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lol, of course! I absolutely should have thought of that. A Great Depression delicacy in ANZ, and probably UK and other 'empire' nations, was 'dripping on toast' - bread toast, slathered with dripping, grilled and then salt-peppered. My father introduced us to this and, setting aside its...

Hmmm, I have never done it but am not averse to the idea of learning about rendering. I shall explore that possibility a little further. No risk of the banknote policy creating a problem. My partner and daughter see it as their civic responsibility to inject all those oils back into the liquid...

I’m having no difficulty sourcing the main vegetable oils that, so far, I have been using for my beginner soap-making efforts. I keep seeing tallow / lard mentioned, usually in the context of whiter soaps and harder soaps, and want to explore that direction a little more. I have two questions...

ahhhh, yes. Thanks. She's approved of the scent already. Let's see how is smells in six weeks time. I do have a vague suspicion that I may end up supplying her university residence hall floor with soap ... especially the ones she does not like so much :-)

Because of the added cinnamon and oatmeal, or for some other reason?

I like rules-of-thumb like that. Thanks, I will try and get a better inbuilt appreciation of water / lye amounts. Experience, I ain't got yet :-) Of course I did not have such a photo last night. All I had was a layer of thin, nice smelling, gruel trying to seep out of the corners of my mould...

I will remember that. I'd not done it with this batch, just poured it (prayed / hoped), closed the shed door and came inside to ask forum advice on what I'd done. ^^ The result, this morning, does not look too bad. I'll be more careful with my constituent calculations next time. Brilliant...

The God of Soap clearly has a sense of humour. I don't know, obviously, but this morning I found a nicely firm well-formed block of lovely smelling soap. The top felt fine so I very carefully removed the mould sides to see what had happened to the thin runny (80%) component. It was fine also. I...

I do not yet own any KOH :-)

Thanks. I had read that thread previously. Mine did not seem to separate like that. I'm making a botch, serially, on the lye side. I used soapcalc for this and set 38% for 'water as percent of oil weight', not noticing that row a couple below where it said 'lye concentration' of 27.552% I'll...

When I added the lye, and mixed with a spoon, it formed a slightly granular looking slightly gelatinous mixture. That seemed fine, so I gently stick-mixed to a light trace. 30s later, as I went to add mica and EOs, it'd returned to its previous state. So I stick-mixed again, to a slightly...

I like that answer. Thanks.

Thanks. Here's a photo of two blocks. Some of the white blotches appear to have tiny bubbles / inclusions at their centre, but in some others I can see no such object (perhaps it is a little deeper in the soap matrix). They are visible on one large face for each block but not (?yet) the other...

Thanks, both. Yeah, shed is controlled-by-climate rather than climate-controlled. I am kinda stuck with it though. It provides me with good work/storage space out from under everyone else's feet, and nobody complains about my music in the shed. I've also just setup a drying rack area out there...

I threw the mould together from scrap timber, after some advice elsewhere in this forum. It's 6cm wide x 9cm deep x 40cm long, with some flexibility because the faces are not fixed. That batch weighed in at around 1300g, which is a little under 3lb, and there was probably 20% 'headspace'...

Ahhhh, sorry, not really. I am quite enjoying their curing but do look-in on them way too often. "A watched soap never cures" I now have five CP soap batches curing in the shed. They are all doing different things. The first (olive and coconut oils) is firm but scentless and has grown some...

looks like a cake / slice - delicious.

Thanks. I used the BrambleBerry lye calculator for 1000g of OO, and then recalculated out in the shed once I found I only had 90% of the necessary NaOH left. The original recipe that I jotted down was 1000g OO, 130g NaOH, and 330g H2O - also 28%. I guess I should use another calculator with lye...

I had to recalculate my quantities on the fly ... not having enough NaOH left for the batch size I'd planned. Ooooops, prior planning and all that. Anyways my next noob-soapmaking effort is 100% olive oil CP soap - 900g OO, 116g NaOH, 300g H2O, with approx' 20ml of lavender EO. It took ages...

That's fantastic. May it bring you much happy curing. I must get onto making something soon. My few recent noob-soap-making efforts have now exceeded the curing / drying space I have. I'm using an outside shed, so potentially have a lot of space ... just nothing set aside and usable for soap...