How much exfoliants to use?

[Zing]

I have found recommendations on usage rates for adding exfoliants to cold process soap. But what if you want to use 3 exfoliants together? Say the recommendation is 1 tbsp ppo, do you divide the 1 tbsp by 3 OR multiply by 3? Do you know what I'm saying? With isolation, I'm limited to coffee grounds, poppy seeds, and corn meal. I'm looking to make gardener's soap. My memory is that @msunnerstood throws all but the kitchen sink in hers....and then loses it in her house.

 

[msunnerstood]

Im not sure it was me who throws everything in but I do add more than one at a time and I have done it both ways. If the additives Im using are scratchier ones, I divide it. if they are all more gentle. Ill use the full PPO. Corn meal (Ive never used that one) and poppy seeds sounds like an interesting combination. If you try it let me know.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

i recently put poppy seeds in a soap at slightly more than 1 tsp ppo and it seems like a lot of poppy seeds to me. I plan to try 1/2 tsp. the next time. I will try to remember to take a photo and add it tomorrow.

 

[JuliaNegusuk]

I always use too many poppy seeds. My certified and therefore strictly speaking, unchangeable recipe use 20g for 600g of oils. Much too many. Would recommend half as much. However most people will probably think even that's too much. But I think if you use too few it looks silly and stingy. But I do like to feel my exfoliants. If you are using several different exfoliants I would put less of each in. I have a great working hands recipe that has sea salt , coffee grounds and pumice in. It is really good and everyone loves it but the sheer volume of stuff that isn't oils means it tends to break up when it gets small because there is not enough actual soap to hold it together in its last days of use. Still its very popular, so people presumably don't to mind. The handyman and the farm manager where I volunteer both love it.

 

[michael732]

I am totally new to this but for me, I would rather have less. (Divide) I would hate to have a batch that's to aggressive. And not be able to use it.

 

[blucrsr]

I agree with the others - divide! I have made a coffee scrub soap a couple of times and use 1 teaspoon of finely ground coffee for my 900g oil recipe. There is quite a bit of coffee grounds in the finished recipe.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

I mix poppy seeds in until I get the uniformed spacing that I want. It is strictly an "eyeball" judgment. It is roughly 1/16 of an inch spacing that I shoot for. So far my poppy seed soap testers love it.

For my pumice, I make a bar that has a lot of pumice in it like the liquid lava soaps. I make it for my diesel mechanic friends and they like it to have a lot of pumice in it. For my 100 ounce tw batch, I will fill up a measuring cup to the 250ml mark. I don't know what it weighs but this a very large grain pumice from "make your own" that I use. If you grab this bar by mistake and start to scrub hard, you will definitely feel it.

 

[Zing]

LOL, I made the soap already back in May! Gardener's soap I ended up multiplying and used two types of exfoliants. One half of the loaf got 2 teaspoons and one half got 2 tablespoons. When I said I was worried I used too much, my wife said "There is no such thing as too much exfoliants."