Advice needed

[zeepsop]

Ok, I'm fairly new to soapmaking and after trying some basic recipes I found online, I decided to play around with the soap calc and made my first batch with the following percentages:

Coconut oil: 30%
Olive Oil: 30 %
Palm Oil: 30%
Shea Butter: 10%
Superfat of 5%

I thought this would make a great basic bar of soap, right? Today after beeing patient for 6 weeks I decided to give it a try and used it to wash my hands. This turned out verry dissapointing. The soap makes my skin instantly feel very very dry (It was just normal before i used te soap). So i must have done something wrong? Or is this soap just not made for my skin type? What ingredients should i use then? Any advice?

 

[lsg]

You might want to cut down on the palm oil and add some Castor oil. Your cleansing value is pretty high and your conditioning value is low. Is this an unscented soap? Sometimes our skin has a reaction to some fragrance oils.
You might try this formula:
Castor Oil 8%
Coconut Oil 22%
Olive Oil 35%
Palm Oil 15%
Shea Butter 20%

Always make a small one pound or smaller batches with any new recipe to see how you like it before using a lot of expensive oils.

 

[Genny]

That recipe has a pretty high cleansing value & a kind of low conditioning value, so that would be pretty drying to me as well. I'd up the olive oil to 40% & lower coconut and palm to 25%. That will lower your cleansing down to 17. I'd also raise the superfat to at least 7%.


whoops. lsg answered when I was typing. Her recipe looks very good as well

 

[nebetmiw]

Do you know the hardness of your tap water? What type of water did you use for making the soap?

 

[sistrum]

Your formula isn't that far off, I would take the coconut down to 25% which will give you a lauric acid content of 12%. This works for most people and I feel is the max amount for regular soap. If you find you are sensitive to this amount drop it down to 20% this will make your lauric more like 9%. You might also want to try using palm kernel oil instead of coconut it's a bit milder and still gives good bubbles.

You can add the extra to your palm oil or your olive or split the difference. If you want to learn to formulate good soap learn to watch the fatty acid contents and don't base your recipe on the "numbers" on soap calc.

Read as much as you can from many places and visit many forums. Good luck and have fun, Sissy

 

[zeepsop]

First of al, thank you for the reply's' and advice! I did make a smal batch for a start so i didn't "waste" much I'm going to trie again soon, but before I do that I'll start reading again. Thank you Sissy. As for the water I used the so called "demineralised water" that I bought in the store I figured that would be a good start. Or is it not?

 

[sistrum]

Same as distilled? If so, good to go.

 

[Badger]

I just realized that I bought distilled water and forgot to use it in my lye water. :? I was trying to get everything right too...

 

[Cherry Bomb]

I just realized that I bought distilled water and forgot to use it in my lye water. :? I was trying to get everything right too...

I think you should be ok. I dislike making little mistakes like that. its frustrating. Besides reading online and reading in books about why you should use distilled water, this thread was also just as informative on the soapmakingforum


http://www.soapmakingforum.com/f11/do-you-really-need-use-distilled-water-soap-making-15203/

 

[cliff]

I just realized that I bought distilled water and forgot to use it in my lye water. :? I was trying to get everything right too...

Ha, that's funny but not really, right? You gotta make a mistake on your first batch. It's been decreed, I think. I dropped my thermometer in my bowl of oils during my second batch. Completely submerged. It wasn't funny then, but it's rather humorous now thinking about how I was fumbling around.