Search results

Since water can’t evaporate through the sides and bottom of a silicone mold, remove the loaf after a day even if the middle is still soft.

I have not tried Leucidal or NeoDefend yet. It's interesting that the lye soap manufacturers list no preservatives. There is a debate going round whether the pH is high enough to keep the bad stuff away. I don't know the answer.

I am just researching recipes for lotions and liquid soaps in order to develop products to sell, so I don't have a lot of experience yet. In my research I have found that natural preservatives don't do as well in preventing gram positive, gram negative or fungus but they do provide some...

Try both and see what you like. I personally like Shea butter because the unsaponified portion is very moisturizing to my skin. However, I have customers who don’t like the smell (even refined Shea) or can’t use it because of a latex allergy.

I’ve never heard of using vitamin E to reduce fatty odors. Does anybody do that today?

What EOs are you using? Some are fine at 2%, others are irritating at 2%, for example clove.

Wow! That's good news!

Patchouli is very strong so I would go on the light side of the EOcalc percentages.

Please show the % fatty acid table and properties table.

For a good stable lather in a shave soap, palmetic + stearic needs to be at least 50. Yours is a little low. I would reduce the amount of coconut oil and increase the kokum or stearic acid.

I love science experiments! It will be interesting to see developments!

I wouldn’t think 27C would be hot enough to cause it to explode. Could it be because the bottle fell?

I make 100% lard soaps. Both HP and CP. I have found that time to unmold and cut the CP soaps is very dependent on the temperatures of the lard and lye when I soap. A batch I made at room temperature took several days to firm up. A batch made at around 120-130F was so hard within 12 hours it was...

DeeAnna has an excellent explanation of crystallization in the article. Imagine when you first make a soap. Your oil or butter is shaped like a capital E with a glycerol molecule as the backbone and 3 fatty acids attached to it. The sodium ion from NaOH attacks the structure. The glycerol...

If it's stearic acid, the spots will appear to be soapy, not crystalline.

I use 2% citric acid and have adjusted the amount of lye. I started down that path because I use citric acid in other products so it was one less "new" item to buy.

Mine is from Bud Haffner. He has a shop on Etsy: Buds Woodshop by budhaffner. I've had it a couple of years now and love it! I broke a string once, but he sends extra pre-cut string with the cutter and it was easy to restring. That is the only problem I have had with it, and have cut hundreds...

It's not essential. Since you are a beginning soap maker you want to keep your recipe simple. It's easy for a beginner to make a mistake with a complex recipe. Sodium lactate is useful for hardening up the soap quicker so you can unmold it sooner, but if your soap is too soft to unmold you can...

I used to have a Braun stick blender and now use a Kitchenaid. Never had bubbles with the Braun but have bubbles with the Kitchenaid. I think it’s the shape of the bell. I have to be careful to burp it and keep the bell well below the top of the liquid.