Beginning Soap?

[stepibarra]

Ok so now I am totally bored with M&P. I really want to try my hand at CP, but am so lost with all the different recipes and ratios;etc... Would anyone be willing to give me a good beginners recipe? If so I would greatly appreciate it.... Thanks in advance....

 

[Guest]

Oh yeah! Fer sure fer sure! I just did that about two weeks ago, my first batch ever and my first CP. You'll be movin' up from high school to college.

I suggest you make a simple 3-oil recipe. I got my idea from About.com and their Castile recipes. Castile is either pure olive oil (1-oil recipe) or can be primarily olive oil aided by other oils to improve hardness, cleansing and lathering. About.com suggests using olive, palm and coconut oils in an 80-10-10 ratio or 60-20-20 ratio. I chose to go in the middle and made my first batch 70-15-15, and I was very pleased with the result.

Or if you want more oils, I just made a 4-oil recipe today, palm, coconut, canola and either olive or castor oil. The recipe was from Dr. Robert McDaniel's "Essentially Soap" called his Basic 4 Oil Soap. I replaced the olive oil in his recipe with castor oil in an attempt to get the uncolored part whiter but it didn't work. I think it will still be a nice soap.

Or please tell us which oils you want to use or which you have on hand and we can find a recipe for you. I suggest you plan on using palm oil and coconut oil, two of the most important soap oils, along with something selected at your supermarket like olive or canola oil, or this may not appeal to you but lard is an excellent fat for soapmaking, and so inexpensive!

 

[stepibarra]

Thanks Greg.... I was thinking of using coconut oil, lard, and maybe some almond?

Oh yeah! Fer sure fer sure! I just did that about two weeks ago, my first batch ever and my first CP. You'll be movin' up from high school to college.

I suggest you make a simple 3-oil recipe. I got my idea from About.com and their Castile recipes. Castile is either pure olive oil (1-oil recipe) or can be primarily olive oil aided by other oils to improve hardness, cleansing and lathering. About.com suggests using olive, palm and coconut oils in an 80-10-10 ratio or 60-20-20 ratio. I chose to go in the middle and made my first batch 70-15-15, and I was very pleased with the result.

Or if you want more oils, I just made a 4-oil recipe today, palm, coconut, canola and either olive or castor oil. The recipe was from Dr. Robert McDaniel's "Essentially Soap" called his Basic 4 Oil Soap. I replaced the olive oil in his recipe with castor oil in an attempt to get the uncolored part whiter but it didn't work. I think it will still be a nice soap.

Or please tell us which oils you want to use or which you have on hand and we can find a recipe for you. I suggest you plan on using palm oil and coconut oil, two of the most important soap oils, along with something selected at your supermarket like olive or canola oil, or this may not appeal to you but lard is an excellent fat for soapmaking, and so inexpensive!

 

[Guest]

Thanks Greg.... I was thinking of using coconut oil, lard, and maybe some almond?

That looks pretty good! I just made Kathy Miller's Favorite Lard recipe* which uses lard, coconut and olive in a 53 : 23.5 : 23.5 ratio, made a very nice, hard lathery soap, and I just plugged the numbers into SoapCalc and discovered that you get almost the same numbers using sweet almond oil instead of olive oil.

Kathy Miller's Favorite Lard recipe

hardness = 44
cleansing = 16
conditioning = 49
bubbly lather = 16
creamy lather = 28
iodine = 52
INS = 160

The same recipe but using sweet almond instead of olive

hardness = 42
cleansing = 16
conditioning = 51
bubbly lather = 16
creamy lather = 26
iodine = 56
INS = 157

I won't say that changing oils doesn't have any other effects, and I'm sure different oils do, but I'm pretty close to sure that nobody could tell the difference based upon the numbers above. I would call the two recipes substantially identical.

Do you have sweet almond oil on hand? If not I suggest that olive is more readily available at your supermarket, possibly cheaper too.

You can plug the recipe into SoapCalc and decide your batch size, lye concentration and superfatting, or if you want some help (or to double check you) tell me what your preferences and I can give you the recipe. I've been using 5% superfatting and 30% lye strength. Batch size depends on your mold. See the sticky in our forum to calculate weight of oils necessary to fill your mold, or I'll help or double check you on that too.

Considering I'm a newbie I suggest you pass this by the experts first, but I think either recipe would make nice soap, and I know for sure that Miller's recipe does because I made some last week.

This is fun!


The recipe I'm referring to is on this page, scroll down to "Blended Soap Using Beef Shortening (or Lard)/With Coconut" where Miller says, "The following is currently my favorite tallow soap recipe! (August 1999)"

 

[stepibarra]

Yeah I think I like the first one better.... I will try this one and hope I don't mess it up too bad...LOL.... One more question... does the lye only come in liquid? and if not is the other easier to use?

Thanks Greg.... I was thinking of using coconut oil, lard, and maybe some almond?

That looks pretty good! I just made Kathy Miller's Favorite Lard recipe* which uses lard, coconut and olive in a 53 : 23.5 : 23.5 ratio, made a very nice, hard lathery soap, and I just plugged the numbers into SoapCalc and discovered that you get almost the same numbers using sweet almond oil instead of olive oil.

Kathy Miller's Favorite Lard recipe

hardness = 44
cleansing = 16
conditioning = 49
bubbly lather = 16
creamy lather = 28
iodine = 52
INS = 160

The same recipe but using sweet almond instead of olive

hardness = 42
cleansing = 16
conditioning = 51
bubbly lather = 16
creamy lather = 26
iodine = 56
INS = 157

I won't say that changing oils doesn't have any other effects, and I'm sure different oils do, but I'm pretty close to sure that nobody could tell the difference based upon the numbers above. I would call the two recipes substantially identical.

Do you have sweet almond oil on hand? If not I suggest that olive is more readily available at your supermarket, possibly cheaper too.

You can plug the recipe into SoapCalc and decide your batch size, lye concentration and superfatting, or if you want some help (or to double check you) tell me what your preferences and I can give you the recipe. I've been using 5% superfatting and 30% lye strength. Batch size depends on your mold. See the sticky in our forum to calculate weight of oils necessary to fill your mold, or I'll help or double check you on that too.

Considering I'm a newbie I suggest you pass this by the experts first, but I think either recipe would make nice soap, and I know for sure that Miller's recipe does because I made some last week.

This is fun!


The recipe I'm referring to is on this page, scroll down to "Blended Soap Using Beef Shortening (or Lard)/With Coconut" where Miller says, "The following is currently my favorite tallow soap recipe! (August 1999)"

 

[Guest]

I presume you're trying Kathy Miller's recipe then. I'm sure you'll like it as it made very nice soap for me. It was my hardest bar to date in terms of not being soft like earlier attempts.

Lye comes in granules. You mix it with water to make your lye solution.

Handling the lye safely will be a new challenge for you but once you understand the precautions it will become easy. My nervousness passed after the first time I used it. Lye is drain cleaner. All you need to do is be careful to not breathe the dust or fumes, and not get the lye solution on you. The only equipment you'll need can be purchased at Home Depot, Lowe's or any other home improvement store. You need a respirator (face mask covers your mouth and nose), chemical splash/impact goggles, and heavy duty neoprene coated latex gloves. The total price for all three together is about $15 so it's a minor expense.

Please note that not all drain cleaners are lye. As far as I can tell Roebic's brand is the most popular for soaping. You need to find lye that is 100% sodium hydroxide, NaOH. Roebic's is such a brand. I get mine at Lowe's, 2# for a little under $8.

There are other posts here at SMF regarding handling lye and I suggest that you read them. Ask if you can't find which post.

Trust me it's easy, and once you get used to handling lye it will become second nature.

 

[stepibarra]

Re: beginning soap

Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it.... I am kinda worried about the Lye, but my itching to make soap is greater; so we shall see what comes out..... Also thanks for the pm... I get it, I just didn't quite get how to do it.... I'll learn..

 

[Guest]

Read this thread: Lye in the home ... It has some very good advice including my own way back when I was just a 7-batch newbie! I'm a veteran of 8 batches now!

Have a look at SoapCalc too. It or another lye calculator will become a very useful tool for you. It looks complicated at first but it's easy to pick up. It makes adjusting oils and batch sizes almost trivial. See the forum "sticky" post "Soap/Lye Calculators: A guide" for more information.

C'mon back if you need any help running the numbers or checking your results. In fact please get somebody to check your recipe the first time unless you're absolutely certain you did it right.

I just started soaping at the beginning of the month and you would not believe how much I've learned helping other beginners!

 

[Deda]

The first few batch I ever made, 6.5 years ago was with Crisco!

It was easy, let me learn how to handle the lye, taught me about trace, let me get the feel of everything. I learned to color, tested temperatures, played with fragrances, played with swirls, got the hang of the whole mold thing.

It was easy, cheap, locally available and an unexpected surprise was that it made a super hard white bar. I don't use it anymore except to test a fragrance, I'd rather test an expensive potentially misbehaved fragrance on crisco then my regular and way more expensive oil and butters.

Not bad at all. IMO

 

[Guest]

That's a great idea for testing inexpensively. I imagine lard would serve the same as an inexpensive ingredient with nice properties. Who would have known you could mix lard and drain cleaner and make something nice?