My First Soap - Please Critique

[Soapy J]

Hello All,

I've been quite the lurker for a while now and have decided I think it's time I made my first batch of soap. Up until now I've only done melt and pour soaps as gifts but really like the idea of making my own quality soap versus buying junk as the grocery store/pharmacy. A little help critiquing my recipe would be greatly appreciated. I'm making this soap for oily but sensitive skin so if you could, please keep that in mind while critiquing. I have my thoughts on how this will turn out based off of my hours of reading but will save those for discussion after this gets going.

The oils listed below are what I currently have purchased with the exception of Castor Oil. Would generic pharmacy castor oil (laxative) be fine for this? I have had issues getting this question answered through my searching.

Thanks for the critiques and suggestions! I'm sure I have left some important information out.

Via Soapcalc:
Water as a percent of oil weight: 38%
Superfat: 7%
Lye Concentration: 26.041%
Water:Lye Ratio: 2.84:1
Iodine: 77
INS 121
No Fragrance
Oils:
Olive Oil: 47%
Canola Oil: 28%
Coconut Oil: 20%
Castor Oil: 5%
Soap Qualities: Value (Range):
Hardness: 25 (29-54)
Cleansing: 13 (12-22)
Conditioning: 71 (44-69)
Bubbly: 18 (14-46)
Creamy: 17 (16-48
INS: 121 (136-165)

 

[judymoody]

The castor oil from the pharmacy is the same as what soap suppliers sell.

I would reduce the canola to 10-15% of your total recipe. It tends to oxidize and will shorten the shelf life of your soap. You could make up the balance with palm oil.

I generally use a 2:1 water to lye ratio but for a beginner, using full water (38%) is fine.

 

[Soapy J]

Thanks for the castor oil clarification. On the palm oil I've been attempting to stay away from it. I'm not a tree hugger but the information out there kind of makes me cringe regarding the palm oil. I know there are sustainable palm oils but I haven't really looked in to purchasing any.

Would you recommend increasing the olive oil % to reduce canola. Originally I wasn't going to include the canola but the price difference was too much not to try. I'll plug some things in soapcalc after work tonight as well.

 

[dixiedragon]

You can also get castor oil at health food stores and Whole Foods. You may find a slightly better price there.

Your recipe looks fine to me. It will be slow to trace because of the soft oils, but that's actually preferable for a new soaper! That gives you plenty of time and you don't have to rush.

You may find this soap needs to stay in the mold for more than a day. Again, that's okay - just letting you know so you aren't taken by surprise. Soaps with a lot of olive oil and not many hard oils (in this case, the coconut is your only hard oil) will take longer to harden, but it WILL get there.

I am not a huge fan of canola, but it's not a bad oil. My advice - go ahead and use it. If it turns out you don't care for it, that's fine. Lots of soapers use canola in every batch they make.

I'm with you - I don't use palm for the reasons you mentioned.

 

[kikajess]

I don't know enough about soapmaking yet (a newbie myself) to critique your recipe, but I was looking for castor oil just last night. I don't recommend buying it at a pharmacy. Out of four pharmacies I checked in town, two carried it. Wal-mart pharm sold a 6 oz bottle for about $6 but was out of stock, and Walgreens sells a 4 oz. bottle for about $6. Expensive! Luckily, there was another health-food store open called Akins. They had a 16 oz bottle for only about $9. Shopping around is worth it!

 

[Soapy J]

I live in a pretty small town but we do have one health food store and a vitamin shop that I will check. (Didn't even think about those places). My wife will appreciate that it costs less as well!

With a soap like this do you guys think 8 weeks cure time would give me a pretty useable soap. When I first started thinking about making my first batch I was bound set and determined that it was going to be 100% castille and go from there methodically adding ingredients until I felt comfortable working with them al,l but the long cure/hardening time scared me off. I don't have the patience to wait 6 months for my first hard bar of Castille! I've read that with these ingredients most say give it 6-8 weeks before using. Feel free to clarify.

Thanks for all of the feedback. I'm on a tight budget so I'd like to make this as good of a first batch as possible knowing that it won't be perfect though.

 

[Saswede]

Your recipe looks good - but like Judy, I'd reduce the canola ....... If you're not using palm oil (I don't either!), you could actually increase the amount of CO to 25% if you don't have sensitive or dry skin. But if your sin is sensitive, keep the CO lower.

If you want to replace the canola, and can get hold of some rice bran oil, it would be a great addition to your recipe.




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[roseb]

I have tried to stay away from canola because my 1st batch ended up having dos and I blame it on the canola. You can buy sustainable palm (grown on farms in Colombia) under the brand name of Spectrum in a health food store. Hope it turns out great! Post pictures!

 

[Soapy J]

I shouldn't have issues getting rice bran oil. On Saturday I took stock of what my local grocery store carried and they had some in the Asian foods section.

I'm not sure how my skin would respond to more CO because I do have fairly sensitive skin. I can only use certain face soaps and deoderants without breaking out in a rash or overly drying out my skin. I had originally thought 15% of CO due to my skin type would be good until I plugged it in Soapcalc and it pumped out numbers that soft. If I decreased my Canola to 15% and increased my Olive to 60% how long do you think it would take to harden up? I know the more Olive oil in the soap the longer it takes to harden but once it does it should be rock solid right?

 

[eyeroll]

I think a 60% olive oil bar will be just fine after a 6-8 week cure. The first soap I made was 75% olive oil and 25% coconut oil. It was perfectly fine after 4 weeks and really nice after 3 months.


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[kazmi]

I'd reduce or skip the canola too. Don't increase the CO if you have sensitive skin. Increase the OO or try rice bran. It has very similar characteristics as OO but it will make a slightly harder bar than OO. I've used high OO or high OO and RBO without a butter or palm and can use mine after 6 weeks but plan on it needing to stay in the mold a couple of days. You will find though with high OO you'll love your soap more the longer you let it cure. The first bar will be nice but you'll love the 3rd or 4th or 5th much more. Plus it'll be a much harder bar that will last longer.

Keep us posted on how it goes and we'll want to see pictures

BTW if you have a membership to Costco get your OO there. A much better price than a grocery store plus their brand works great in soap.

 

[Soapy J]

I'd reduce or skip the canola too. Don't increase the CO if you have sensitive skin. Increase the OO or try rice bran. It has very similar characteristics as OO but it will make a slightly harder bar than OO. I've used high OO or high OO and RBO without a butter or palm and can use mine after 6 weeks but plan on it needing to stay in the mold a couple of days. You will find though with high OO you'll love your soap more the longer you let it cure. The first bar will be nice but you'll love the 3rd or 4th or 5th much more. Plus it'll be a much harder bar that will last longer.

Keep us posted on how it goes and we'll want to see pictures

BTW if you have a membership to Costco get your OO there. A much better price than a grocery store plus their brand works great in soap.

No Costco here. We do have a SAMS less than an hour away and have friends with a membership. I may make two or three different recipes in small batches since I have the oils and see how they turn out. Will probably be the weekend before I get the time though. Thanks for all of the feedback today. It's been greatly appreciated and I will definitely post pics once I get going in this thread so we can all see start to finish. Eventually I'll just have to bite the bullet and settle on my starting point recipe! The decisions...


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[judymoody]

By all means, you can replace some of your canola with olive oil.

If you don't want to use palm (I use organic, sustainable), you can substitute with lard if you don't mind animal fats.

This would work:

coconut: 25%
castor: 5%
canola: 15%
olive: 55%

2:1 water to lye ratio (roughly 33% lye solution)
7% SF

Try a 2 lb batch - big enough to be forgiving of small measurement errors but not so big that you'll be using this soap forever and ever.

 

[pamielynn]

If you are sensitive to coconut you could try palm kernel oil. Gives hardness and bubbles.

 

[Soapy J]

Alright guys and gals. I've finished picking up the remainder of my supplies today and will be attempting a small batch in a bread pan shortly after this post. The recipe I am going with seems very basic (no other ingredients such as EO/FO's) and is as follows:

Olive Oil: 60%
Coconut Oil: 20%
Canola Oil: 15%
Castor Oil: 5%

Water: 38%
Lye: 7% Discount

I've run the numbers through SoapCalc after using the thread on here to determine the total weight of my oils.

I'll be taking pictures for everyone and have detailed notes to share if needed along the way.

Wish me luck.

-Soapy J

 

[eyeroll]

Good luck. Have fun!


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[Obsidian]

Make sure you line your bread pan if its metal. Lye reacts with most metals, especially aluminum.

 

[Soapy J]

Well. Crossing my fingers I did everything correctly. Like I've read on here quite a bit, eventually you just have to make a batch! The only thing I had issues with that stand out would be lining the pan with wax paper and not having thermometers that go down to 90-100 degrees (My fault in making assumptions here with what we had). Here are some pictures. The recipe had a little left over and we had some heart molds laying around from melt and pour so I filled a few of those. I plan on giving these 2-3 days in the mold before I take them out and cut them. Will take a few pictures then so you guys can give me some feedback.

 

[Soapy J]

Well, I'll be taking this soap out of the mold this evening and am crossing my fingers all goes well! I learned a ton just in whipping up this first run and am sure unmolding and cutting this will be just as educational. Will post pictures... (Soap is looking very creamy

 

[JessieD]

Looking forward to seeing how your soap is doing! I've also shied away from the high OO recipes. I'm very curious to see how yours is.

Jessie