Search results

Lol, watch out, you will soon have to give away lots of soap to keep it from taking over your house.... I started with shaving soap, and then bath soap, and probably won't need to ever buy either again the rest of my life! Welcome to the hobby!

As DeeAnna said, you will have to experiment to see how much EO YOU want in the the soap to get the fragrance level you want. "rule of thumb" is an ounce or so of FO per pound for most people, I want much less than that. The only real hard and fast rule is to pay attention to the maximum...

Jojoba has a lot of non-saponifing stuff in it, and too much can make for greasy soap. You will only need high superfat if you use a very large proportion of coconut oil -- it's very drying to most people. Your soap will be fine, I made one with fairly high cocoa butter and it's a nice soap...

Soy, canola, or HO safflower will work very well to replace olive oil. The safflower is very close to OO though, so if there is something about the high oleic oil in the soap you don't like, probably best to use something else. Large amounts of cocoa butter is going to be expensive, I prefer...

I do indeed have a very sensitive smeller for some things (I can smell the alarm pheromone in my bee hives VERY strongly, for instance), and prefer a level of scent in soap I suspect most people wouldn't smell at all. That said, if you cannot smell it, you didn't add enough for you. If you...

Dharam Trading has "pre-reduced" indigo (which isn't pre-reduced, it's blue). It is really, I think, synthetic indigo powder very finely ground, so it's easier to work with. Quite strong, be careful, I made some soap that was nearly black! The trouble with indigo is that it can easily exist...

Tried some of the soap I made with Salty Mariner. Very light scent, will probably use a little more next time. Still a delicate floral "sea air" that doesn't smell like ocean at all (salt water actually really has a distinct scent of dead fish to me, and I don't want that in soap...). Does...

Even forty drops of EO could be pretty light scent, depending on what you used and how much soap you made. I find 10-15 drops more than enough in a pound, but if you made more, you need more scent! I usually find soaps have more scent when I lather them up than when they are dry after a good...

Hot process soap can get very dry while you are making it, particularly if you do not seal the crock pot with cling wrap during the cook. Do not use a water discount for HP, you will end up with very dry soap that will mold very poorly. It can be so dry that it won't stick together, and looks...

Try it at about half a gram per pound -- I find I prefer soap with "subtle" scents. Much more pleasant when it doesn't make your eyes water.....

Another update: I've tried the Made to Measure soap (took a while to get to it, with six different ones in the shower, I don't get to try new ones that often). Still has a scent of high quality cigarette tobacco, but in the shower it's a bit more floral. Great staying power, it has much more...

Well, lye strong enough to saponify fats would be strong in my book! I don't think there's enough difference between "full water" and "33% lye" to make a huge difference in scent behavior. I have found that scents seem to be stronger in hot process soap, probably because they are not exposed...

You could re-batch with a equal amount of stearic acid and the appropriate amount of lye for the stearic acid, but then you are going to have a huge amount of maybe good maybe not shave soap. I second the idea of using it for bath soap and trying again. We all have batches of soap that don't...

I agree with IrishLass. My personal shave soap recipes start with 40 or 50% Stearic acid or soy wax, with 30 to 40% lard or tallow and 10% coconut oil, then lanolin, cocoa butter, and shea butter in some combination for the remaining 10%. You also need 60% KOH to make it easy to lather. All...

They need to be put into a regular hive ASAP -- the brood will die of cold if they are not kept warm. The proper way to do this is to cut the comb out of wherever they are and put it into empty frames in a new hive. If this was done, they may survive. If not, they will lose all the brood...

Your recipe will make perfectly good shaving soap. Castor is OK, but doesn't add anything in my soaps -- I like my tallow version much better. It does make the soap a little sticker, but that's not a real issue in shaving soap. I like cocoa and shea butter as superfat, they keep the...

Those look great, especially for HP. glad it worked for you!

That will work. I use less coconut oil and more tallow, but there isn't any reason not to try your recipe. I would put the EDTA in the water for the lye, and would use 0.1% or more. I've also had issues with rancidity in my shaving soaps, so I now use 0.1% citrate and BHT in everything. May...

Better than my first attempt! I'll post some pics tomorrow, was busy insulating in the garage tonight.

Well, first attempt was a bust, I think the soap was too fluid and my "hearts" became thin swirls of no real shape. I will try again this weekend, I have a trick planned that may work out. Not that I need anything else to do, or any more soap....