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I use orange ten-fold EO and it definitely discolours to a dark ivory or orangey colour. I've heard others report a pinkish colour, so it could be worse!

I've had that happen when I didn't stir my solution for long enough. It looks like it's dissolved but you have to stir it long enough so that it doesn't settle out like that. Mine wasn't a 50/50 solution but I also added a bit of water and got it dissolved. Made fine soap. I suspect the scum...

I make salt bars with 70% coconut oil, and a bunch of soft oils, 80% fine sea salt and 15% superfat. Not drying at all and oodles of lather.

EG, I suspect the OP is using pH test strips on the surface of the bar. The slight bit of ash there is what he/she is likely picking up. Test strips are useless and so is pH measurement of soap (as I learned myself a few years ago).

The very high olive oil is why you have little lather and bubbles. Decrease the olive to 50%, add in 5% castor, then make up the difference with palm or lard. You will have much better lather and it will still be lovely on your skin.

I keep a bar from every batch for 2years as a control. That way, if someone claims they have an issue I can pull out my bar from the same batch and figure out what's happening. Haven't had to do that yet, touch wood.

It was a soap studio for a medium-sized business, so yeah-quite a bit of laundry. I just mentioned it because it had never occurred to me that combustion was even possible. I use some cloths and some paper towel, but I always make sure that the cloths are in an open area between soaping and laundry.

Not my story, but I would add another soaper's words of caution. She actually had a fire in her soap studio because they would put the raw soap-covered rags into garbage bags to taje to the laundromat at the end of the week and they spontaneously combusted. I guess a build up of heat from...

I second the other posters who suggested dropping the olive oil percentage down. I've discovered that I can't use high olive oil soaps, eapecially on my face. Leaves my skin dried out and feels terrible. So I keep olive below 30% and that really helps. Your skin may not like higher %-ages of a...

We all start out thinking soap is easy. But when most of us look back at our first batches, they are simply awful compared to what you'll be able to make a year or two later. Trust us: this is the whole 20/20 hindsight thing that we are trying to give to new soapers to spare them some trouble.

I use EOs from NDA, and have no trouble with the scent surviving CPOP. I use the 3% level, except for the irritating ones. Those I keep at 0.4% generally. Could it be the source of your EOs?

That looks like ash to me. You can trim the bars with a knife or just rinse it off. I spray my loaves with alcohol and CPOP so I get minimal ash. I do find that individual molds get ashier, due to the increased exposed surface area.

Beautiful! How on earth did you get a swirl like that?

Good call. I haven't looked up the fatty acid profile yet. Will do.

I have been given some hemp oil to play with, and I have not used it before, although I've been wanting to. The search function has failed me- I was thinking of trying 10% and subbing it in for apricot kernel in a recipe I like. Has anyone worked with hemp oil? Is 10% a good starting point?

Thanks, I'll have to try again.

Do you pull the petals out of the green bit at the base or dry them intact?

Ok how does everyone dry the dandelion flowers for infusion without them going to fluff?? I've tried twice now and both times-fluff!

I had a customer mention that she was breaking out in a rash after using my soap. I asked which one, and she mentioned two different ones she had tried. The common denominator was lemongrass EO. So I gave her a bar with no lemongrass to try and no problem. She was sensitive to lemongrass, but...

I've been soaping since 1996. Back when books about soap making still referred to the Internet as new-fangled. And back when your lye had to be calculated by math! But I did take some time off in the middle. I got back into it after my baby developed excema. My favorite soap is a charcoal and...