Few questions about additives

[noskiveez]

I have a few questions about ingredients. I'm keeping to natural ingredients, nothing synthetic. I've got all my goodies to make the soap now.

Would it be okay to use tea instead of plain water in a recipe?

Is there a soap calculator that takes into account milk (like goat or coconut milk)?

My husband made a mold out of wood (its hinged) and its 12x4x2.5 would my calculations of 48 oz to fit in that mold be accurate?

After I unmold and cut my bars, how should I store them so they do not collect dust? I live in an extremely dust area and want them to remain dust free.

Where do you store your blocks of butters for best results? Fridge? Room temp? Do you leave it in the box or remove it and store in another container?

Where do you purchase packaging? I'm looking for affordable bottles for lotion, tins for lip balms, chapstivk tubes, deoderant sticks and jars for hand cream. I would like to give some stuff to friends and family in something more attractive than a baby food jar or recycled commercial lotion bottle.

 

[PippiL]

for jars etc, check out the specialty bottle...they have a big selection and shipping costs are very good.
I store my soaps in the laundry room,I don't have a dust problem.
I pretty much to store everything in the laundry room.

 

[soapbuddy]

You can use tea instead of water. For milk soaps either sub milk for the water portion required (make sure it's very cold or frozen into cubes), or do half water to mix the lye in and add half as milk.
If you take the length x width x height and multiply that by 0.4 that should give you a rough estimate how much your mold will hold.
If it's dusty where you are, try your closet or your basement if you have one.
I store my blocks of butters in my fridge, since I have two of them.
For containers or packaging, find the vendor that's closest to you, by going to a web site that's calld suppliersbystate.
Please don't reuse any lotion containers. They can never be as clean as any new containers that you purchase.

 

[ToniD]

Yes, you can use tea.

Most don't caculate out their milk. Soap calc will give you a number, but you can't just put the grams of milk in the caculator. You need to read on the carton what the % of fat is, and then multiply the amount of milk by the % (turned into a decibel) to get how much fat. That would be what you put in the caculator.

If it is 2% fat and you are using 200 grs of milk

200 x .02= 4 grs As you can see it is an insignificate amount. Just use the milk as your liquid and it will be fine.

I don't caculate mold sizes Sorry can't help you there.

Storage in a cardboard box is fine. Curing? maybe lay paper loosely over the top leaving it open on sides and bottom.

I usually leave my butter room temp, but I have a fairly cool room.

sks bottle is a good one.