HELP! Soapmaking Calculator

[DeeAnna]

@DeeAnna The calculations you want to see, do you already know the formulas and you do yourself now?

Yes to both.

...but without frequent testing, what would you suggest as a standard % of purity....

A number of suppliers provide that information -- I know Essential Depot and The Lye Guy do. It would be reasonable to use the % provided by your supplier. I don't think it's necessary to test the purity if you do a good job of providing reasonably dry, air-tight storage. For people who don't know the lye purity, the defaults could be set to 100% for NaOH and 90% for KOH to give those folks something to use.

 

[Dean]

First of all this is awesome. Thx!

I don’t know who Admin is but I’m quite certain she must be an angel from heaven.

My wish list based on Soapee:

Add field to pick soap type... bath bars, face bar, liquid, cream, shaving bar, shaving cream, etc. Recommendations (fatty acid combos, water/lye, etc.) set to selected type.

Use realistic recommendations. For example, I think the realistic range for lauric+myristc is about 10-20%. Tighten up the ranges. They r so broad they’re not very helpful.

Combine Bubbly/Cleansing and exclude ricinoleic acid.

Allow user to enter total weight as an option instead of oil weight.

Change Water Amt to Liquid Amt. Add field to write in liquid types.

Add field to write in fragrances.

Add field to write in additives.

Add process type..hot cold etc field.

My recipie screen:
Sort by name or batch date (default to today). The screen should remember user sort preference.

Add percentage of each oil type and display all other pertinent info in summary.

Public Recipies
Allow recipies to be rated and commented on by logged in users.

This is beyond the scope but maybe as a future version have a vendor screen where users can rate vendors and compare prices.

Thx again.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Use realistic recommendations. For example, I think the realistic range for lauric+myristc is about 10-20%. Tighten up the ranges. They r so broad they’re not very helpful...."

I know this is just an example, @Dean, but the catch with this suggestion is that the 10-20% IS a realistic range for these fatty acids. In fact, it is actually more narrow than what I know to be the typical range for many soapers' recipes.

 

[Dean]

“@Dean, but the catch with this suggestion is that the 10-20% IS a realistic range for these fatty acids. In fact, it is actually more narrow than what I know to be the typical range for many soapers' recipes.”

I know the ranges are debatable and I probably should not have used an example as it could ignite controversy. However, what I was thinking when I wrote that is the ranges that u share. They r much more helpful than the calcs. In fact I wrote them dn and put it on my fridge door. I kind of think of of it as bell curve where u capture just the sweet spot at the top of curve. Thats prob a crappy example too. I had to take stats several times b4 I passed and pretty much forgot it all. Anyway hope u kno what I mean about more narrow and meaningful ranges.

 

[dixiedragon]

Something I'd like to see:

For masterbatching lye water purposes, it would be nice if it told you what your lye + water would weigh at a certain concentration.

Also, I'd like the option to print a very basic recipe - that just includes the weights, oils, and no other info, just because I feel like the page is crowded when I print it.

Also, the ability to search and/or organize recipes. Soapee just saves them in the order you create them in. I'd like to be able search for my All Veggie Soap, or my Tallow Lard soap.

 

[cmzaha]

I have a very simple like...I like a check box next to the oil list so I can check off what I have poured in my buckets. Soapee does not have that

 

[amd]

I use SM3. I like that there is a an option to use premixed lye solution and to enter what ratio premix is.

I don't like that lye solution calculation is percentage. I believe it is lye concentration percentage, not sure (I am horribly math challenged at percentages). What I did for my recipes was go to soap calc and find the amount of water I needed for my water to lye ratio, and then I adjusted the percentage until it matches the amount needed. I would like a water to lye ratio in any calculator.

I also like that SM3 allows you to mark an ingredient that is added as a water substitute and will adjust the water qty if you have that ingredient marked. It's really handy for doing split method with milks, I know how much premix lye solution to measure, how much additional water to add, and how much milk to add without having to break out my calculator.

 

[Alan M.]

What is SM3?

 

[amd]

SoapMaker3 program.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Is there a current lotion calculator working you all use currently?

I actually use SoapCalc to get my amounts in ounces and grams! LOL
I enter the top 12 fatty acids into the column. I start with 100 gram batch. 100 grams = 100%. Easy to formulate in %. I use Joseph Henry's guidelines mentioned in a previous post. Once that's done, I make a 100 - 300 gram trial batch and go from there.

Joseph Henry's is just about the coolest online calculator I've ever seen. User friendly too. The one shown below is all filled in, but you can type in any ingredient you want. Too bad it's no longer working.

 

[Alan M.]

SoapMaker3 program.

Wow! $90. Is it that much better then SoapCalc?

Joseph Henry's is just about the coolest online calculator I've ever seen. User friendly too. The one shown below is all filled in, but you can type in any ingredient you want. Too bad it's no longer working.
View attachment 32110

How much does a calculator like that and SoapCalc have in common? Completely different?

 

[shunt2011]

SM3 also tracks your stock, supplies and will give cost per bar. It's a very detailed intensive program to start. It's much more than just a soap calculator.

 

[penelopejane]

Soapmaker 3 does a lot of these things.
You can adjust KOH purity but not NaOH.
It has liquid soap.
The qualities of fatty acids and the resulting soap are calculated differently to Soapcalc.
It has oz and grams and is easily resizable.

It might be a good place to start to see how it works.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

How much does a calculator like that and SoapCalc have in common? Completely different?

Yes, it's for formulating lotions, cream & potions. Completely different.

 

[amd]

Wow! $90. Is it that much better then SoapCalc?
How much does a calculator like that and SoapCalc have in common? Completely different?

As Shunt and Penelopejane said, SM3 does a lot more than soap calculations. It saves recipes, allowing you to group them. When I make a recipe, it will pull up all of the ingredients in that recipe and tell me if I have stock, am getting low on stock, etc. It will also track cure times, even allow you to edit how much time you want a soap to cure. So, say I make a castile soap that I want to cure for a year, after I make the soap I can edit the cure time to 365 days, and it will keep track of how many days are left in that cure. I don't know if that would be a function that would work well in a simple soap calc, so hopefully someone will chime in if they would like it or not.

As Zany said, it also allows you to enter non-soap formulations.

Oh! I just thought of something. It would be nice on the soap calc if there was a list of ingredients in order from most to least. In SM3 I can export an ingredient list for my labels and it has several options for how to list them (as common name, as INCI, and if I want them from most to least I think are the options). This is really nice so that I can copy and paste it into my labelmaker.

 

[Jenn Lee]

I switched from soapcalc to soapee recently, just used brambleberry calc when I was visiting my mom who wanted me to help her make some soap. I like soapee the best, but it's still lacking a few things that were also mentioned above. I like to have nice, discreet places (that I can print on 1 page front & back for my recipe binder) for each type of additive. I actually made my own lye calculator and have slowly been adding these other items into it, but it's a large spreadsheet and a bit messy thus far. So I have been looking for the following:

Ability to enter purity percentage for Lyes (this is also in the phone app)
INCI names / label generator - preferably not just for the oils and lye, but common additives as well. This can take a while to look up.
Separate sections for additives - sodium lactate, citric acids, chelators, colorants, fragrances, etc. Possibly a space to put in the brand of each as well
Costs calculator option would be great
Notes section broken into time frames - @ mixing, @ unmolding, @ 2 wks, @ 4 wks and so on or options to make your own time notations
Dual lye calculator
Extra acid calculator (for acetic acid additions and such like)
Fragrance calculator
Colorant calculator (possibly not, but wow would that be amazing for some help on getting some of the natural colorants in their sweet spots!) or at least options to check the color it best matches (have this on a phone app that is quite nice)
Ability to save the recipe and then edit to make changes
A basic template for labels would be amazing too!
Box for suggested or manually entered cure date/time

Great idea on another soap calculator!!

 

[IrishLass]

I really like SoapCalc for the brevity of the first few lines, and how it can handle changing from percentages to weights and back (it makes it very easy to resize in SoapCalc - something that Soapee is not great at).

Ditto that. SoapCalc's ability to quickly/easily resize and do weight/percent or percent/weight conversions (in either pounds, ounces or grams) is one of the few reasons why I prefer using SoapCalc instead of Soapee....and not just for soap either. I take advantage of that feature in SoapCalc every time I formulate things such as fragrance blends, oil cleansers, lotions, lip balms, body butters, etc..., and even when formulating or fine-tuning my cooking/baking recipes. If you ask me, a calculator without such a quick/easy ability to do at least that is not a handy enough soap calculator....at least not for my needs anyway.

So the lotion calculator would be a separate calculator right? Soap and lotion are two separate sets of calculations? Is there any overlap?

Yes, a lotion calculator would need to be a totally separate calculator. The only thing in common that it would have with a soap calculator would be having a list of oils/fats and the ability to keep track of their weights and percentages for batch size purposes. From there, it would veer off in a totally different direction.

Although a lotion calculator sure would be an awesome thing to have, I can only imagine what a huge undertaking (or rather headache, lol) it would be to create for the use of the general masses of lotion makers or would-be lotion makers at large because there are just so many variables to consider.....things such as the differing preservative systems, the differing HLB systems/emulsiying systems, differing thickeners, additives, cationic ingredients & ionic ingredients and what things work or don't work with each, etc., etc., etc. DeeAnna touches on all these things in this post here.

I know of folks such as Arimara that have customized one for themselves based on the specific oils fats, emulsifier and preservatives they like to use for their own formulations, but I have no clue how one would go about creating a user friendly one that can take into consideration all the differing variables and that that anyone from beginner to expert can use just as easily as they would a soap calculator.


IrishLass

 

[Alan M.]

I need some testers. If you have some time to test a new soap calculator please post here or PM me and I will add you to the private forum.

 

[artemis]

I need some testers. If you have some time to test a new soap calculator please post here or PM me and I will add you to the private forum.

Me! Me! I like to test things.

Edit to Add: Please. (sorry, I got a little carried away)

 

[OldHippie]

I will participate as a tester.