Salt increase volume of final soap?

serfmunke · Feb 15, 2012

When making salt soap my volume is too much for that of my molds. Is it because of the salt? I measured my ounce weights for the molds using water and ended up with five extra soaps! Where did I mess up?

carebear · Feb 15, 2012

Think it through
Normally you have water + lye + oils; in your salt bar you have all the same plus salt - so yea, it's going to take up more space because the salt takes up space.

How much extra it makes depends on how much salt you use.

Kleine Teufel · Feb 20, 2012

I just made my first salt bar. 80% salt ppo. 16oz of oil with the 80% salt equals the same amount of batter as my 21oz oil batches with no salt. So use about 76% of the amount of oil you usually would for a full batch. Hope that helps!

serfmunke · Feb 26, 2012

Yup, makes perfect sense. I always need to mess up first before the logic sticks.

carebear · Feb 26, 2012

serfmunke said:
Yup, makes perfect sense. I always need to mess up first before the logic sticks.

welcome to my world.
but in my case, I need to mess up twice...

Midnight Rowan · Feb 29, 2012

I do my salt bars in the BB square silicone multicavity mold, and use Irish Lass' formula (100% CO, Coconut milk for liquid, 25% salt, 13% SF), 16 oz. of oils. It always fills up 5-4 oz. cavities exactly (flush with top of cavities). So, 16 oz. of oils + 4 oz. of salt = 20 oz. total (or 5-4 oz. cavities). I imagine for messier calculations (such as 80% salt), you'd take your oils + 80% of your oils (if you're using this much salt) and that will give you your total volume:

16 oz of oils + 12.8 oz salt = 28.8 oz. total volume

Make sense?