KOH for hard soaps?

[artsycrafty15]

We heat our home with primarily wood so I have lots of ash just lying around. Found out you can make lye, awesome! I have researched a bunch on CP but all I have found is that when using KOH you need to use tallow to make a harder soap. I can't cause my husband is allergic to red meat. And I can't find much of anything on any site that says what types of oils or other acids can be added to make a harder soap. Any suggestions?

BTW I've only used M&P soaps so try to dumb it down a little.

Thanks!

 

[wetshavingproducts]

You really don't want to use potash you made yourself unless you want to make soap the truly old fashioned way. You can't use lye calculators. You won't know how much KOH you actually have, etc etc.

 

[Richard Perrine]

Not certain if anyone is interested, but I have been on a mission to explore lately and just discovered an interest in making soap with KOH instead of NaOH. Trying to determine the differences and pros/cons. I also had a container of KOH that i needed to use as I decided not to get into liquid soap making. Here are my first tests:


The first image is my citrus blend CP soap a couple of minutes after pouring. It was pretty stiff. After a few minutes longer, it softened greatly and heated up. It was gelling! I added glycerin, so the sugars undoubted contributed to the heat. I poured another KOH soap w/o the glycerine and it solidified quickly and w/o softening (soap on right). I refrigerated the bars for about an hour and pulled them out of the mold. A little sticky, but not bad.

 

[shunt2011]

Not certain if anyone is interested, but I have been on a mission to explore lately and just discovered an interest in making soap with KOH instead of NaOH. Trying to determine the differences and pros/cons. I also had a container of KOH that i needed to use as I decided not to get into liquid soap making. Here are my first tests:

View attachment 32343 View attachment 32344 View attachment 32345
The first image is my citrus blend CP soap a couple of minutes after pouring. It was pretty stiff. After a few minutes longer, it softened greatly and heated up. It was gelling! I added glycerin, so the sugars undoubted contributed to the heat. I poured another KOH soap w/o the glycerine and it solidified quickly and w/o softening (soap on right). I refrigerated the bars for about an hour and pulled them out of the mold. A little sticky, but not bad.

This post is 4 years old. Please start a new thread, you can include link to this one but the OP haven't been here in years. Thanks!

 

[Richard Perrine]

Sorry. Wasn't sure. Thank you.