Mango Butter replacement for Stearic Acid - soap is MUCH harder! ???

[RogueRose]

My recipe called for 2% Stearic Acid and I decided to replace it with Mango butter b/c it fit the needs of the recipe better. The soap needed to be semi-soft and it was pretty much with my original recipe with the 2% stearic. I figured by switching that little 2% with mango butter may make the soap a little softer and give a better conditioning factor which I wanted.

The strange thing is, this soap has become MUCH harder within 30-36 hours after pour while the same soap is still semi-soft after 4 months!

Here are the attribures of Stearic vs Mango

Mango butter / Stearic Acid
49 / 99 hardness
0 / 0 cleansing
48 / 0 Conditioning
0 / 0 Lathe
49 / 99 Creamy

Can anyone explain why this might be happening or give any iinsight ast to why?

The rest of the ingredients I don't think are that important, but are EVOO, Hemp, Avacado, Castor, Grapeseed, & peach kernel each about 16% (with 2% stearic or Mango butter).

Does anyone know why this might happen?

 

[Serenity]

Hi RogueRose

That's an interesting recipe. I'm wondering why it needs to be semi-soft. I know that just 1-2% of cocoa butter or beeswax can be used to harden cp soap and mango butter is only a little bit softer than these. I often use up to 5% shea butter to help harden my bars and shea is softer than mango butter. Even that small amount helps make them harder. Without the mango butter, your recipe sounds like it would be very soft. 16% castor oil is a lot!

I don't know much about the chemical composition of stearic vs mango. I couldn't view your attachments. But I read that soy wax has a similar composition to stearic acid and might be able to be used as a substitute.

 

[RogueRose]

IDK what happened to the image I posted but I couldn't get it to show up in editing either. I posted the characteristics for the 2 "oils"

Yes, the bar needs to be very soft. it's even made with KOH.

 

[Serenity]

You'd probably need to research the fatty acid profile of stearic acid to find something similar in composition.

 

[RogueRose]

You'd probably need to research the fatty acid profile of stearic acid to find something similar in composition.

I have done that and by adding the Mango butter it should have made the soap even softer, more conditioning and more creamy.

The soap Ihad before with the same recipe w/ stearic acid was about the consistency of vasoline but maybe a little firmer. By exchanging the Steatic with Mango, I should have had a softer bar, more conditioning and creamier. We are only talking about 2% of total oils, so it shouldn't make much difference which is why I'm so confused.

The recipe with Mango butter is more like a castile after 4-5 days (fairly hard, can dent with fingernail). This just doesn't add up.

 

[skayc1]

Mango Butter is a hard oil, it will help make a harder bar, not a softer bar.

 

[RogueRose]

Mango Butter is a hard oil, it will help make a harder bar, not a softer bar.

Well when you compare Mango to stearic, the mango is 1/2 as hard as the stearic. This is why I'm so confused. Stearic acid will give the ahrdest bar possible so when I switched to a butter that is only 1/2 as hard but my soap came out MUCH harder than the original recipe, I was just totally confused.

I had never used mango butter before so that is why I posted. I thought maybe someone else had run into something like this so at least I wasn't alone. ...

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

The hardness is not really a well named characteristic - if you make two soaps and one is cp, the other hp, you'll have two different physical hardnesses. Or look at co - produces what it in effect a bar that you can use as a hammer, but is in comparison to SA much less hard by the numbers

 

[RogueRose]

The hardness is not really a well named characteristic - if you make two soaps and one is cp, the other hp, you'll have two different physical hardnesses. Or look at co - produces what it in effect a bar that you can use as a hammer, but is in comparison to SA much less hard by the numbers

Ok well I can agree with that, but I'm talking about 2% of the total oil volume here! This is totally unexplainable from what I've experienced before (never used mago before). 2% of a softer oil/butter should not make a VERY soft/mushy bar turn into a very substantially hard bar. That just doesn't make sense especially looking at the acid's in the butter. it's 45% Oleic (which is a little lower than olive oil) and 42% Stearic & 3% Linoleic --- WHILE Stearic Acid is 99.5% Stearic acid which produces that hardest bars along with Palmitic.

Since Mango is almost 1/2 Stearic acid, then there should really be no difference in this formula because we are talking about a 2% change in oils, which is really only about a 1% change b/c of the stearic acid in Mango butter.

I'll have to try another batch and see what happens. Who knows, maybe I had some bad ingredients or something from the original batch that was so soft, or maybe the mango or stearic acid wasn't correct (even though I've used the stearic like 10 times so far.