Does anyone else use soy wax and goat milk ?

[Basil]

My €0.02:

• (All this experience is not based on the glorious GW415 soy wax, but from the variant of canola wax that I'm using and that appears to be very similar in most respects. I still used the term “soy wax” to avoid botanical cluttering)
• I've found that 20% soy wax is the maximum above which a soap (ungelled) tends to develop a chalky, floury consistency and becomes brittle. I usually use 10–15% soy wax in conjunction with butters (mango, cocoa) and/or palmitic oils (palm, RBO, japan wax).
• In direct comparison to other (very) hard oils, it does perform on par. In retrospect, I should have added a “control” batch with a medium-hard oil like shea butter or lard, to have better comparison at the lower end of the spectrum. Take-away:
• I can only discourage actually performing the “experiment” of @Zany_in_CO (single-oil soap from hard soy wax). GW415 and friends are soft soy waxes, but like mentioned above, still bring agreeable hardness. Fully hydrogenated vegetable oils are strict HP ingredients. As in: Rapid, concrete-like false trace below some 60°C/140°F.

I love your posts and value your expressive way of communicating @ResolvableOwl ! I’ve always wanted to ask you what you do for a living or did for a living? Or your background? I’m brave enough now to ask I think as we are getting to know each other. I must add ——I was made to stay after school one day when I was in high school, because rather than listening to my biology teacher lecture, I was passing a note around questioning other students where our teacher might have bought her fuzzy clip on collar with furry Pom Pom balls..

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Today I’m going to tweak that recipe . I really like cocoa butter, so I’ll try that again .

If, as I suspect, the bars are a little sticky due to using 10% castor, I would lower the castor to 5% and add the cocoa butter at 5%.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@ResolvableOwl It’s good to know about the chalkiness issue. I never bothered to try milk with soy due to my working temp.

@Basil The recipe I calculated is attached to my post above as an edit.

 

[Basil]

I have company coming today, but when I get a chance, I will run the recipe above through the calculator using GW 415 as a custom oil.

Here’s the recipe calculated with GW 415 as a custom oil. Stearic + Palmitic 22% vs. 36%, oleic 41% vs. 27%, etc. compared with the recipe using “fully hydrogenated soybean oil”. The difference in the lye amount is minor, but the longevity is a lot less.

Thank you!!!!!

 

[Basil]

@ResolvableOwl It’s good to know about the chalkiness issue. I never bothered to try milk with soy due to my working temp.

@Basil The recipe I calculated is attached to my post above as an edit.

Thank you!

 

[Basil]

I have company coming today, but when I get a chance, I will run the recipe above through the calculator using GW 415 as a custom oil.

Here’s the recipe calculated with GW 415 as a custom oil. Stearic + Palmitic 22% vs. 36%, oleic 41% vs. 27%, etc. compared with the recipe using “fully hydrogenated soybean oil”. The difference in the lye amount is minor, but the longevity is a lot less.

I had to pull it up on my computer so just read it. Amazing!!! And it makes even more sense now. I finally have it in my head! That does explain some things! I also reread all the posts and others responses from your original thread and plugged the numbers into soapcalc. I'm afraid I tend to skim read sometimes, thinking I understand. I got it now! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and explain it more @Mobjack Bay . Back to the drawing board

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

The jury is still out on that. (insert 'tongue in cheek' emoji here.) In case you haven't noticed, this Forum functions as an asylum for many of its members. In that sense, you are in good company.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hanging out here because everyone helps to make my deep-in-the-rabbit-hole soaping behavior seem normal.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

everyone helps to make my deep-in-the-rabbit-hole soaping behavior seem normal.

It isn't???

 

[earlene]

None of my soaps with 30% GW415 Soy Wax have turned out chalky. I am not quite sure where that is coming from.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

It might well be that the GW415 is more well-behaved than my canola wax, or that some of my recipes have some other issues that I'm not fully aware of (remember that I even manage to make a brittle 20% castor soap). If others do well with different feedstock in different recipes, fine! It's just an observation I've made, with the supplies available to me. I've had soap with a sandy texture, so brittle that I could have crushed it into a powder straight after unmoulding. I've had others that became scratchy after a few days, but were fine after some months of cure. I also had ones that were absolutely fine.

My point is: YMMV. Recipe/other oils matter, soaping/gelling/curing temperatures matter, lye concentration matters, additives matter, EOs/FOs matter, batch/mould size matters. Hydrogenated vegetable oils is a class of ingredients with a wider range of properties than unaltered oils, hence has more occasions to behave surprisingly. Testing a recipe is imperative.