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Welcome! I adore Dublin and now I'm jealous of your bees.

Yeah it should be grainy with that much salt, and they are a little sticky at first but you cut them at the right time - if you wait to long you cant cut them and they crumble. Thats actually a really nice batch of salt soap. Now let it cure a good long while in a nice dry place (salt soap might...

Posting your recipe and process would help a great deal. Are you trying to make transparent melt and pour soap? Or just transparent? There are a great many recipes for both out there, and not all of them work.

If it IS NaOH and it wasn't stored properly and kept very dry, water in the air would react with the lye and make it much less pure.

I'm just using the last of my beer soaps that I made about 2 years ago now (half frozen IPA / half concentrated) - wow what nice soap. Very glidy and slidy and fabulous lather. I didn't scent that batch and the hoppy aroma is still there. I need to make that again.

Like others here, I find palm a little more waxy, and not as gentle compared to lard. If I am using palm I do not replicate my usual 65% lard with palm, but rather use like 20% palm and 10% shea or sometimes mango, and bump up the olive oil - which actually makes a nice vegan bar.

Hi and welcome :mrgreen:

For temps I really go by feeling the outside of the container & I aim for "warm". Unless of course there is stearic or even shea for me - then I aim for "almost hot" to avoid false trace. I only soap cool (room temp) if I want a super long trace for something fiddly. For me the best way to...

Ok you don't get to join the ugly soap club just yet - I really like that pretty green soap!

For this soap the recipe was 20% palm, and I split the batter before I added the palm oils, then added regular palm oil to half of it and red palm to the other half (then some of the white got charcoal). I wouldn't use more than that (that orange part is then 20% red palm, or 10% of the total...

I find if I make my bars a full inch thick (so 2" x 4" x 1") they don't break till the end when they are super thin. Same for my cavity molds - its better if I fill them completely. And I had less breaking when I used fine salt rather than fine & kosher mixed. My recipe is 80% CO and 80% ppo...

Howdy neighbor (Long Beach here). Do check out the soap collective meetups that Carolyn linked to upstream. Those are tons of fun. The nice thing about ugly soaps is that they are still soap :)

Sorry, the link was just to a simple hot plate on Amazon. I cant edit that original post so try this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B2WOWE/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I only use the hot plate because my old gas stove either did very hot or nothing. And yes, oils...

I make small batches for my friends and I. I also heat and hold - I use a small electric hot plate - this one in fact: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B2WOW However my cheat is that I heat the water and oils together. I know that's not ideal for the emulsion, but it works for me.

I just made another batch of my minty forest salt soap and it uses: Fir 14% Rosemary 9% Eucalyptus 27% Peppermint 18% Spearmint 32% For a "greener" scent I like Lavender 25% Eucalyptus 25% Grapefruit 25% Rosemary 12.5% Peppermint 12.5% I don't think you can go wrong with eucalyptus and citrus.

Sure, cant go wrong with that - nice basic body cleaning bar. Let it cure for at least 6 weeks before handing it out IMHO. I have dryish skin so I use less coconut oil and more lard. Or just up the superfat to maybe 6 or 7% and call it a facial bar :) In the future you might want to try 5%...

Blueberry into MP? I can't imagine that working. I've soaked various things like madder root, indigo and spirulina in glycerine and added that drop by drop to M&P with surprisingly good results, so that might work with alkanet. Or maybe dehydrated blueberry powder mixed into glycerin and added...

Oh! then I would do the chunks of MP as embeds - pour some thin trace CP soap into the mold, drop in the cubes, pour the cp soap on top. It won't matter if the M&P melts a little 'cause its ice :D

I've done M&P embeds in a tube of CP soap that worked, the CP was a low heating mostly lard recipe and the M&P did not melt. Your idea has merit, but yes you stand a risk of the M&P melting so soap as cool as possible with a recipe that doesnt heat a lot, and the fridge isn't a bad idea. Or pour...

I also use 100% coconut oil 0%SF for my laundry soap AND in my emergency kits - will wash anything and will lather in salt water :) +1 to making a salt bar - I think you'd really like it. My favie is 80% Coconut, 10% Olive, 5% Castor 20% SF and 80% PPO of fine uniodized salt.