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Are you willing to bake your own breads or are you looking for pre-made products?

Their Bergamot&Chamomile is one of my favorites. It is a light scent in soap and it comes back when wet. I pour at 1oz per pound of batter (~6%) but you could go with 1oz ppo. I also have tested the Lavender/Flowers, also poured at ~6%. It is a light lavender floral in the Tassi lavender...

If you decide to test different oils, I would suggest adding fractionated coconut oil, avocado or macademia, hazelnut, Kukui and some cera bellina on top of the beeswax.

FO descriptions tend to be based on the actual notes the supplier uses to create them. I doesn't mean they're going to smell anything like the description once all the notes are mixed together. Fragrance testing takes a lot of time and effort. We all smell things differently. No matter how...

I noticed that different FO testers poured from the same batter can feel very different, from nice to not so nice or worse. I think some FOs affect the feel of the soap more than the oils we use. The solvents used for aroma molecules can affect the superfat and the cure. Fractionated coconut...

The one from FB is spot on and very strong so go light. They should be having a sale soon if you want to try it.

I decided to test the Rosewood&Musk as a blender for black tea and Rose FOs. A good black tea FO has been very hard to find. Most smell like lemon tea and are usually light on the tea notes. At the other end is BB's Black Tea which can't decide what it wants to be and have liquid smoke thrown...

I avoided canola for over a decade and then I needed an extra oil in a pinch and bought some canola from Costco. To me, it has no smell at all. I ended up loving the soaps I made with it. I consider it now a luxury oil right after avocado, macademia and hazelnut. I don't care that it's...

The later you add the fragrance, the more likely it is to preserve the complexity of an FO. By the time the batter is at thick trace, the pH would have dropped about 2 points which reduces the reactive lye ions that happily destroy anything they can react to. It won't save aroma molecules that...

Welcome back!

The kokum wasn't your problem. Your pH is too low which means you didn't have enough KOH in your recipe. I think you didn't factor in that KOH is usually no more than 90% pure so you ended up with about 5+% superfat. Using soapcalc, you were missing close to 23g of KOH for a -5 superfat. If...

FOs can get very expensive when you don't like the scent but they are priceless when you find something you love. I started testing FOs about 2 years ago and I have a large collection. On average, I like about 10% of the FOs I buy. There is a lot of waste. I can send you some to get you...

I have the BB cutter. It seemed like a good idea but the wire broke the first time I used it. I ended up replacing the wire with wires from NS. I didn't even bother to contact BB since it was a defect in the material they used in the first place. Also, as Deanna said, it isn't meant for...

Make sure to check the flash point for the FOs you want to buy. You need oils with a FP >200 F IIRC to safely carry on planes. If you are not in a hurry, Fragrance Buddy is having a sale in June (don't know exact date). You can read the reviews to see if you might like any of them. I have...

I finally bought strings from Nurture soaps to replace the broken one. I hadn't wanted to deal with BB and waste more time since the flaw is in the material they used. I can already see the new string is much better quality. I hate rebatching too. It is easier to recycle. When I...

I'm reviving this thread to eat my words. I was sure these FOs won't survive the cure and I was wrong. The majority did. Many are very nice and I would use in large batches. I haven't done a wet test yet. There is no hint of DOS or off notes in any of the testers. I felt I should update...

I suspect it is the niacinamide. I've never used it partially because I couldn't figure out a safe usage rate that I would be comfortable sharing with others. I expect anything over trace amount would be problematic. Since you also have panthenol and allantoin, you have to worry about...

I've never had a problem with Lavender but EO/FOs have been the main cause of the DOS I've seen since I started testing FOs. I can pour 50 testers using the same batter and find DOS (a year later) in a handful of them. Some suppliers are worse than others, most likely because they tend to...

This is the slicer that ruined the soap I wanted to send for the Home swap. The problem with it is the cutter. I couldn't tighten it enough to get clean straight cuts and the wire broke on first try. It was almost elastic in a strange way. It kept on stretching until it broke. My only...

I do what earlene suggested. Since the vinegar is just to increase the hardness of the soap, I only add as much as I need to make the soap hard. I still have to cut earlier than if vinegar wasn't an additive. My suggestion is to titer the vinegar down to figure out how little you need to add to...