Search results

In last year’s soap making, layering indigo and white in one soap seems to have been the least successful, especially when the combination was an insert. I started out pouring a batch in layers (2, blue and white; or 5 blue and white 3 and 2). Later on I would pour a fraction of a recipe in...

Early in the year, pre-Covid (remember when?) I made a three layer cp soap by coloring the first layer with indigo, then diluting the next two with plain white batter. Months passed with the soap curing out of sunlight. Late this summer I gave a bar (which had still managed to fade...

See? You hit the nail right through the board, without even bending it! I’m referring to CP soap formulated for shampoo function. None of the sites I found indicated that much of a difference existed “just add more castor! Higher super fat! Essential oils!”. Nowhere among all the sites I’ve...

A friend has requested I try making shampoo bars (for dry hair, like hers). Ok. Why not? I went looking on the internet, and once again (although even more so than with CP soap itself) I found myself wondering “where is the science”? Lots of claims about this or that ingredient, but no sense...

Thanks for replying. Isn’t that a diffusion? You’re diffusing the colorant in oil, a small quantity with a slightly larger yet still small quantity. Isn’t infusion putting an amount of colorant (in this case) into a significantly larger quantity of oil, and adding an element of time and/or...

One website insists one ALWAYS infuses oil with a colorant at a ratio of 9:1. Soap Queen by contrast seems to argue (in what seems more like diffusing than infusing) 3:1, or 1t to 1T of oil (3tsp=1T of course). I’ve generally used the 9:1 but as quantities grow, the amount of paprika or...

I made my beer soap this weekend, using a Presidio Pale Ale—-and as one post predicted, it came out an off white. Hmmph! Nice yeasty smell on cutting. I set the beer out to de-carbonate on wednesday and froze it Friday night, making the soap Saturday night. Any suggestions for getting a...

Ah. That is my problem with soap making. A book with science behind soap making turned out to be a science course I didn’t need or want, with few of the answers I did. I’ve been adding castor under the belief it was producing suds but you say it does not. If it was, and beer makes a sudsy...

Do you use castor for suds in your regular recipe, and use it with beer then, or omit it?

I’m going to make a beer soap next weekend, setting out a medium colored beer, probably an IPA or Pale Ale, on wednesday to begin conditioning. Questions abound. A lot of the recipes I see call for oils I don’t use (avocado) or colorants so sparkly and “pretty” they just seem out of place in...

Their customer service isn’t anything to write home about either! But, I have seen and used her posts. I’ve also put some and those of other sites on Pinterest as a reference. There are still gaps though, answers to questions like “how do you know what (natural) colorant works best diffused...

I am finding that to be very true, this site and its members is a very good resource. I don’t have kindle, or an ereader but that’s good to know. Thanks.

I bought “Scientific Soap Making” out of an abiding respect for Science, and figured it would make a good research and reference tool, answering why things went south, with a scientific explanation of what was happening. I was wrong. It is more of a science course in soap making, and goes off...

Ah. After I’d posted here I went back to the ‘net and found a website with a page dedicated to Indigo three ways, and with three types of indigo. But, they didn’t indicate it was so sensitive. I’ll try to watch the temperature of the lye when I add the indigo and see if I note any...

Dark bread was once looked down upon, and Wonder Bread was seen as progress, so was polyester. Freeways were also seen as good, mass transit bad. Shooting bison you had no intention to eat from the back of a train, a legitimate past time, till most of them were killed... Making soap at home...

Is it possible to get a consistent blue from indigo? I generally add it to the lye solution, 1tsp per pound of soap. I’ve gotten lots of gray, occasional Levi’s blue denim and once a quite striking navy that was nearly black. That the other layer was white kaolin clay enhanced (also added to...

I’ve seen many good articles, some referred to me here, on how SoapCalc calculates its figures for hardness, conditioning, etc, but how does it calculate its recipes? It seems that anything more than a 2 layer soap taxes my abilities of concentration to the breaking point, given my already...

Ah, Thanks. I’ll have to try that.

I started out using lard to get around questionably sourced palm but moved away from it to avoid the stupidity surrounding its use (almost, but not quite as hysterical as that surrounding lye. "LYE! Oh My GOD!") Palm + Shea and that's it? What's the percentages, if that's not a secret...

You're right, again it serves me right for not going back to verify (and on the same page no less) before hitting send. She is NOT talking about olive oil, she's referring to focusing too much on the conditioning number and producing too-soft and short lived soaps. I can hardly wait to see the...