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I make a "working hands soap" for sale for a charity which is quite popular. I wanted to cover all bases, cooks, gardeners, mechanics soap so I threw the kitchen sink at it in terms of ingredients so it is very high in coconut oil for cleansing and has pumice, coffee grounds and seasalt. It is...

I have to say I agree. I'd been making soap for several years before I got nagged into coming up with a recipe for the shop where I volunteered. When I finally gave in I had a deadline of about 9 months, which I thought was plenty of time given my oodles of soaping experience, but also a new...

I will add beeswax to my list of things to try it water discounting fails. Thanks Megs. I made my first batch of 1.5:1 lye ratio soap yesterday. Only 2 soaps. This much water is a tiny amount. I wasn't sure if my calendula petals would provide enough colour in that little water, but it seems...

Penelope Jane, refrigerated soaps do get ash. That is my problem. The 3 or 4 that recently haven't are an anomaly. I always used to refrigerate fine until this certified recipe. I want to refrigerate, it's my preferred method. It worked without fail until I certified this recipe. It's like...

I do cover with cling film. But I seem to find that the ash forms days or even weeks after unmoulding. Looking at the lemongrass and poppyseed soap I cpoped a couple of months ago, it seemed fine when I unmoulded it and for ages afterwards. It now has ash on it. I don't know when it formed...

Wow. Really good video. From that low water and thicker trace seem to potentially be the answers. I don't usually worry too much about trace, as I think someone has mentioned. I will give it more attention. But cavity moulds are a bit trickier to fill with thick trace. But not impossible...

Hmmm. I will definitely give this a try. Is there any reason a steep water discount, like say 1.5:1 would not be a good idea? I measure in grams so my measuring should be accurate enough to avoid problems like the lye not dissolving. Or maybe I'll just start at 1.9:1 as suggested. But...

Thanks Seasuds, I might give that a try, it is such a small thing.

I'd love to be able to refrigerate my soaps but normally this doesn't work which is why I started the evil cpoping in the first place. Why these three or four refrigerated soaps have suddenly worked is what's driving me mad. I cpop at about 80 degrees farenheight, covered with clingfilm and...

Thanks all, for your support and thoughts. Irish Lass, I do all of that almost exactly as you describe, but I still get some superficial ash and it really mucks up my colours and I just don' t like cpoping. (I also don't like auto correct as it has taken me ages longer to type out if you have...

I have been having a helluva time with soda ash on a certified recipe (I am in UK). I have tried CPOPing which is mostly successful but does rather spoil the colours of a couple of my soaps as I use natural colours. Ash has only been a problem on about 4 of my 9 regular recipes. The base...

I always use too many poppy seeds. My certified and therefore strictly speaking, unchangeable recipe use 20g for 600g of oils. Much too many. Would recommend half as much. However most people will probably think even that's too much. But I think if you use too few it looks silly and stingy...

I use orange peel powder and 5 fold orange EO in one of my soaps (also orange and patchouli). I have had these natural coloured orange soaps for months without fading. In fact I think that the colour actually seems to intensify over time. I have never had one of these soaps go brown. However...

I have found Soap Kitchen very helpful. Why don't you drop them an e-mail and see if they can point you in the right direction. They normally have basic recipes available on their website for all sorts of things. This may be a specific recipe for a kit they don't sell any more, which might be...

To back up LilyJo, you have to get your safety assessment sorted and this applies to melt and pour as much as CP. You also need to know about restrictions on essential oils and fragrances before you start this process though the assessors can help you. I was working to a deadline when I...

How about this for your amusement.... SPELL CHECKER Eye halve a spelling checker; It came with my pea sea. It plainly marks four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word, And weight four it two say, Weather eye am wrong oar write; It shows me strait a...

Hi. This sounds an interesting recipe. I haven't used almond oil a lot in soap, but when I have I like the bubbliness it seems to bring, so possibly is a good combination with olive oil as an alternative to the more usual coconut oil. I have been looking for an excuse to use some almond oil I...

Hi Amy. Sorry I haven't tried the sandalwood/amyris blend. I only noticed it when I was looking up stuff for this post. I have not seen it before so it must be a fairly new product. The commercial sandalwood is a strong scent and holds well. But Soap Kitchen keep changing the description so...

I use commercial sandalwood in my soap, which seems to include essential oils and "fragrance materials" so falls between being an EO and an FO. Amyris is also supposed to smell like sandalwood, also called west indian sandalwood. But I have never tried it. My supplier (in the uk...

I am just using my last 100% coconut oil soap from a batch I made about 3 years ago. No sign of DOS despite 20% super fat, or discolouration of botanicals (actually desiccated coconut). But I like to use coconut water, not ordinary water to make my coconut soap. But it does use up quickly...