Help with fragrance Oil Amount

[hailinguk]

Hi There,

I've decided to go with this recipe instead and wondered how much fragrance oil you would recommend adding to the batch in mls if possible:

295g caustic soda
615g coconut oil
800ml sunflower oil
800ml olive oil
900ml water

Thanks

 

[honor435]

add castor, it adds alot more bubbles to your soap, 1oz per pound, you can convert on computer.

 

[hailinguk]

Can I swap the sunflower oil for castor oil instead?

 

[honor435]

i dont know mls, but castor you only want about 8-10%, no more.
tell me your recipe in all grams please.

 

[hailinguk]

Hi,

According to onlineconversion.com it says:

295g caustic soda
615g coconut oil

712g (800ml) sunflower oil - I selected the vegetable oil drop-down
648g (800ml) olive oil - I selected the olive drop-down
900g (900ml) water - I selected the water drop-down

Thanks,

H

 

[BakingNana]

I get 281.6 g for lye with these amount with a 5% superfat. Did you run this through a soap calculator? The amount of lye you show is nearly no superfat; not any room for error.

 

[IrishLass]

I agree with BakingNana- that is way too much lye for your recipe as written. I typed your recipe into SoapCalc.net and your superfat level comes out to about .5%, which puts your soap in almost guaranteed danger of being lye-heavy. I'm thinking that you meant to type in 5%, but you accidentally put a decimal point in front of the 5, which gave you a very high lye amount. Unless you are making laundry soap, .5% would be a very bad idea.

That's also a lot of water as well- beyond even what is known as a "full-water" amount- and it will initially give you a very soggy soap that will take a long while to firm up.

This is how I would re-write your recipe:

281g caustic soda for a 5% cushion of superfat
615g coconut oil
712g sunflower oil
648g olive oil
573g water for a 33% lye solution, or you could do a standard "full water" amount which would be 725g of water.

As for a fragrance oil amount, I typed into SoapCalc.net a general amount of .7 oz ppo of fragrance (that's basically my own standard amount for most of the fragrances I use), which comes out to approximately 96 mL or 3 oz (85 g) by weight for your batch.

I invite all my fellow soapers here to doublecheck my calculations to make sure I didn't screw up (it's getting to be past my bedtime :wink: ).

HTH!
IrishLass

 

[dagmar88]

Hi,

According to onlineconversion.com it says:

295g caustic soda
615g coconut oil

712g (800ml) sunflower oil - I selected the vegetable oil drop-down
648g (800ml) olive oil - I selected the olive drop-down
900g (900ml) water - I selected the water drop-down

Thanks,

H

it's 10 in the morning over here, so the grey mass is still fresh :wink:

I think that's pretty a big batch (I assume you're quite new to this?) and I wouldn't use that much sunflower oil.
To see what each oil does when soaped you could take a look at http://www.zensoaps.com/singleoil.htm
Sunflower stays pretty soft and you have a fairly high risk of your soap going rancid.
I'd personally prefer to use no more then 10 to 20 % max.

Like the others sad, you need more superfat (or lye discount) and a lot less water.
I'm totally with agriffin when it comes to castor oil; if you could get some that would be a great addition

Here's what I'd do (without castor):

25% coconut oil (250 grams)
65% olive oil (650 grams)
10% sunflower (100 grams)

139.97 grams of NaOH/caustic soda (5% lye discount)
330 grams of water (5% water discount)

A good and simple beginners recipe IMO. If you want to you could take 15% of the olive oil and add 15% of lard, tallow, crisco or palm. That would cut the costs a bit and ensures your soap will harden up quicker so you're able to unmold and cut sooner.
Olive oil gets super hard but needs a long time to get there and likes a very long time to cure.
My bastille and castille soaps take like 6 months before I'm comfortable giving them away.

Or with castor:

25% coconut oil (250 grams)
58% olive oil (650 grams)
10% sunflower (100 grams)
7% castor oil (70 grams)

139.5 grams of NaOH/caustic soda (5% lye discount)
330 grams of water (5% water discount)

Who's the supplier of your fragrance oils? The amount always differs a bit, depending on the strength of the FO; but when I do test batches I usually go for 3% of the weight of the oils.

Good luck!