Catherine Failor's shower gel recipe with 20% lye excess

[pumita]

I'd like to make the "simple coconut oil gel" using the recipe in Catherine Failor's book "Making natural liquid soap". As the recipes are for 2,7kg of paste I decided to make six times less. Should I just divide the amounts by six or should I use the lye calculator in the book?
I recalculated her recipe with the lye calculator in the book and I saw that she uses a 20% lye excess whereas she recomands using a 10% lye excess.
So dividing the recipe's amounts by six will give me a 20% lye excess, while by calculating it on my own I can use a 10% lye excess.
What's better?
Is there a special reason why she uses a 20% lye excess in the shower gel recipes?
Will I be able to neutralize the 20% excess using borax as a thickener?

 

[walkinwounded]

Yes, I'm also wondering whats with the access lye, as it took me twice as much citric acid as she even recommended to neutralize one of her shower gel recipes?? Makes a nice body wash though if you forgo the gelling methods and just thicken it up without worring about transparency.

 

[Bigmoose]

I would recalculate the lye amount from the method in the book. I figure mine at a 2% lye excess. I figure as long as you do good math and have a good scale why not do 2% vs 20%.

Bruce

 

[carebear]

I don't play the game she does. I use Summer Bee Meadow's lye calculator for liquid soap and SF at 2% and get lovely clear, safe soap. I'm no liquid soap expert, but I like my way better!

 

[walkinwounded]

Thank you thank you, Carebear and Bigmoose!

Between what both of you written inspired me to devise my own liquid saop recipes, I have been making catherine failores lye heavy heavy soap for a little now as I'm fairly new to soaping. It seems so simple now.

Summer Bee Meadow's lye calculator for liquid soap is the "shizzle". Were has everyone been hiding it?

2% lye heavy is way way better then 20%, what the heck! I get to make soap and keep my skin to, way better deal.

 

[carebear]

Oh I do a 2% lye discount. So not lye heavy at all.

 

[walkinwounded]

Carebear


Would a 2% lye discount(superfat) make liquid soap cloudy if one was trying to make a clear/translucent soap?
And with a 2% lye discount, would you need to neutralize still? Cause that would be great not adding citric acid to body wash, or would you still add the acid for what reason?

 

[carebear]

I am NOT a liquid soap expert, but mine comes out clear and no, I do not neutralize. Citric acid, though, may have a dual reason in shower gel because it is also a chelating agent and can reduce soap scum. Not sure about that. But a little tetrasodium EDTA can do the same thing.

 

[carebear]

Oh and the reason for the big lye excess is 1 to (theoretically) ensure clear soap and 2 because KOH is not really pure (it has a lot of water I've read) and this was her way of dealing with that.

Summer Bee Meadow uses more accurate numbers for the "strength" of the KOH.

 

[pumita]

Can you recomand me another good lye calculator for liquid soaps that measures in grams instead of ounces?

 

[agriffin]

From what I understand, Summer Bee's calc at 0% superfat for liquid soap is automatically set to a 10% lye excess. So if you superfat 2%, you're doing a 8% lye excess. That is what I typically do as well.

SO really...unless I'm just crazy...Summer Bee's calc is pretty much doing it the Failor way. 10% lye excess. I know Steve had at one time updated the calc so maybe it's different now.

 

[carebear]

From what I understand, Summer Bee's calc at 0% superfat for liquid soap is automatically set to a 10% lye excess. So if you superfat 2%, you're doing a 8% lye excess. That is what I typically do as well.

Hmmm - that is not my understanding from a few years back - I was told that the SBM was adjusted to fix the issue that caused other calculators to require the high excess lye, but that other lye calculators did have this built in somehow. Perhaps I was told wrong.

But when I soap at 2% SF in liquid soaps using the SBM calculator, my resulting soap is never caustic.

Go figure.

I absolutely could be wrong!!

 

[margarita]

I'm really very new to making liquid soaps (actually I've only started researching), but just today I was reading here about that lye excess issue. It says that KOH has about 10% impurities, so Failor actually ends up doing 2% lye excess instead of 12%. And then she neutralizes it. Summer Bew Meadows calculator already has those 10% built in, so you only need to to do 2% lye excess if you're going to neutralize or you can do a superfat and skip the neutralizing.
I'm in no way an expert, this is just how I understand it.