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Being a glutton for punishment I tried a hidden heart swirl this evening. Not gonna work very well, colors are all wierd (used some bacon fat, turned yellow, so the base color is off) and I don't think this will be anything but ugly soap, but we shall see. If the design comes out anywhere near...

It works if you use a water discount, add sugar, and don't mind stick blending a lot. Add more hot water at the end, the yogurt, and some glycerine and it's fluid enough to do swirls, etc. I couldn't get it to work without adding sugar, and I suspect you can do your swirls, etc before it goes...

Indigo is a pain to work with. Definitely do NOT add it at trace, it will not "dissolve" and you get blue specs. Indigo is a strange dye, the blue form (oxidized) is completely insoluble in water and the soluble (reduced) form is dull yellow. Sadly, it's very easily converted from one to...

More water helps, as does covering the crockpot with plastic wrap while it's cooking and NOT stirring it much. You lose quite a bit of water during the cook, and dry soap sets up very fast. I cover mine with plastic wrap as soon as I have it in the mold, that allows me to smooth the top quite...

Aluminum doesn't change oxidation states as easily as iron or copper, so it would be less likely to promote DOS, but I'd not bet money on that. What I can assure you is that you aluminum cookie cutters will start to corrode fairly rapidly, even if you wash them quickly. I'd use stainless steel...

Glad to hear your Mom is better Zany -- mine just turned 94 last weekend and is getting frail. Will be putting a ramp on the house as soon as it's warm enough on a weekend, she's starting to need help with the bigger steps.

Lol, any information on good soap scents for guys is welcome. Even though I probably have enough soap to last me until I'm too old to make it any more, I'll be cooking up some this weekend, gonna be too cold to go outside.

Instant corrosion of the copper, it's not something I'd put on or in soap for that reason. The bad news is that copper, like any polyvalent metal ion, with greatly accelerate oxidation of the fatty acids. Use copper colored mica next time, I think! If you are lucky, the color isn't rancid...

Time for a couple updates: Finished the Fierce bar, so started on the Drakkar and Rustic Woods and Rum samples. Drakkar is very close to the cologne, and stays around in the soap pretty well. Faded to tolerable for me, but not my favorite scent (never did like colognes from the 70's)...

That soap will probably harden up in time. I made a batch with used fryer oil that was "vegetable oil" containing soy and canola, I assumed equal parts. I used 80% of the vegetable oil and 20% soy wax at zero superfat, then added 5% of the original weight in lard as superfat. The bars were...

Don't wait too long, HP soap gets pretty hard pretty fast. I tend to cut mine as soon as they get to room temp when I can, certainly don't wait past the next morning, and they are quite firm even then. You can remove the soap from the mold as soon as it's firm enough not to sag, but it will...

Try this in soapcalc: 40% palm oil 30% soy wax or stearic acid (add some glycerine if you use stearic acid) 20% shea butter 10% coconut oil You can add meadowfoam oil as superfat if you want, either by reducing the shea by 5% or by calculating a zero superfat and adding it after the cook...

You are quite correct -- soda ash is sodium carbonate produced by the free lye in the soap reacting with carbon dioxide in the air and precipitating as the white, finely powdered salt. The more free lye there is at the surface of the soap, the more "ash" you will get. If you pour at thick...

At best, a rebatch soap will work like a HP soap, meaning thick, relatively non-homogenous soap prone to making "rustic" (lumpy and rough) bars. It's perfectly good soap, but it's not gonna be pretty. Even extra water will never make it a fluid as soap at trace, even pudding trace. Even...

As DeeAnna said, too high a temperature for the fat and the lye will cause the water to boil when you mix them, and a lye volcano is not a good thing! Just for safety, it's a good idea to have oils and lye at similar temps and to mix while adding the lye to the oil -- if for some reason it...

Time for an update: I tried the Fierce in the shower. It has faded to a nice, spicy scent, but is too persistent for me, it hangs around on my skin even at the very low rate I used. If you like the scent it's a good one, very strong though. Drakkar is next, and sadly this batch of testers is...

I figured out how to do the "counter top fluid HP", but I'm not sure it's worth any extra effort. Basically you MUST use sugar in some form to get extra heat, and a water discount. Lacking those two things, you won't get the fast saponification because it's not hot enough, even with oils at...

That recipe is the one I like the best of all that I have made so far. Very slick, lathers very easily, will last forever and a day. Make more, it will be quite popular I suspect! Peter

I used some food dye (blue #1) is a soap last night because the indigo I'd put in faded away (probably due to the BHT I used). Turned bright red, then yellow, then pink, and eventually sort of lilac (which is fine, the soap is scented with lilac/wisteria FO). Will see what happens as it cures...

Titanium dioxide is exactly that, an oxide of the metal titanium, supplied as a very bright white pigment. Superfine particles of metal oxide. It's very inert (not reactive) and I believe does not dissolve in stomach acid (would have to check that, but if it's used in food, likely not)...