Hard oil help!

[mflo3812]

Hello, wonderful soap makers! I'm so so happy to have found this group and have learned so much already! My question is a doosy, so hopefully there's some insights you can share!

I made the switch to all clean, natural, non-toxic makeup and skincare products a year ago (which is huge as I am a certified makeup artist and skincare procedure loving fanatic) and this has led me to playing with my own stuff!

We have Nigerian dwarf goats and I've been wanting to get into goat milk soap (specifically targeting your face), but in all my research, I keep seeing coconut oil being used as one the hard oil for the bar soaps. I'm trying to steer clear of coconut oil, palm oil, shea and mango butter ... just for the pore-clogging properties these all have for your face.

I've got oils like Olive oil, jojoba oil, seabuckthorn oil, castor oil, but I think all of these would make the soap more soft and not harden correctly, right?

Am I better off to just make body soap bars and keep the facial aspect to a liquid soap? That's an avenue I haven't wanted to go down yet, because I figure there MUST be a way to do a soap bar that's got ALL the goods, without reducing quality.

Anyway, phew, long winded. Just wanting your advice/opinions on other hard oils I maybe haven't come across yet or something that would work.

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[AliOop]

Welcome to the rabbit hole! It's a whole lot of fun to make your own products, isn't it?

A good thing to know is that when oils are mixed with lye solution and saponified (turned into soap), they are no longer oils, but rather alkali salts with very different properties than the initial oil.

Coconut oil is a perfect example. As a solid oil, many consider it moisturizing (I don't, as it sits on my skin, leaving it greasy and dry at the same time....but I digress). When CO is saponified and becomes soap, it becomes the opposite of moisturizing, and it is highly cleansing, stripping oils off the skin. Thus, don't assume that comedogenic oils make comedogenic soap, unless you are using a high superfat where a lot of unsaponified oils remain in the soap.

Also, soft oils don't equal soft soap. Example: 100% olive oil soap, when made and cured properly, will be rock hard.

Personally, I find it hard to make a soap that I can use on my face. They all make me peel and break out at the same time. The only one that ever worked for me was very high in lard, very low in coconut oil... and had added goat milk! However, my friend can't stand that soap; she loves a version of that recipe that uses OO instead of lard.

Because using fresh goat milk is a bit of an advanced technique, I'd encourage you to make some small batches of very basic soaps without goat milk. Use those on your hands and body to get an idea of what your skin prefers. When you are comfortable with the basic soapmaking process, you can replace some of the water with goat milk. We have lots of great threads here with detailed instructions that will have you successfully making GMS in no time!

 

[DeeAnna]

If you don't want to use coconut oil, palm oil, shea butter, or mango butter in your soap for whatever reason, it's perfectly fine to not use them.

People use a blend of fats to maximize the desirable properties of soap -- gentle cleansing, abundant lather, and reasonable life in the bath. Coconut oil increases the amount of lather and physical hardness. Palm oil increases physical hardness, adds mildness, and increases the longevity in the bath. Ditto for the butters.

But you can use lard, tallow, hydrogenated soy, or other nut butters as alternatives to palm, shea, and mango. And you can omit coconut entirely if you prefer. Just realize that omitting some types of fats will affect the properties of the soap -- it's all about tradeoffs.

I also agree with Ali that it's important to not confuse the properties of the fats you start with when making soap with the properties of soap made from those fats. During saponification, fats are deconstructed into glycerin and fatty acids. After a fat molecule is broken apart, the stearic acid from shea, for example, doesn't look any different in soap than stearic acid from lard.

Even the excess fat in soap (aka superfat) doesn't escape damage -- the action of the lye during saponification and the effect of the normal alkalinity of soap will deconstruct the fats into fatty acids as well as mono- and di-glycerides.

 

[cmzaha]

I very seldom use soap on my face but when I do I use my 100% Almond Oil Soap of which I only have a few bars left. hint hint someone... The downside to 100% Almond Oil soap is the long cure time required before it is a decent bar of soap, 6-8 month cure time. You can try it at 4-5 months but it usually has 0 lather before the 6-month mark. I also use 2% superfat with this soap.

 

[AliOop]

I very seldom use soap on my face but when I do I use my 100% Almond Oil Soap of which I only have a few bars left. hint hint someone... The downside to 100% Almond Oil soap is the long cure time required before it is a decent bar of soap, 6-8 month cure time. You can try it at 4-5 months but it usually has 0 lather before the 6-month mark. I also use 2% superfat with this soap.

Carolyn, do you add sorbitol to this, or any chelator?

 

[A-Polly]

Hello @mflo3812, and welcome!

For one very quick answer to your question, babassu oil is often suggested as a substitute for coconut oil, and it is low on comedogenic scale (at least on the ones I've seen; as noted in the labmuffin article linked below, the charts do not all agree!). Also, where did you get the information about shea butter? It's ranked as pretty low on the scale as well, and mango butter may be a tad higher but also on the low side.

But as @AliOop and @DeeAnna said, once made into soap these oils & butters have suffered "...a sea change, into something rich and strange" — and wonderful! Using handmade soap is pure pleasure — I just love it and hope you will enjoy entering into the soapmaking experience!

A RECIPE, AND MORE INFO:

Here is a forum post from years ago, listing a formula that is extremely mild and may be close to what you are looking for. Note that the recipe is labeled "shampoo bar" but is instead a nice face and body bar with a low-to-zero cleansing number on SoapCalc (but numbers aren't everything, for sure!). It was a good 3 years or so ago, but I recall making at least one substitution (I didn't have soybean oil) and adding goat milk. It contains a small amount of shea butter (10%) as the only hard oil.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/gennys-shampoo-bar-recipe-and-question.75925/

Here is a 2019 post by Labmuffin Beauty Science, which explains a lot about comedogenicity ratings, how they are determined, and when they can be useful. I found it fascinating (rabbit ears!!):
https://labmuffin.com/fact-check-how-to-use-comedogenicity-ratings/
But for TLDR, the author makes the same point as @DeeAnna and @AliOop:

Here’s the big kicker though – even if an ingredient is comedogenic on its own, it might not be comedogenic in a product. And even if a product contains no comedogenic ingredients, it can still be comedogenic on the skin.

And:

Your unique skin chemistry partially determines the comedogenicity of an ingredient – even under the controlled restrictions of dermatological studies, the same ingredient and the same procedure gave a range of results on different people.

 

[mflo3812]

I very seldom use soap on my face but when I do I use my 100% Almond Oil Soap of which I only have a few bars left. hint hint someone... The downside to 100% Almond Oil soap is the long cure time required before it is a decent bar of soap, 6-8 month cure time. You can try it at 4-5 months but it usually has 0 lather before the 6-month mark. I also use 2% superfat with this soap.

OH, this is great information! Naive question ... those with nut allergies... can they handle putting nut oils on their face? I guess maybe it would just depend?
Thanks for your response!!

Hello @mflo3812, and welcome!

For one very quick answer to your question, babassu oil is often suggested as a substitute for coconut oil, and it is low on comedogenic scale (at least on the ones I've seen; as noted in the labmuffin article linked below, the charts do not all agree!). Also, where did you get the information about shea butter? It's ranked as pretty low on the scale as well, and mango butter may be a tad higher but also on the low side.

But as @AliOop and @DeeAnna said, once made into soap these oils & butters have suffered "...a sea change, into something rich and strange" — and wonderful! Using handmade soap is pure pleasure — I just love it and hope you will enjoy entering into the soapmaking experience!

A RECIPE, AND MORE INFO:

Here is a forum post from years ago, listing a formula that is extremely mild and may be close to what you are looking for. Note that the recipe is labeled "shampoo bar" but is instead a nice face and body bar with a low-to-zero cleansing number on SoapCalc (but numbers aren't everything, for sure!). It was a good 3 years or so ago, but I recall making at least one substitution (I didn't have soybean oil) and adding goat milk. It contains a small amount of shea butter (10%) as the only hard oil.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/gennys-shampoo-bar-recipe-and-question.75925/

Here is a 2019 post by Labmuffin Beauty Science, which explains a lot about comedogenicity ratings, how they are determined, and when they can be useful. I found it fascinating (rabbit ears!!):
https://labmuffin.com/fact-check-how-to-use-comedogenicity-ratings/
But for TLDR, the author makes the same point as @DeeAnna and @AliOop:

And:

I SO appreciate your response! So incredibly helpful. I'm actually very excited about the idea of trying babassu oil! That's a great one I hadn't thought of!

Welcome to the rabbit hole! It's a whole lot of fun to make your own products, isn't it?

A good thing to know is that when oils are mixed with lye solution and saponified (turned into soap), they are no longer oils, but rather alkali salts with very different properties than the initial oil.

Coconut oil is a perfect example. As a solid oil, many consider it moisturizing (I don't, as it sits on my skin, leaving it greasy and dry at the same time....but I digress). When CO is saponified and becomes soap, it becomes the opposite of moisturizing, and it is highly cleansing, stripping oils off the skin. Thus, don't assume that comedogenic oils make comedogenic soap, unless you are using a high superfat where a lot of unsaponified oils remain in the soap.

Also, soft oils don't equal soft soap. Example: 100% olive oil soap, when made and cured properly, will be rock hard.

Personally, I find it hard to make a soap that I can use on my face. They all make me peel and break out at the same time. The only one that ever worked for me was very high in lard, very low in coconut oil... and had added goat milk! However, my friend can't stand that soap; she loves a version of that recipe that uses OO instead of lard.

Because using fresh goat milk is a bit of an advanced technique, I'd encourage you to make some small batches of very basic soaps without goat milk. Use those on your hands and body to get an idea of what your skin prefers. When you are comfortable with the basic soapmaking process, you can replace some of the water with goat milk. We have lots of great threads here with detailed instructions that will have you successfully making GMS in no time!

Thank you so much for your response! I totally hear you when you talk about coconut oil not working for your face. Whenever I see it in soap and it claims to be for your face, I'm confused. But I guess that's the beauty is that everyone's skin is different
Everything I've seen about olive oil in soap is that it will be a little bit softer the than a bar with coconut oil. Has that been your experience, or do you just let it sit longer and it's fine? I'd love to know your response!

If you don't want to use coconut oil, palm oil, shea butter, or mango butter in your soap for whatever reason, it's perfectly fine to not use them.

People use a blend of fats to maximize the desirable properties of soap -- gentle cleansing, abundant lather, and reasonable life in the bath. Coconut oil increases the amount of lather and physical hardness. Palm oil increases physical hardness, adds mildness, and increases the longevity in the bath. Ditto for the butters.

But you can use lard, tallow, hydrogenated soy, or other nut butters as alternatives to palm, shea, and mango. And you can omit coconut entirely if you prefer. Just realize that omitting some types of fats will affect the properties of the soap -- it's all about tradeoffs.

I also agree with Ali that it's important to not confuse the properties of the fats you start with when making soap with the properties of soap made from those fats. During saponification, fats are deconstructed into glycerin and fatty acids. After a fat molecule is broken apart, the stearic acid from shea, for example, doesn't look any different in soap than stearic acid from lard.

Even the excess fat in soap (aka superfat) doesn't escape damage -- the action of the lye during saponification and the effect of the normal alkalinity of soap will deconstruct the fats into fatty acids as well as mono- and di-glycerides.

Ahhh, this is great. Definitely trade-offs, I could see. Are there certain nut butters that have worked well for you? If someone had an allergy to nuts, would that be a problem for them putting it on their face?
Seriously. There is so much I still need to learn about the science of this! So I appreciate you!

Carolyn, do you add sorbitol to this, or any chelator?

What's a ... chelator ? #stilllearning

Okay, I've come to the conclusion I want this recipe. Unsure of amounts, so if you have any feedback on that, I'm all ears.

Sidenote: what texture/element does honey give to soap? Hardness, lather, etc?

Goats milk
Lye
Olive oil
Jojoba oil
Babassu oil
Castor oil
Honey?

I need to have the soapcalc website explained to me a bit more and look up some YouTube videos on it. It seems confusing right now

 

[Relle]

Welcome mfl .

 

[DeeAnna]

@mflo3812 -- "...Are there certain nut butters that have worked well for you? If someone had an allergy to nuts, would that be a problem for them putting it on their face?..."

I can talk about the chemistry of soap and what fatty acids contribute what properties to soap. But I don't have sensitive skin nor allergies to these ingredients, so I don't have a lot of dermatological information nor personal experience to offer you.

 

[mflo3812]

@mflo3812 -- "...Are there certain nut butters that have worked well for you? If someone had an allergy to nuts, would that be a problem for them putting it on their face?..."

I can talk about the chemistry of soap and what fatty acids contribute what properties to soap. But I don't have sensitive skin nor allergies to these ingredients, so I don't have a lot of dermatological information nor personal experience to offer you.

That's alright! I really appreciate you! Thanks!

 

[Tammyfarms]

What's a ... chelator ? #stilllearning

Here’s a great explanation of chelators. https://classicbells.com/soap/chelator.asp

I need to have the soapcalc website explained to me a bit more and look up some YouTube videos on it. It seems confusing right now

In the beginning soapcalc was so confusing! There are a lot of numbers, some of which are very important and others not so important. Here’s a great explanation: https://classicbells.com/soap/soapCalcNumbers.asp
There are great YouTube videos for learning how to use soapcalc.
Regarding your questions about oils, I love a high lard bar for my face and body. I am still learning and experimenting. As mentioned above, what works for me, may not work for you, there’s a lot of experimenting involved to get it right.
There is so much to learn, enjoy the journey.

 

[cmzaha]

Carolyn, do you add sorbitol to this, or any chelator?

In the first batch, I only added in BHT otherwise I made the batch per Cee's instructions. That is the batch that went dossy around the 8-month or so point. On the second try, I added in my EDTA/SG combination along with BHT and Sorbitol it did not acquire DOS but I still did not like the soap. I add a tiny amount of BHT to all my batches.

@mflo3812OH, this is great information! Naive question ... those with nut allergies... can they handle putting nut oils on their face? I guess maybe it would just depend?
Thanks for your response!!

Almond is technically not a Nut!! My daughter is highly allergic to hazelnuts but not almonds which are drupes, but of course, peanuts are not nuts, so one just has to know what they are allergic to. We cannot group all nuts, seeds, drupes, etc under nut allergies, and the definition of actual nuts is a bit of a gray area in my opinion. In other words, you just cannot always know what someone may or may not be allergic to.