First try at liquid soap

[jcandleattic]

Here is a picture of the rest of the results.

Looks decent. Will divvy it up and add fragrance and color later.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/e78ncpRpJOstOZwI2

also beware, scent can change the viscosity of your soap, so it may thin out even more, or it may thicken up. Depends on the scent used.

 

[Ivanstein]

Can you please post your full recipe, including weight of dilution liquid?

I posted the main oils previously, but I will try to piece the whole thing together:

Recipe is:
50% coconut oil
45% lard
5% castor oil

In soapcalc:
-1% superfat (lye excess)
3:1 water to lye ratio. (My thought was a lot of water would make a more liquid paste and be easier to dilute. This turned out to be trivial)

Soaped in the normal manner. The batter got HARD. Like almost fully cured bar soap hard. I kept it on the heat at the advice of previous posts. It finally gelled and turned into the thick paste which is translucent.

I mixed up a 2:1 water to paste by weight ratio to dilute. Way too much water.

Also added about 3% sodium lactate per weight of paste. I neutralized with 10 TBSP of Borax.

As it dissolved, I realized the huge error I made in dilution. So, I kept it on the "warm" setting in the crock pot. This ends up being about 95°F. I kept stirring it occasionally so the skin didnt get too thick.

It started with a very full crock pot which is a 6 quart if I am not mistaken. When it was ready, I'd estimate it was down by two quarts, approximately 2/3 full. This would roughly be 50% water weight per paste weight. (0.5:1) Roughly...very roughly.

When I was ready to bottle it up, I cranked up the heat for an hour and got the soap to about 150°F, then hit it with the stick blender to homogenize it all. This left it opaque and milky. However, as I had guessed, it was due to micro bubbles in the solution. It took about 6-8 hours for that to clear up after bottling.

I have read about the "piggy" smell of using lard. I dont think this to be the case, it smells like any other raw soap I have made. Easily overpowered by a good FO.

The lather has lots of big bubbles like a dish soap, but it feels nicer than that.

Overall, a good first try.

 

[penelopejane]

Here is half a bottle with some lavender lab color and lavender vanilla FO.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/cuqBg3Jv9TjIMZ302

I only get my google photos from your link. You can load photos direct to SMF by using the manage attachments link.

 

[Ivanstein]

I only get my google photos from your link. You can load photos direct to SMF by using the manage attachments link.

I use tapatalk. For some reason it quit letting me post pictures.