How Find a Reciep?

[Moonday]

Hi
I'm started to make soap in last week by finding a book. I have some recipe for making soaps but I have not pure material! In my City I can by NaOH but I think it isn't pure. this is true story about oils too! I can buy some oils but I'm not sure they are pure.
How I can Find how much of NaOH with how much of oils are a true recipe when I'm not sure about percentages?
Another Question: Can I wash our Soap by could water for decreasing lye when I use of cold process?
I make some soap that seem is very alkali when I forced to use more water and lye because water and lye in my recipe wasn't enough!
Thank you for your help!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

If you are changing a recipe in any way I suggest you use a Lye Calculator to make sure it is okay before you do anything - especially as a beginner.

As for percentages, a simple calculation helps:

Our recipe is 345 grams of sunflower, 145 grams of canola (to take your example)

Total weight is 490 grams.

Take the amount of 1 oil and divide it by the total weight (345/490 = 0.7) and then multiply that by 100 to get the percentage (0.7 * 100 = 70 = 70%)

If we do the same for the other oil, we get 30%, which totals 100% with the other oil, so we know we are good and complete.

ETA - I stayed away from lye and water amounts as they should be worked out with a lye calculator based on the oil amounts.

 

[hdicreations]

If you are a beginner, my advice would be to try and perfect a simple 1,2, or 3 oil recipe. You can get your bearings and learn to feel the difference in each batch and also test cure times/mildness. For those oils, most local groceries carry them and since you will be using them (I assume) just for testing purposes, the oils at your local grocery should do. When I first got started, I shopped at Wal-Mart and Kroger for Pure Olive oil, Lu-Anna Coconut oil, and Lard. When you get the hang of things, you can outsource for more exotic oils.

As for Lye, I used to get 100% lye from Lowes for 14.99 for 2 lbs. (which is really high)

As for percentages, the only thing I can advise is to get your hands dirty and your feet wet. You won’t know the difference in oil percentages and how they feel to YOU until you try different ones. But start simple because you can get lost in the oils, so to speak, and end up going broke trying recipes that others have perfected.

I personally use a combination of Soap Calc and Summerbee Meadows’ calculator and resizer.
http://summerbeemeadow.com/content/lye-calculator-and-recipe-resizer
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp

I’m not sure I quite follow the “another question”, but if your soap seems lye heavy, I would firstly recheck the recipe by running it through one of those above-listed soap calculators, making sure your oils/lye/water measurements are right on, then I would re-measure my mold and plug them into the Summerbee meadow resizer. This is show you exactly how much soap for your mold. Then there is the wait. The lye is virtually gone after the first two days of cold-process soap making, but the saponification process continues. I have heard of soap saponifying for 3-6 months!

But whatever you do, don’t give up and keep asking questions!

 

[dixiedragon]

Where are you located? It might be helpful to post a thread with the name of your country. You might find a soaper in your country who can advise you.

 

[OliveOil2]

As said above you really have to use a lye calculator, soap calc is a great one. Increasing your water does not make your soap more mild, the water is just a vehicle to dissolve the lye. Even when you find a recipe in a book you need to run it through a lye calculator, and always measure by weight.