Search results

I can confirm that the basic idea has some practical validity in making liquid soap. It makes a difference whether you add the acid at the beginning or at the end. At the beginning it will create potassium citrate and cause less oil to be saponified. At the end it could reverse the...

It does appear to be a hot process soap.

That's great. Thanks for taking the time to do it and post the results. I'm going to study all this in more detail when I have time so that hopefully I'll have a few informed questions to accompany my naive ones. I have actually tried to steer people away from dissolving KOH in glycerin...

Welcome and thanks for your post! It's very interesting. I suppose these matters might be more familiar to the biofuel people than to the soapers. I will try to learn more about this, but my first thought in response is to wonder what sort of conditions, temperature and otherwise, are...

Let's not go overboard conflating what a product is with what it is called. It's not that olive pomace oil isn't olive oil, it's that it can't be called olive oil in commerce. It's a regulatory matter that has been adopted in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, not a vehicle for expressing disdain...

The full ingredient list: High-oleic safflower oil Castor oil Myristic acid Potassium hydroxide Glycerol Propylene glycol PEG-150 distearate Sodium lactate 60% solution EDTA

It's not a refrigerator; I store them at room temperature.

If it's sold for candlemaking, it won't substitute for stearic acid. It might substitute for a tropical butter, at best. You are right that we never get reliable information of the fatty acid composition of these products.

It's probably fine. You don't really see different grades from craft suppliers. That said, I like to buy from better suppliers that do provide information. Typically it will be sold as triple-pressed vegetable stearic or palm stearic. There is also animal derived stearic that is functionally...

Titanium dioxide is a good way to whiten CP soap. You could use white mica, which itself is probably mineral mica plus titanium dioxide. I haven't tried that so I don't know if the result is any better than using titanium dioxide alone.

Thanks. I'll write it up when I get a chance. Actually, when I get a chance to make more soap and maybe take a few pictures.

If you want the soap to be clear like this, you would use FD&C dyes. I have a lot of Select Shades left over from the old days when I used it for bar soap. These days you could use Lab Colors from Bramble Berry, for instance.

Foremost I wanted the best possible mildness and skin feel. Besides that, easy saponification, good fragrance compatibility and clarity. So far it seems good in those respects.

Here something I've been focusing on lately. I developed a variation on formulating liquid soap and have been testing it with different fragrances. The soap seemed very good, so I sent some off for feedback. A soap maker friend said it was better on the skin than a good bar soap. I even sent...

Thanks, those photos are much clearer. I suppose it must be DOS, though it's occurring in some unpredictable patterns. Other types of discoloration, say from partial gel or certain fragrance oils, are either noticeable right away or become apparent in a matter of days. While your symptoms could...

It's hard to be sure from these photos whether it's DOS. I suppose that could be a reasonable explanation, but I've never seen a pattern like that, where it happens to one side of some of the bars. Is there anything special about the affected ones, like maybe they came from the side of the mold...

Based on an estimate of 90% strength KOH, this recipe comes out on paper to be superfatted 8%. You can plug those numbers into Soapcalc to see it. I entered the oil amounts, then raised the superfat percentage until it computed 11 oz KOH. 8% is very approximate, but it's high and more than you...

I'm told that NYC water is considered to be soft, and it's true that I've never seen the more noticeable effects of hard water that people describe. But "soft water" is a relative thing. I stay in hotels often, sometime weekly, and occasionally the higher rated ones have water softening systems...

Bacteria are pretty easily inhibited by the pH of soap. Mold is more adaptable and can grow on most anything. It's lucky we don't get it on soap more often (it happens), but I imagine there is plenty to feed mold in a soap bar without worrying about a little sugar additive.

They are indeed the best, and it matters if you want to make them. I did a lot of research into that and initially was frustrated by conflicting information about how bagels are made. However, there used to be a union of bagel makers here, and while some details may vary between bakeries...