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Iron oxide is basically rust. I think rust has a little bit of a smell to it, so I could see it having a small effect on a person's scent. I don't know if the animals would mistake it for a natural scent though... Sorry I couldn't be more help, just thought I'd offer what I had.

I used shea butter in the shaving soap I made last night. Only about 5%, but it was the first time I've used it in something. The lather was thick and creamy, but I don't know if there was enough shea in there that I can attribute it to that. May need to make a small batch without it to see what...

That's me every day. That's me today, but I can see the wave coming...

LOL, I was that way especially on my first couple of batches. Now after 4 batches of bar soap I'm finally getting to where I don't have to look at them every day.

I've heard about these...the "dreaded orange spots", yes? Hasn't happened to me...yet. I imagine red palm oil isn't something the store sells a lot of though, so you should definitely check the expiration, but I'm not sure I would have remembered to either. I've been buying most of my oils at...

My Crock Pot isn't that old, maybe 4 or 5 years old. It has "high", "low", and "warm" settings, I think "low" is the 8-10 hour setting. That's the setting I use to make pulled pork. I think the stearic acid never would have melted on low, so it makes sense to melt on high and then switch to...

Definitely one of the things I'm considering. I read some tutorials that said to do it on high. Other possibilities: More water: I'm not really sure how much water should be used for this type of soap. On this one I did close to 100% of the weight of the base oils, which I thought was...

Well, I've mentioned in a couple of other threads that I was trying a shaving soap tonight. Recipe as follows: 5.8 oz Stearic Acid (51.8%) 4.8 oz Coconut Oil (42.9%) 0.6 oz Shea Butter (5.4%) 0.5 oz Powdered Goat Milk 1.7 oz Glycerin 0.3 oz Almond FO 2.3 oz Lye (All KOH, 8.4% discount) 11 oz...

It's done now, I'm going to post another thread about it.

Well my shaving soap is cooking as we speak. I put the goat milk powder in before adding the lye per a cream soap tutorial thread from this forum. Now that it's cooking, it's turned orange. I thought that might happen but I'm still a little sad that I won't have a perfect white cream. Should...

Yeah I don't think that beige/tan is a bad color for goat milk soap, it will still work just fine. My first couple of batches came out that color, but I'm using powdered added at trace (and doing CP) so I think for me it's less the milk and more the fragrance. My unscented soap is a very light...

That's interesting. Are you at work and behind a corporate firewall right now? I can access SoapCalc at work and our IT policies are actually pretty strict. If you're at home you could look into changing your browser's security settings. But if you found a site that works, that's cool too.

SoapCalc is a good resource if you haven't seen it yet. Punch your recipe in there and it will give you values for hardness, how cleansing, conditioning, etc. your bar will be. So when I say "balanced" it's those types of qualities I'm talking about. You can use it to calculate how much lye you...

I hadn't thought about using it in lower quantities for bar soap. I suppose there's no reason you can't if it gives you characteristics you want in your soap. I've been trying to get more hardness in my bar soaps. For us noobs it's probably better to keep it simple to start with. My soaps have...

Well do report on how the Bastille soap turns out, maybe it will have a mild enough scent to let the goat milk come out. The coconut oil will definitely bring the lather, I don't think it's generally considered smooth though. Lard I think brings a sort of balance to a soap. What else is in...

I don't get an appreciable smell in an unscented batch from the goat milk. But I'm using powdered, one ounce of powder in a roughly two pound batch. I don't know how fresh would do as far as smell goes. I've done just one unscented batch, the others I've done all have fragrance or essential oils...

Would that be 4% of the superfat number (i.e., going from 10% to 10.4%) or adding 4% to the total number (going from 10% to 14%)?

Glen, I have used powdered goat milk in all my cold-process soaps so far, it sounds like you might be using fresh goat milk so I don't know if that will produce different results. I would think it would be the same for hot-process as it is for cold (but I'm pretty new at this too). From what I...

Thanks all for your welcomes!

OK, now that I know some of the principles involved, how does this sound for a shave soap? 11.5 oz Stearic Acid (51.3%) 9.7 oz Coconut Oil (43.3%) 1.2 oz Shea Butter (5.4%) 4.62 oz Lye (8% lye discount, all KOH) 3.5 oz Glycerin 1 oz Powdered Goat Milk 0.5 oz Almond Fragrance Oil 21.9 oz Water