visited the forum, but I've been started soaping again recently and have load of soap I've been giving away to friends and family. It's generally well received, but one friend asked if was ok for sensitive skin and I wondered if anyone...

Here is a pic of my HP castile:

Shaving soap guru? I wish! I will admit that I do find it hard to resist adding a dash of KOH to any soap I make. Just using NaOH is like having a gin and tonic without a slice of lemon :wink:

I've just checked my notes, and I used 10mls less water in the castile, 190g vs 200g for 650g of oils. It was EVOO (only because it was on offer in the shop, and cost less than pomace or regular olive oil). They were cooked at the same temp (I don't have a crock pot so I do them in the oven) for...

I've mainly been making shaving soaps, but since I now have enough to last me for about 32 years I decided to have a go at bath soaps. One of my favourites is 70% olive oil and 30% which has a 10% lye discount. This one stays soft for ages, even after 6 weeks curing I can still put a thumbprint...

Just CPd this, and it nearly blew up my stick blender! It goes from a horrible seized lumpy mess, to apple sauce then mashed potatoes in about 10 minutes, then with some careful short bursts with the blender it goes lovely and creamy, like a thick white custard. It seems to be pretty much...

DeeAnna you are a diamond! That is just what I've been looking for. I've been meaning to try some older recipes for ages but always been put off by the numbers soapcalc comes up with, the recipe I've just tried had a lauric acid content higher than stearic acid (18 vs 16). But I did a quick test...

That looks very interesting. If my stearic acid ever turns up I think I may have to make that my next little experiment. Thanks for posting that DeeAnna. My back in time Victorian soap has just come out of the oven, I can't wait to give that a test lather. Haven't got very high hopes, but who knows!

I've only used goats milk once so I'm no expert, but I suspect the brown / orange colour was caused by the lye/milk mixture heating up and burning the sugars that are naturally present in the milk. As for the curdling, when you add the lye to the milk it will start to saponify the fat in there...

If you get any feedback from your testers I would be interested to know what they think. The only bum I get to test my recipes on is Me!:)

I must admit that I don't worry about the purity of KOH when doing lye calculations, if I'm doing a batch that gets 50% of the lye from KOH and the rest from NaOH I just calculate half of the batch with one, half with the other and mix it all up together.

I'm back from a week away at the seaside, and dying to make more soap! Sadly the stearic acid I ordered still hasn't turned up so I thought I'd try a recipe I found on the Victorian soap project (there's a link to it at the start of the thread). It's a fairly simple recipe, 1/3 coconut oil and...

I'm probably a little bit late to be of much help, but I posted the recipe for my current attempt here http://www.soapmakingforum.com/f11/does-lanolin-saponify-35420/index2.html. It is my current favourite, alongside songwind's MdC clone which you can find here...

You return home from a week away and the first thing you do is check to see how your latest batch is doing. Now I know I need help :roll:

Phew! I thought I was the only one :Kitten Love:

I love my coticule! Various people on wet shaving forums told me I would be mad to get one as a first hone, but since I'm a bit wrong in the head I got one anyway. It does everything from set a bevel to a bit of a touch up. My two favourite razors are a 5/8 Sheffield ground kropp and a 6/8...

I've only made cream soap once, and while I can get a fairly good shave from it, I prefer a bar soap so I've not done it since. Looking at your recipe I'm not sure how it would perform as a shaving cream. Olive oil won't give you the creamy/ stable lather you need, oils high in stearic acid (or...

Prairie creations get good reviews on the wet shave forums, I'm in the UK so I haven't tried them. The ingredients She uses look good tho'. I'm curious about the aloe vera juice, I wonder if the skin friendly goodies would survive the saponification process. Maybe Deeana could help with that...

That looks very similar to the recipes that I've been playing with. The numbers are very slightly different, but the only thing that I've never used is castor oil, but that's only because I used the little I had in a 'pre-shave' soap I tried and never ordered any more. My shaving soaps tend to...

If I saw that coming toward my face, I my running away would be very obsessive and persnickity indeed:eek:.