best oils for whiter soap?

[jax1962]

i'm making a red, white and blue soap for a challenge and wondered if anyone has any tips on the best combination of oils for a nice shade of white - i don't have any td and no time to get any as the deadline is sunday - i DO have bentonite and cornstarch?? oils i use are olive, sunflower, rapeseed, coconut and maybe lard but no palm if i can help it. thanks guys! x

 

[sabon]

I made one with 100% coconut oil with 15% superfat and it is a beautiful white.

 

[jax1962]

that sounds good to me sabon!! i thought 100% coconut was too drying though??

 

[brandnew]

whiter soap

my very first soap was 100% lard and it felt so lovely and smooth and was a pristeen white. palm is also white, supposed to be the tallow of veg oils. good luck! coconut is supposed to be drying over 20-30%...

 

[AnneBonny]

Tallow makes a hard, white soap - and is definitely not as harsh as coconut oil. Although - as much as I love tallow soap, it's lather is just not impressive. You could a blend of tallow and coconut, I think that would be the best of both worlds, it would lather AND you'd still have skin left.

 

[judymoody]

If you up the superfat to 20%, a 100% coconut soap will not be drying.

White oils: CO, PKO, babassu, lard, tallow. Regular golden colored olive oil (neither pomace nor extra virgin) is only slightly more yellowish.

 

[brandnew]

with the hardening qualityof the coconut oil wil the soap still be a nice hard bar with a 20%?!?

 

[IrishLass]

with the hardening qualityof the coconut oil wil the soap still be a nice hard bar with a 20%?!?

Oh my, definitely yes! And make sure to cut into bars when the soap has finished gelling but is still quite warm, or else you will have a heck of a time trying to cut it.


IrishLass

 

[Soap Techniques]

with the hardening qualityof the coconut oil wil the soap still be a nice hard bar with a 20%?!?

very hard!

 

[jax1962]

how do i get it to 20% superfat?? i run my recipes through soapcalc but then once they're ok there, i go to the sage.com to find out the quantity of lye as i use ready diluted lye - trouble is that thesage.com only goes up to 10% superfat????

 

[IrishLass]

If you can tell me the dilution percent of your pre-made lye solution, I might be able to help. I work from a pre-diluted lye solution, too- a 50% solution (i.e. 50% lye to 50% water).

IrishLass

 

[judymoody]

how do i get it to 20% superfat?? i run my recipes through soapcalc but then once they're ok there, i go to the sage.com to find out the quantity of lye as i use ready diluted lye - trouble is that thesage.com only goes up to 10% superfat????

I just use soapcalc. Do you know that % of lye that's in your premade liquid?

 

[jax1962]

thanks ladies - my ready diluted lye is 30.5%

 

[IrishLass]

Thanks, jax!

Okay- what you need to do is go onto SoapCalc and type in your recipe, i.e. what kind of lye you'll be using (NaOH), the weight of your oils (however big you want your batch to be), the superfat % you want to use (20%), and how much of each oil you want to use (100% CO?).

In the area where it says "3 Water", you will see 3 subcatagories underneath that you can choose to click on. Ignore all of them except for 'Lye Concentration'. Click on the circle to the left of 'Lye Concentration', and in the green box to the right of it, go ahead and type in 30.5 (the % rate of your pre-diluted lye solution).

Now go down to the bottom of the page and click onto where it says 'Calculate'. After you click on that, click on 'View or Print Recipe'. Once you click on that, another page will pop up with all your recipe amounts charted out for you in both ounces and in grams. Don't worry- even though it the word 'print' is on the icon with the word 'view', it won't automatically print it out for you. You have to specifically command your computer/printer to do so if you want a print out.

Okay, now look at the lavender colored area of the chart where it has your water and lye amounts written out. Add the water and lye amount up together. Whatever that end sum is- that is how much of your pre-diluted 30.5 lye solution to weigh out for your batch of 100% CO soap with a 20% superfat. (assuming that you want to soap with a 30.5 lye concentration, that is).

HTH!
IrishLass

PS- I invite anyone to feel free to doublecheck my instructions in order to make sure I didn't screw up.

 

[sabon]

that sounds good to me sabon!! i thought 100% coconut was too drying though??

Superfatted at 15 to 20 percent is not drying. Got to know this through valuable suggestions by judymoody and IrishLass.

Be prepared for a beautiful white bar of soap but cut before it hardens completely

 

[jax1962]

awww, thanks irish lass and sabon - you've been truly fantastic. i'll have to print the instructions and get my aging head round it first but i promise to report back - with evidence! have a great weekend ladies xx

 

[jax1962]

p.s. irish lass - HTH?? :?

 

[jax1962]

ok, so i just did this irish lass, for a batch of 600g coconut oil and i got

200.427g water
87.957g diluted lye

this will mean my water will be 33.405% as % to oils.


i've soaped before with the diluted lye and NEVER added water but i usually soap to 10% superfat. so, me being thick, is it the fact that i'm increasing the superfat % that means it needs more water?

 

[IrishLass]

Don't worry about the "water as % of oils" box. When working from the "lye Concentration" box as we are doing, the "water as % of oils' box becomes meaningless and moot. That's why I told you to ignore all the boxes under the Water section except for the 'Lye Concentration' box..

All you'll be doing is adding up 200.427 + 87.957, which means you will need to weigh out 288.384g of your prediluted 30.5% lye solution. Don't add any extra water beyond that.Just weigh out your pre-diluted solution 'as is'.

To explain- since your pre-diluted lye solution is a perfect 30.5% concentration of lye and water, all we needed to do was to use the "Lye Concentration' box to type in 30.5 in order for SoapCalc to calculate the proper weights of lye and water for your batch.

From there, all you need to do is add the two weights (lye and water) together to get the proper weight of pre-diluted solution to weigh out (the 288.384g grams of pre-diluted solution will contain a combined weight of 200.427g of water and 87.957g of lye)- nothing need to be added or taken away from it. It's perfect.

HTH!
IrishLass

 

[jax1962]

ahhhhh the light dawns!!! feck - i can be an eejit sometimes!

what i DID was, ahem, now don't laugh..... i added the 87g lye and 200g water

it turned out nice! what % superfat do you think i've got now then? :?

i'll start again tomorrow, promise!



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