I did it! Thank you, Irishlass et al!

[coffeetime]

I finally made liquid soap tonight using IL's CP method and it seems to have worked. I was absolutely gob-smacked when the bubbles started to fly. (Nope, not English, but I love the phrase.) It went through all the stages just as described. So thank you, it was so much simpler than I had imagined.

On another point, why is it some recipes call for 2x the KOH amount in glycerine or water, and some call for 3x? I used SM3 for my lye calc and it's set to 3x but the Soaping 101 video only uses 2x.

 

[Susie]

You can make soap with only 2 x the liquid, but the paste is harder and more difficult to stir and dilute. I much prefer paste made with the 3 x amount.

And congratulations on the liquid soap! Welcome to the liquid soap portion of the addiction!

One of the many great things about liquid soap is that it requires no cure time, and you can store your paste until you need it.

 

[coffeetime]

Unbelievable! The paste was zap free in less than an hour with no stick blender used. And it's so beautiful! The paste looks like a big pot of hardened amber. I love this!

Thank you Susie. I did use the 3x and it worked perfectly so I'll keep using that. Now to figure out dilution/scenting/etc.

Have you ever used infused oils as part of your recipe for colour? I have alkanet-olive oil that I could use. Do you know of a list somewhere of oils and their properties in liquid soap?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

With LS, a little scent goes a VERY long way. I used 5% in my last one and it is really far too much

 

[gigisiguenza]

Unbelievable! The paste was zap free in less than an hour with no stick blender used. And it's so beautiful! The paste looks like a big pot of hardened amber. I love this!

Thank you Susie. I did use the 3x and it worked perfectly so I'll keep using that. Now to figure out dilution/scenting/etc.

Have you ever used infused oils as part of your recipe for colour? I have alkanet-olive oil that I could use. Do you know of a list somewhere of oils and their properties in liquid soap?

This is a really good pdf put out by Nature's Garden with oil properties
Hope this helps

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...Cwdlxhm70Ra7p6b-boqA&bvm=bv.103627116,d.aWw

 

[coffeetime]

Thank you, Gigi, but that is for bar soap, and I'm not sure if it translates to liquid soap. Does it? Or is the reaction with KOH going to produce different qualities than NAOH?

 

[IrishLass]

Congratulations, Coffeetime! Welcome to your new addiction! Doing a happy dance for you!

Ditto on the 'less is more' when it comes to scenting liquid soap. I find I only need to use between .3% and 1% FO as per the total weight of my diluted soap (depending on the strength of the particular FO I'm using).


IrishLass

 

[Susie]

I do infuse oils for color in bar soaps, but liquid soap colors so well with colorants I already have, that I just never bother.

 

[coffeetime]

I did a little hunting around and found this write up on the properties of single oil liquid soaps. It's a paragraph in the middle.
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/Soapmaking101/liquidsoap.html

 

[coffeetime]

I have now joined the Yahoo liquid soaping group as well so I can pick their collective brain. This stuff is fascinating!

 

[Susie]

That's where I got the whole CP process from. Great group of folks.

 

[Misschief]

I have now joined the Yahoo liquid soaping group as well so I can pick their collective brain. This stuff is fascinating!

I keep forgetting that I've joined a couple of groups on Yahoo. Thanks for the reminder!