Jiggery Pokery

[Colin]

Hi,

I want to make a soap consisitng of the following and I want as much of the hemp and canola oil as possible in the receipie as this is locally sourced and part of what I'm doing soap wise.

Canola Oil
Hemp Oil
Coconut Oil
Palm Oil
Castor Oil
Shea Butter

Playing with the soap cals i'm able to get this and the testing batch is a good soap, but I fear its not hard enough and too much conditioning, can any one help with %'s?

Thanks

 

[akseattle]

@Colin, It will be hard to get a really hard bar using so much canola and hemp. But, the first easy step is to reduce the castor oil.
I think the common recommendation is to keep the castor oil at or below 8%. As wonderful as castor oil is supposed to be, especially for a less expensive oil, too much can make your soap a little sticky. So, you WANT castor oil in your soap, but not that much.

Next, it seems like canola oil is a little harder than hemp. So, if you want to keep the combined oils at 35%, I would reduce the hemp and increase the coconut oil and the palm oil.

If you are concerned about the additional coconut being too drying, maybe increase your superfat or increase the palm oil instead of the coconut. It's great that you are trying to make use of locally sourced products - better for the environment and your local economy!!

You didn't ask about your water to lye ratio. But, it seems like you work with alot of water! I am a fairly new soaper so I'm not sure what your solid fats to liquid oils to be able to have the greater lye concentration. But, even beginner recipes default to 38% water. You have 41%.

Except for my first batch (that had almost no water because I didn't know better and just grabbed a recipe off the internet with the most shea butter I could find cuz I like shea) I used 38% water for about my first 10 batches - I was afraid of my batter moving too fast. But, but the time they cured, they were just small shrunken bars!! So, you could consider 34% of water as percent of oils or lye concentration of 29% . Your soap may feel harder even though it just doesn't have as much water. It cures faster, too without so much water.

Below is your recipe tweaked. It's still not the hardest bar in the world. But, it gets your hardness up to 39, and increases the longevity from 20 to 23.
What do you think?

 

[squidstings]

You could use Fractionated Coconut Oil (MCT) to increase the hardness.

That much Hemp oil could dominate the colour fyi.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Building on @akseattle's comments I would definitely drop the castor oil down to 5% and use the additional 10% of the recipe to add an oil that will help with recipe longevity - either more shea, palm or something else - I use soy wax (GW415) or cocoa butter.

Hemp oil is high in linoleic and linolenic fatty acids, as is canola oil, which can shorten the shelf life of your soap. But at 10% and 20% respectively you seem to be OK overall, so I'd go for something like this:

5% Castor
20% Canola
20% Coconut oil
10% Hemp oil
15% Shea butter
30% Palm oil

If you are making cold processed soap I would change to the lye concentration setting (don't use water as a percent of oils) - and set it to 33%. It's a good starting point.

Let us know how it goes!

@squidstings - I may be wrong but I thought that MCT oil would contribute nothing to hardness or longevity with no stearic or palmitic content whatsoever. But I'm happy to be informed otherwise If I am wrong.