Help with Emu recipe please
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ResolvableOwl
Notorious Lyear
If cautious 6% of emu oil is what you want, you're fine. That said, I've never worked with Emu oil, but judging from its fatty acid profile (and as long it doesn't have other adversarial properties like smell) it's one of the few “perfect” oils that give a well-balanced bar of soap at up to 100% usage rate!
But there is another detail that caught my attention. You've added palm kernel oil to the recipe. Is that intentional? Or did you actually plan to work with palm oil? The two are very different in their properties, including saponification value, so you better don't mix them up. (If you would here, you'd add too much lye and create a soap that is slightly lye-heavy, instead of 5% superfat/lye discount).
But there is another detail that caught my attention. You've added palm kernel oil to the recipe. Is that intentional? Or did you actually plan to work with palm oil? The two are very different in their properties, including saponification value, so you better don't mix them up. (If you would here, you'd add too much lye and create a soap that is slightly lye-heavy, instead of 5% superfat/lye discount).
I found some of this recipe and changed a few ingredients….didn’t really know what I was doing. Was trying to keep down the middle in properties. I just would like to use some emu oil…I bought 4 ozs so wanted to use it. Nothing in stone but the emu ….would like to use more but fairly new to trying to compose a recipe. I made some lotion bars with emu and they r lovely….that was a recipe I found online though.
Appreciate any suggestions and thank u for responding. Appreciate it
Appreciate any suggestions and thank u for responding. Appreciate it
First, I'd cut down the total cleansing number that the combination of CO + PKO gave you, from 57 to around 18, especially if you were going for 'middle of the road' in the properties. There is way too much skin-oils-stripping/skin-drying lauric+myristic FAs in that recipe. There is nothing wrong with combining these two oils, but you need to reduce the amounts of each when you do. @cmzaha has posted that she combines the two and likes the effect, but she still maintains the more-or-less same cleansing property as if she were using only one of the two oils, maybe a bit higher, but she can tell you more about that if she sees this here.
And your 52 hardness property is also certainly not 'middle-of-the-road' either. True it will be a hard bar, but it won't last long because it will wear away quickly with all that oleic and lauric and myristic.
Like RO said, perhaps you should use some palm oil (not PKO) to lend hardness and longevity and that would also reduce the overly cleansing property. Or if you do not have regular PO or hydrogenated PO (shortening), then you could try some butters or other hard oils instead. I don't know if you use animal fats, but if so, lard or tallow are some options to lend hardness as well as mildness. I like a combination of Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter or even Mango Butter. Cocoa Butter is the harder of the 3, but they are all fairly nice in soap.
Cat&Oak
Well-Known Member
Isn't it great? It never gets old the researching and testing. Soapmaking is not easy.@earlene
Wow do I have a lot to learn!! Thank u so much!!! I will work up a new soap calc sheet. Appreciate your input
Let me rephrase that: It is easy to make a batch of soap but to tweak and perfect it and work through the many failures to get that perfect recipe, that isn't easy. Good job on doing your research ❤
