help me balance this soap

[Obsidian]

I made this recipe a few months ago and I'm quite disappointed in it. Its drying and leaves the skin tight and waxy feeling. I want to use it in a confetti soap but I'm not too sure what the new base should be to balance it out. Any help? I plan on 1 part old/2 parts new.

http://www.evernote.com/l/ANiMsKXOgf1Ij7eXAXzSpI6VAf_wGc2ouRQ/

 

[IrishLass]

I just want to make sure I am reading you correctly- you want to add the soap you made using the formula in the Evernote attachment as confetti in a new base? If that is the case, if it were me and I also found it to be as you described (drying/waxy), I would use it in one of my less drying formulas, such as a formula with a higher linoleic/oleic profile for example. One of the soaps I make is actually something along those lines- i.e., confetti from a 100% CO formula added to a 65% tallow formula, and it turns out great for me. I scent the 100% coconut part with a chocolate FO and the tallow part with a coconut FO.


IrishLass

 

[kumudini]

Hi O, your recipe looks fine to me, with just 15% CO, it shouldn't be so drying. I have zero experience with lard soaps but from what I heard on the forum, that's not the culprit, I wonder if it's your fragrance that's irritating your skin, in which case repurposing it in a different soap is less likely to produce the result you desire. But it might suit other people's skin fine, why not try giving it to a willing tester.

 

[Soapmaker145]

I hasn't cured long enough. My suggestion is to give it at least 3 more months before deciding. I find soaps with high lard/tallow and high butters need a long time to cure before they stop feeling waxy. My limits right now with a long cure is about 40% tallow and 10% butters (regardless of the kind I use). They still need a long cure to lose that waxy feeling. At 8 weeks, I wanted to dump mine. At 5 months, they are heavenly.

If you decide you don't want to wait, I would use a base of 30% tallow or lard, 15% coconut, 5% castor and the rest your favorite liquid oils (olive, sunflower, canola, apricot kernel, rice bran, hazelnut) and some avocado/macademia (at least 10%). If I'm doing it, I would probably add about 15 to 20% Avocado/macademia oils because I like them, 10% canola and the rest whatever I have handy. These are the oils that feel silky to me, YMMV.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I hasn't cured long enough. My suggestion is to give it at least 3 more months before deciding. I find soaps with high lard/tallow and high butters need a long time to cure before they stop feeling waxy. My limits right now with a long cure is about 40% tallow and 10% butters (regardless of the kind I use). They still need a long cure to lose that waxy feeling. At 8 weeks, I wanted to dump mine. At 5 months, they are heavenly.

If you decide you don't want to wait, I would use a base of 30% tallow or lard, 15% coconut, 5% castor and the rest your favorite liquid oils (olive, sunflower, canola, apricot kernel, rice bran, hazelnut) and some avocado/macademia (at least 10%). If I'm doing it, I would probably add about 15 to 20% Avocado/macademia oils because I like them, 10% canola and the rest whatever I have handy. These are the oils that feel silky to me, YMMV.

Good points, but I wonder about that 10% castor. All things considered, 10% castor is not the end of the world, but in combination with butters and so on and so on...................maybe it's just too much all together?

If I was to add this in to a soap as confetti, I would be tempted by something like a 20/80 CO/lard bar. It increases the overall CO amount, of course, but with a lot of lard and some butters in there, you still have a creamy bar with less than 20% CO.

 

[lionprincess00]

Maybe 60% lard, 15% co, 4% castor and 21% olive.
I'm thinking the castor at 10, you wouldn't need more than 3 or 4% to balance it down some. Added olive to balance out the cocoa butter. This is my basic suggestions. I'd personally use sweet almond in place of olive, but i cant remember if you use and like SA oil.

 

[Susie]

I would use this:

Lard 88%
OO 15%
Castor Oil 2%
Superfat 8%

To balance out the CO, castor oil, and the butter.

 

[Obsidian]

I really think its the coco butter that is bothering my skin. I don't normally use it in soap but I had a small amount I wanted to use up. I wondered if it needed a longer cure but honestly, I don't think that will help at all. It doesn't feel "uncured" if that makes any sense.

The weird coating very well could be increased by the castor. I made a 20% castor bar once and it also left a weird skin feel. Not sure if I want to use high lard, I'd like to add in enough OO to balance it but without making it into a bastile.

I'll go over your suggestions in soapcal, see how they look. Thanks

 

[Soapmaker145]

Good points, but I wonder about that 10% castor. All things considered, 10% castor is not the end of the world, but in combination with butters and so on and so on...................maybe it's just too much all together?

I've never tried more than 5% castor. I would expect the extra castor to add to the waxy feeling but that is just a guess. Have you done any comparisons?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Not at all! But from what other have said with that sort of castor, it can go funny. Curing doesn't help it. So while a cure might help a soap with butters, would it help a buttery castor soap? That was my point. A longer cure helps a lot of things, but a cure is not a cure-all!

 

[amd]

My "Castile" soap is 90% oo and 10% castor. I would describe it as waxy. I have attributed it to the castor. Of course my "Castile" bar is only 5 months old so no idea how it will cure out at month 12.

 

[Kamahido]

I would use this:

Lard 88%
OO 15%
Castor Oil 2%
Superfat 8%

To balance out the CO, castor oil, and the butter.

But doesn't that exceed 100%?

 

[cmzaha]

^^^Yep Susie did boo boo...

 

[lenarenee]

I have so much respect for soapmaker145, but I don't find that lard needs a long cure before it's nice and use mine happily at 3 weeks, although don't usually don't have to.

Is this an unusual recipe for you, ever made anything similar?

Could it be the 20% cocoa butter? That's a very "rich" ingredient to use with lard which is already so conditioning so maybe the clash.

Also, sometimes I wonder about fragrances and their affect on the soap's properties. I swear some can really augment a recipe, and a few seem to detract.

 

[snappyllama]

I'd probably counteract that cocoa butter/castor overload with fairly high OO. Maybe something like:

OO 50%
CO 15%
Lard 35%

I'm not normally a fan of high OO, but it plays nicely with cocoa butter.

 

[Soapmaker145]

I have so much respect for soapmaker145, but I don't find that lard needs a long cure before it's nice and use mine happily at 3 weeks, although don't usually don't have to.

Is this an unusual recipe for you, ever made anything similar?

Could it be the 20% cocoa butter? That's a very "rich" ingredient to use with lard which is already so conditioning so maybe the clash.

Also, sometimes I wonder about fragrances and their affect on the soap's properties. I swear some can really augment a recipe, and a few seem to detract.

I agree with you on the cocoa butter. My point on needing a longer cure is for soaps that combine high % of lard/tallow with high % butters. I've made some batches of high lard, high tallow, and both (after finding this forum), totally out of curiosity. Both were good at 8 weeks and kept on getting better. It's when I mixed them with mango/shea/cocoa butters that the waxy feeling developed and the longer cure became necessary to get a nice soap. This is based on my limited experience.

I think using 20% butters without the lard may work fine but I haven't tried it yet. It's on my list of experiments for this year (individual butters and various combinations). I'll probably add varying amounts of castor oil to the list also. When I run these experiments, I'll report back FWIW. So much to learn, so little time to soap.

I also agree with you on the fragrances affecting the overall quality and feel of the soaps.

 

[doriettefarm]

I have a feeling it's probably the high amount of cocoa butter. I've never been brave enough to try more than 10% for fear of really hard, brittle soap with no lather. I've made plenty of lardy batches with 10% castor and never had them turn out waxy. But I have made a few batches that were high in beef tallow and used PK flakes instead of CO . . . those definitely felt waxy. I know you're not a big OO fan but maybe try some rice bran, sweet almond or high oleic sunflower and see if that helps.

ETA: yay, kumudini is back!

 

[Obsidian]

No, this was the first time with a recipe like this. I wanted to see what a soap with no traditional liquid oils would be like. I'm really interested in your recipe snappy but I was thinking about increasing the coconut to help cut the waxy feel. maybe something like 50% OO, 20% coconut and 30% lard.

I have used 20% shea in a all veggie soap that was quite nice. I'm finding I don't care much for coco butter except as a SF in shave soap.

I've not used this FO in other soap but I have used it in lotion with no weird skin feel.

 

[Arimara]

That's a shame. I borrowed your recipe and used it with beef tallow. I haven't tried it yet but now I have to check mine.

Back. It lathered rather nicely. I'm going to see how my hands feel after I let them really dry.

 

[topofmurrayhill]

I don't know how to balance it by combining it with another soap. It doesn't really work that way. It's about the fatty acid balance of each individual soap and not one making up for another, so I think maybe it would be better to rebatch it in combination with an HP soap to really merge the two.

The proportion of palmitic/stearic in your recipe is very high. I'd generally consider that to be the out-of-balance part. Here is the weird thing: In soaps with iodine that low and INS that high, I use a lot more lauric oil (coconut or PKO) and it works. I have tried every which way to improve them by lowering the lauric oils -- increasing oleic, increasing palmitic/stearic, increasing ricinoleic -- and it always ends up making the soap worse rather than milder.

Based on that experience, I can only offer the odd advice that you could make the soap more mild by decreasing palmitic/stearic and adding coconut oil (and possibly oleic oil to bring it up closer to 40% oleic acid).