New Crafter needs some help

[Commander Blaine]

Hi All, I'm new to the whole soap making thing, i find it very interesting unfortunately i have next to no experience with it, i own a few moulds , about 10kg of lye and made a batch of soap out of butter just to see what it would be like (bit too greesey for my liking also.... is it molds or moulds? so i know for future reference)

basically I'm doing soap making because i had a type of acne which cleared up with age. the snag i am experiencing now is now I'm covered in grotesque scars from shoulders to toes even then, bad diet causes a small flare up with no idea what causing it.

after some research I've come up with a recipe i would like to try

Shea Butter, Coco Butter & coconut oil, apparently these are good for scars so i would like to combine them to make a soap to help mask / blend in some of the roughness of these scars....

and I'm going to level at this point, my first batch of soap, wasn't great, being butter in essence it fell apart so i come humbly with a few questions.

i have a book on soap & candle making for dummies however its not exactly clear cut with information for me, in essence all i can take from it is "render fat or oil, add lye, let sit, get soap"

i have been reading that you are meant to add water to the mix or something like that as its meant to help the lye, i honestly have no clue, but that's why i am here, to ask questions and learn from my mistakes.

is there a rule of thumb or a table which tells you how much water to use vs how much oil you have used, or a formula to calculate it with, i have found some online calculators but i much prefer to do it myself by pen and paper.

also i would like to ask how do i calculate how much lye to use, again is there a calculator or formula dependent on how much water / oil / fats have been used?

additionally, this soap i am making is relatively expensive for me, so i was also wondering is there a way to make my soap go further, is there something i could add to it to make it thicker, so it doesn't wear down so fast? some form of generic padding this way i can get a longer lasting soap?

anyways, this is my first post, with lots of questions i only just found forums for soap making so I'm jumping at the chance to ask questions.

i hope someone can help me, I'm honestly stuck on this.

 

[dixiedragon]

I love www.millersoap.com. She has some GREAT information, and a bunch of recipes.

When you say you made your first batch with butter, do you mean cow butter? Or cocoa butter?

I've made various combinations to try to get rid of some scars I have, and honestly the best I've found is a product called "Scar Guard". It's in the first aid section of the drugstore and many grocery stores? (I'm in the US, by the way.)

You don't have to render your own fat to make soap. You can if you want, but I don't recommend that until you've gotten a few more batches under your belt. You can make soap with stuff you buy at Walmart. Mine has lard, olive oil, castor oil and coconut oil, all available at Wal-mart.

 

[Commander Blaine]

Hey Dixie thanks for the reply.

i actually used baking butter, it was cheap as hell £1
(I'm in Jolly Old England, my pic should be a guy with a top hat and monocle )

i cooked it up and threw some lye on it, i let it sit for 12 hours then stuck it in the fridge 24 hours.

i tried rendering full fat milk, but it was pasteurized which i later found out was no good, so i had to throw it out.

i don't think we have "scar guard" here, I've seen something which might be the same called "scarepairx" or something like that but its too expensive for me to buy, I'm unemployed so i don't have a lot of money coming in.

a buddy of mine is going to front the cash for this batch, you can't even put a penny on my skin without it touching another scar, I am a dermatologist's nightmare.

i will definitely check out that website for further tips and information, does it have anything about thickening the soap so it lasts longer? if not, given you were in a similar boat to myself, was there anything you did to make your soap last longer?

 

[kaliquen]

Before you make another batch with your expensive oils do a search for how to make cp soap. There's a lot more to it than just tossing lye into oil. Read as much as you can until you understand the process (and the safety requirements involved). Good luck!

 

[Belinda02]

There are a ton of videos on utube. Please don't make another batch until you watch at least 10.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Adding my voice to those saying to do more research before making another batch! The Soaping101 channel on YouTube is a good resource for learning the basics! I would go way back to the early episodes to get the basics. Soap Queen TV also has a four-part tutorial on the basics of CP soapmaking.

Many lye calculators will also give you the amount of water you should use for soap.

 

[Relle]

I can only tell you my experience using Rose hip oil on scars, I'm not sure about old scaring but I found it diminishes fresh scars, but you have to put it on daily for a very long time and it is expensive (here in Oz anyway).
I spell the word 'Mould', that is the English spelling.

 

[dixiedragon]

I'm sorry, I'm in the US. I have no idea what "baking butter" is. But I'm 99% sure you can't make soap with it, or at least not easily! Can you link to the book you got on Amazon or something? I am having a thought that perhaps you got a self-published e-book. I have a lot of soap making books, and I have never heard of one that says "render the fat and throw in the lye."

I am not trying to insult you, but I think you need to step waaaay back. Lye is dangerous and you have no where near enough information to be playing around with it. The Efficacious (sp?) Gentleman on this site is also in England, maybe he can point you to some good UK resources.

If you only want some soap for personal use, you would probably be better off to just buy some from a local soap maker.

 

[dixiedragon]

Let me also add that soap is not a "leave on" product. So while a soap made from scar-reducing ingredients won't hurt anything, it probably won't help a lot. Maybe you could try making a balm?

While this is a lip balm, you could choose to pour it into a container and rub it on your skin.
A simple formula to help guide you in lip balms formulations:
20% Beeswax
25% Butters/Oils that are solid at room temperature. These butters are on the soft side.
15% Butters that are hard at room temperature. These butters are on the brittle side.
40% Oils that are liquid at room temperature

This would make something that is firm. You could also try simply getting capsules of Vitamin e and squeezing them on to your skin.

Here's the scar guard I was talking about:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000RABT8U/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[doriettefarm]

Agree with many other posters who said you should step back and do more research before throwing money away on raw materials. You can make a fine soap with lard/tallow, olive, coconut & castor oils . . . all are available at the grocery store here in the US.

Youtube is a great resource in addition to this forum. You should also become familiar with a lye calculator and there are many online to choose from. I use http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp to formulate my recipes.

I would also recommend reading a few blogs with results of single-oil soapmaking (http://www.zensoaps.com/singleoil.htm & http://curious-soapmaker.com/big-test-100-one-oil-soaps-part-i.html). All of this info will help you decide what base oils are best for you and help you decide on a recipe.

 

[kaliquen]

I agree that a leave on formula would be a lot more beneficial to your scars than something that you wash off. Even just softening up the cocoa butter and rubbing it on would help. Oils don't always exhibit the same properties once they've been turned into soap, the perfect example being coconut oil. By itself it's a nice moisturizer, but in soap it can be very drying and harsh especially on more sensitive skin.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Hello Cmdr.

I agree with the other posts here - look at making a lotion or a lotion bar. I make a simple one with 80% cocoa butter and 20% shea butter. It's a hard bar that you rub on to the skin.

In a soap, lard and palm are very similar to shea butter, which makes me wonder about the benefits of putting the expensive butters in a soap.

Of course, you do have a big bag of lye so you should get some soap made - 15 to 20 % coconut oil, with the rest split evenly between olive oil and palm or lard would make a soap that is really nice, but still simple. Put the % in to the soap calc linked above, set the batch size and then calculate and it will tell you how much lye you need.

ETA - And yes, we say mould, not mold. There are a lot of lonely U's here, as many people are from America and so insist on using colors when they should be using colours and so on.......................

 

[Commander Blaine]

Alright there are so many responses on this, more than i even dreamed of getting after having this post up for one week, i also think there might of been a misconception, I wasn't talking about the soap being a "leave on product" i can understand how it might of sounded that way, what i was trying to ask was how do i make sure it doesn't break down too quickly, soap you naturally use in the shower, how could i toughen it so it doesn't crumble or decay on its own, how do i keep it like a solid mass like how store bought bars are

but i hold my hand up to that, i wasn't exactly clear, posting around midnight will do that though, but moving on

I'd like to clear something up. I understand that i said "just throwing lye in" or something to that effect but it has never been an unstable or casual guess of an amount, it has also always been diluted in water and I've always has eye googles and long kitchen sink yellow gloves as well as a small dust mask against fumes (its all i had, better than nothing )

i understand health ad safety is very important and i have always taken the proper precautions with it, my main issue is that i simply do not know of a lye -> water or lye & water combo -> soap mix
instead of using an online calculator (by the way i am very grateful for that link) i wanted to do it by pen and paper, and learn the correct ratios that way, I'd rather not rely on a tool i can't use when the end of the world strikes it was more a case of if your making 3lbs of soap you use this much lye with it and that is your ratio for soap making in general, i digress though I'll look at the calculator, thank you for giving me the link

DixieDragon, here is this book i bought:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0764574086/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
its an actual book i bought.

next, to those who suggested looking at videos, i have them loaded up i'm ready to watch them, i have actually looked at over 50 different videos, but they all just seem to be a case of "render fat, add lye solution, let cool, make soap" nothing really about calculation of lye to oil, or anything like that.

and @ The Efficacious Gentleman would a hard bar last a long time, would it crumble or would it last a long time?
is there a difference between making soap and a hard bar? so i heat and mix the two butters together and let them cool to make one?

additionally i will definitely look at balms, oils and leave on products and home recipes which have been suggested

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Don't worry, no one was saying that you thought a soap was a leave on product - but it is thought that soaps (wash off) aren't as beneficial as lotions or bars (leave on products) for certain things, and this case is one of them. You really need the butters to be on the skin and stay there, which is not something that happens too well with a soap. A lotion for that would be best, for the scars.

With lye, the amount that you need per oil type varies. 100g olive oil will need a different amount of lye than 100g coconut oil and so on. This is due to the SAP value for each oil. In actual fact, there is also a slight variation between batches of the same type of oil - but it is generally so low that it is not considered.

These SAP values are therefore averages, which is why people will almost always use slightly less lye than is required - known as a lye discount or superfat. Averaged SAP values and chances of measuring issues mean that a margin for error is best!

This is why I just use a calc. You can get the SAP values for each type of oil that you use, put it on paper or in a spreadsheet and use that instead. There are many here who do that, in fact.

 

[Commander Blaine]

also, i caved, while watching this cold process soap making video series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvuWaClMz0&list=PLAADF6209996265D2

i looked at the bramble berry.com soap making App, wow, that's all i can say, just wow! i am loving this App!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

In answer to the hard lotion bar, it is just melt the oils in a double-boiler and then let it cool in moulds. I would say use individual moulds, not a loaf, as cutting it would be annoying.

 

[Commander Blaine]

the leave on soap thing, then that's my bad i hold my hand up to that "Dyslexic thing" can read pretty well but it's understanding the meaning.

good to know about pouring directly into Moulds

but I'm not sure what a double boiler is, is it a specific peice of soap making equipment? (will google it later)

its good to know that others prefer to have spreadsheets too, personally having this app its fast and portable but i don't think it'll hurt to cover all bases on that. is there a download to pre-made spreadsheets on the forums, if so i can have a snoop around

(TEG i liked your facebook page by the way)

I also have the app for this forum on my phone, just gotta say you guys rock

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I think there are some links to spreadsheets. I know that someone put together a good one and asked for feedback, but I can't find it :/

A double-boiler is just something, usually glass, that you put in to hot water or over hot water to melt things without it being directly in the pan. Like you would use for melting chocolate. It's also called a baine-marie (spelling might well be wrong)

 

[Commander Blaine]

Oh right, yeah I keep forgetting that's what double boiling is

I'll take a look around for that spreadsheet a bit later, thanks for answering all my questions and putting my knowledge straight, other then tracing, super fats and gel phase, is there any other stages or phases to soap making I should know about I'm going to build my own custom hand book I think

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I would say that if you are doing cold process, don't think of super fatting as a phase or stage - in cold process, the lye will react with the oils regardless of when you put it in the mix. Getting a mix to trace and then adding in the extra oil does not do much at all. I find it easier to put all of the oils together at the start and only have to worry about scents and colours at the end before pouring in to the moulds.