Making a harder bar.

[mshearn3198]

Been using some of our bars of soap and have been disappointed that they have gone soft in the soap dish, the recipe is as follows

Olive (pomace) 500g
Coconut 250g
Castor 50g
Shea Butter 100g
Sweet Almond 50g
Babassu Oil 50g

142.69
330g Water

Is there a way of making a harder, more durable bar of soap from this recipe, or something similar. Also does anyone have a similar problem when their homemade soaps get left in a soap dish.

Also what is a good ratio/percentage of hard to soft oils to put in a soap.

 

[AliOop]

Hi @mshearn3198, that is so disappointing when you have a soap that doesn't meet expectations. Here are some of my thoughts about that:

1. Does your soap dish allow for drainage, and drying out between uses? If not, that's the mostly likely culprit. Any homemade bar of soap will pretty much go to mush if it sits in water, has the shower water beating on it, or is used so frequently that it never dries out.

2. Did you make this as hot process? If not, that almost a 2.5:1 water:lye ratio, which is rather high for CP. For CP, I'd lower it to at least 2:1, which means that less water will have to cure out of the soap.

3. How long did you let it cure? The basic recommendation is at least four weeks for CP or HP, but I like to cure mine at least six weeks. Using them before they are fully cured can result in softer, more soluble bars.

4. If I were going to change that recipe, I'd replace the babassu with cocoa butter. The combined amounts of babassu and CO would be too drying on my skin, and the CO in particular is very soluble and can get mushy. The addition of cocoa butter will harden the bar and not be as drying to the skin.

Meanwhile, if you don't like these bars, you can donate them to a homeless shelter, or grate them up and use them as confetti in a new recipe. Either of those options is better than powering through a bunch of soap that you don't like.

 

[lsg]

Fats and oils high in palmitic and stearic acids lend hardness to CP soap bars.