Next few thingies

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm undecided which of the following projects to tackle next. Reasonably – neither. But you know how the game goes, and maybe you know this wonderful, slightly sarcastic, and painfully true adage of G. B. Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

• It's about time to give those elusive glycerin rivers another chance. I've already stolen taken inspiration from the tried-and-tested recipe of @KiwiMoose, and invested into cosmetic-grade TD, shea butter, and equipment for more aggressive CPOP (heating pad).
• Eventually get my hands dirty with EOs in CP soap. I somehow feel like I might extend the Longest lasting EOs thread by the minty EOs that have started building up around here.
• Wonderful @Ladka has sent me a brick of her self-rendered tallow , and I'm long overdue to make something fancy out of it.
• I still haven't had a chance to mess around with my new canola wax yet. Some poor lab assistant has to determine its saponification value . And I actually have got an idea how to reverse-engineer its FA profile.
• Fortune has also played a portion of lard into my hands. Planning for a 75% bar, to expose my inner critic to it, and challenge how much of the raving and/or refusal of pig juice is justified or just folklore.
• ZCS swirl – Scent a batter with discolouring vanilla FO, split it, add ZCS but only to one part, and do a swirl design.
• And a ton of other things, some of which I have already spoilered across SMF. (I've found that the chances for a project to be put into practice, increase with the degree of public announcements. That's also part of the reason why I started this thread ).

It's out of question that sooner or later I will do all of these – I'm just unsure about the order in which to be unreasonable. Opinions?

 

[gww]

Good on ladka
Cheers
gww

 

[dibbles]

If there isn't one you clearly want to do first, leave it to fate. Write all of your ideas on slips of paper, put them in a jar and draw one out. Or make something with Ladka's tallow - and EO (two birds, one stone soap).

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Please consider being a tad more reasonable with the lard initially if you are a skeptic - I am a lover of the lard but generally use it at 50% and am not sure what even I would think of a 75% bar. So if you do make a 75% bar first, please don't judge lard on that alone if you find it is a disappointment

 

[KiwiMoose]

Glycerin rivers! Go for circa 28% lye concentration. Be totally unreasonable!

 

[Ladka]

I'm for tallow and lard.
I mostly use lard in quantities below 50 % of total oils.
The only time I used more lard was about two years ago when I used about 78 % lard, 15 % coconut oil and castor oil in a batch of about 350 g total oils. The batter took ages to trace and the soap felt oily. I never took care to find the reason and I have no bar left to see how it would behave after two years.
Re your testing the characteristics of lard soap using 75 % makes me think of, say, 75 % olive oil soap or 75 % coconut oil soap. They are both wonderful in combination with other oils but very specific in such high percentage, IMHO.

 

[gww]

I am new and admit to using 75% lard (or bacon fat) on most of my soaps and at least 55%. I can only compare with soap my daughter made that had low lard and lots of things like goats milk and oats. I can tell very little difference but think I like the lard best and believe my wife does too. I made one batch 100% and the only thing I can say about it is that it is lasting forever compared to the ones with 20% coconut oil. 100% cleans and washes off well but does not bubble and I have not made more. I may be missing something due to not having a wide selection to compare against but have felt little need to make much adjustment to the high lard bars. But I am new as heck. I really like lard due to price and ease of working with it. It has been pretty stable and acts pretty much the same every time.
Cheers
gww

Ps I have really hard water and it may make a difference on how greasy soap makes you feel, I know it does on commercial soap.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

OK, I'll obey . First in line will be the oink bar – but I'll step back to 65% lard. Plus 20 canola, 10 CO, 5 castor, with 95/5 dual-lye, sorbitol, CPOP. I really want to employ the lard first in a soap where it is the only hard oil.

It shall also be the stage for the ZCS swirl as well. The SDS of my vanilla FO has listed vanillin at “1–2.5%”. The article description warns: “This fragrance oil will darken the soap after a few days.” We'll see if/how it does, and what @Todd Ziegler's ingenuity can do about it. I have the hesitant performance of @CreativeWeirdo's coffee beans in mind (December Un-Challenge - Retry), and my FO is even lower in vanillin than Santa's Pipe. I guess there's a way to find out .
Hanger swirl? ITP? Ohhh, decisions…

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Isn't that a great colour for a vanilla soap? Let's hope that nothing nasty will happen to it!

 

[dibbles]

Very pretty color - is there some lollipopping going on with the pour?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Yes! I decided to resort to a proven design, and made a Lollipop swirl.
Unlike my (and your ) red palm adventures, I've got the colour from unrefined canola oil (20%, this is the first time I'm using it in bar soap; it makes a lovely, deep orange-yellow LS without staining woes).

 

[Microchick]

What is ZCS?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

@Todd Ziegler's DIY vanilla colour stabiliser, made from darkroom (thiosulfate) and winemaker's (bisulfite) supplies.
(Not sure about the etymology, but AFAIK the Z immodestly stands for Ziegler)

 

[Ugeauxgirl]

OK, I'll obey . First in line will be the oink bar – but I'll step back to 65% lard. Plus 20 canola, 10 CO, 5 castor, with 95/5 dual-lye, sorbitol, CPOP. I really want to employ the lard first in a soap where it is the only hard oil.

It shall also be the stage for the ZCS swirl as well. The SDS of my vanilla FO has listed vanillin at “1–2.5%”. The article description warns: “This fragrance oil will darken the soap after a few days.” We'll see if/how it does, and what @Todd Ziegler's ingenuity can do about it. I have the hesitant performance of @CreativeWeirdo's coffee beans in mind (December Un-Challenge - Retry), and my FO is even lower in vanillin than Santa's Pipe. I guess there's a way to find out .
Hanger swirl? ITP? Ohhh, decisions…

Interested to hear your results. I've made high percentage animal fats bars (lard, tallow and lard+tallow) and they're best after an 8 week cure. 12 is even better. Welcome to the dark side....

 

[Zany_in_CO]

65% lard. Plus 20 canola, 10 CO, 5 castor, with 95/5 dual-lye, sorbitol, CPOP. I really want to employ the lard first in a soap where it is the only hard oil.

GAH! And to think that Grandma's Old Fashioned Lard Soap was simply lard + water + lye!
I still make it that way today for a 95-year-old geezer pal that loves it. Says it reminds him of his childhood.

 

[Ugeauxgirl]

I've made one that is 75% lard, 20% coconut and 5% castor that is very nice.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

@Zany_in_CO Welcome to the HIPSTERY DARK side of soaping!

Mini update: I did not CPOP the lollipop since I wasn't sure how heat-resistant the plastic of the tube is (I wasn't keen on a mishap like @KimW 's oil bottle disaster back in April). Upside: the colour has lightened a bit, and it now really looks like vanilla pudding! No discolouration yet (44 hours in). I have kept the pouring beakers uncleaned, to watch when/if things start getting brown. Just a bit of soda ash so far…

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I say go for the 75% lard recipe and then be surprised by how nice it is. The only thing that keeps me from using 80% lard is my nose.

 

[AliOop]

Interested to hear your results. I've made high percentage animal fats bars (lard, tallow and lard+tallow) and they're best after an 8 week cure. 12 is even better. Welcome to the dark side....

Totally agree about the extra aging required. But lard is all lightness and good, no darkness at all!

@Todd Ziegler's DIY vanilla colour stabiliser, made from darkroom (thiosulfate) and winemaker's (bisulfite) supplies.
(Not sure about the etymology, but AFAIK the Z immodestly stands for Ziegler)

Actually, ZCS stands for Zigali's Color Stabilizer. The truth is that @Todd Ziegler was super modest and was trying to name it after me, because it was my question about homemade VCS that got him started on the now-famous experiment that resulted in the even more famous recipe. I insisted that he needed to take credit since he did all the heavy lifting. We finally agreed on Zigali's, which I must admit, does have a certain ring to it.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Shy of three days in, it's been unmoulding time! Fair enough, the yellow has mellowed out quite a bit, but it' still entirely acceptable for a soap that smels like vanilla pudding . Tbh, there is a noticeable lard smell too. Let's see who would win in the end.

Still not the faintest hint of browning yet.

I kneaded the leftovers/trimmings into a soap ball (right) that is similar enough in size to the actual soaps that I might call this session officially “zero waste”. If the un-ZCS-ed part would sometime decide to turn brown, I can see how a CP soap would look like with about half the recommended ZCS dose.