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As KiwiMoose said, no matter where you get the recipe from, plug everything into a soap calculator to make sure the lye amount is correct. There are a bunch of lye calculators. If you’re thinking of turning it into a business, Soapmaker 3 is a good choice as you can keep track of supplies and...

I’ve also started using the 100% lye Roebic that I pickup from Lowe’s. Works great and is convenient.

I own and have used the lucy czextruder one for soap dough. It is quite nice and they have tons of shapes on those discs. You could have someone waterjet some out for you. Or, depending on your skill/equipment, you could make your own discs. You should have plenty of length assuming your loaf...

Made some soap. This is hot processed. Lately I’ve just been doing solid colors since it seems like no one I provide soap to seems to care about the decorative stuff. Every so often I’ll do a swirl just to mix it up. Decided to go with a swirl today. Not too bad. The lighting is kinda yellow...

A bit of a necropost but wasn’t sure it needed a new topic... I had run out of lye from a soap making supplier and went to Lowe’s and grabbed this bottle. I noticed on the First Aid part on the back, it says to rinse with water then vinegar. I thought that was interesting. I’ve read a lot on...

Just an update for anyone searching this topic in the future. I did make a batch of pine tar soap and decided to try adding it in post-cook. I usually soap around 200F and had pre-heated the pine tar to around 190F. Mixed in easily and well. So for any HP'ers out there wondering about adding...

Yeah, I haven’t messed with the stuff. So maybe a pain to mix in. I figured I’d need to microwave it or something ahead of time.

Yeah, that’s fair. I HP for a few reasons. One is speed. But also because I don’t have to worry about acceleration, overheating, gelling, ricing, stearic spots, soda ash, etc. I just want some nice usable soap :D I do a swirl every now and then. I guess the thought would be if there was...

So I’ve been wanting to make some pine tar soap for a while and finally ordered a can of the stuff. 97% of what I do is hot process. It seems like most people add the pine tar in initially with the oils but most people also CP. Is there anything in pine tar that reacts with the lye monster...

You don’t have to have a scale with 0.1 gram precision but I prefer it. For one, it helps to satisfy my OCD. With that out of the way, it also gives you more information. I pour all my oils directly into a single pot that sits on my scale. It’s easier to make a mistake like that and knowing...

I bought this scale a year and a half or so ago and it has been fantastic. It has more precision than the 7000. I use it in grams and it reads tenths of a gram. You give up some max capacity by going down to 2600g max but my batches are 1350g of oils (3lbs) which is as big as I ever plan on...

I’ve got a batch of the black raspberry vanilla from Nurture that’s over a year old now and I can still smell it no problem. It seems to come back in force when it gets wet. I have a couple week old earth meets sky as well that is still overwhelming strong to me. I do mostly HP and only use...

So this soap that I made was essentially a “semi-boiled” soap. For the first image, the soap had been fully dissolved in a lye solution and cooked but it hadn’t been fully saponified yet. It was quite crumbly but a bit greasy too. So not sure it’s quite the same as what you experienced. The...

I’ve also gotten the “cake”. I usually let it cool in the container and pull it out the next day for the next “wash” or however you’d like to handle it. I use my regular lard-based bath soap recipe. It is very light (weight-wise) as described above and is also a bit crumbly until it cures for a...

I use stearic in my soaps. Though almost all stearic acid I’ve found is actually 50/50 stearic and palmitic once you dig deep enough into the documentation. I add it to mine to speed things up (I do HTHP) and to add a little extra hardness. You can certainly use them to add specific qualities...

I would also recommend you take a look at that thread. One thing I think I should mention though. Curing takes about the same amount of time whether it's cold process or hot process. Hot process can be used immediately but ideally you would wait just as long as you would with cold process...

Gotcha. Don't feel embarrassed! I was really confused by it for a while too. I can't find the book right now otherwise I'd take a look. I just can't remember how it all worked.

Well, the sprucecrafts recipe did not specify which lye to use. It assumed you would use NaOH. That's why I was asking.

I used Jackie's book as well for my first liquid soap. There is a table in there that tells you how much water to add for a certain dilution amount if I recall correctly.

Just to double-check... the sprucecrafts recipe is actually referring to NaOH. So if you used KOH in the amount listed for that one, it would not be enough lye to saponify your oils.