Oil Substitution... Help?

[BekkahBoo]

I'm still fairly new to the soap-making process and am trying a new recipe. It calls for 6.5 oz. Soybean oil. Can I substitute this with 6.5 oz. Olive oil?

Recipe is as follows:
-2.1 oz cocoa butter (refined)
-9.5 oz 76 degree melt coconut oil
-4.4 oz refined sunflower oil
-6.5 oz soybean oil
-1.5 oz apricot kernel oil
-5 oz lye
-1 TBSP white kaolin clay
-3 oz castor oil
-9 oz palm oil
-1 oz lanolin butter
-12 oz distilled water
and
-2 oz vanilla essential oil


ALSO, is there anything I can substitute for Lanolin Butter?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Pop over to soapcalc and do the following -

enter Soybean oil as the only oil, set the % to 100.
click on the calculate the recipe button - you don't need to change or enter anything else at this point.
select olive oil from the oil list - the two sets of numbers listed will now compare the two oils, side by side.

This allows you to check every oil in soap calc against another regarding what can be subbed and so on.

Of course, you need to go to soapcalc for subs as you need to run all changes through a lye calculator for changes in SAP values.

 

[IrishLass]

ALSO, is there anything I can substitute for Lanolin Butter?

Here are some possible subs for lanolin, although as the good Gent mentioned above, you'll need to run any subs through a lye calculator to get the correct SAP value:

cupuacu butter
shea butter
jojoba oil


IrishLass

 

[SoapBro]

Here are some possible subs for lanolin, although as the good Gent mentioned above, you'll need to run any subs through a lye calculator to get the correct SAP value:

cupuacu butter
shea butter
jojoba oil


IrishLass

i've never used cupuacu butter so i really dont know anything about it, but lumping jojoba with shea? you cant even use jojoba as 100% of the oil in soap because it will separate into a caustic mess, probably do to being a liquid wax and all, so how can it be interchangeable with shea? :crazy:

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

i've never used cupuacu butter so i really dont know anything about it, but lumping jojoba with shea? you cant even use jojoba as 100% of the oil in soap because it will separate into a caustic mess, probably do to being a liquid wax and all, so how can it be interchangeable with shea? :crazy:

But in this recipe it isn't 100%, so we are looking for the effects of an oil at these amounts rather than something that can always be swapped out - sometimes it can, of course, like palm-lard-tallow being pretty much there. But when something has no direct match, we can still find possible things to use instead.

As an example, castor has no real substitute, but some sugar can get more bubbles in there if that is what the castor is being used for.

 

[ClaraSuds]

I would just replace the soybean with more sunflower and the lanolin with more cocoa or palm. To be honest I can't imagine that soap is going to be anything fantastic. It has so many different ingredients in small quantities that no one of those ingredients will really shine. My guess is you'll end up with a more expensive version of a soap you could have made with palm, cocoa butter and apricot oil.

I can understand these kinds of recipes if you have a heap of ingredients on hand and just want to use them all up. But if you were starting out and had to buy all of that for a small batch of soap....expensive and unnecessary. The soap I used to buy was a 8 ingredient one. Yeah it was nice soap, but so is every other bar of soap I've made since, with just 1-2 oils in them.

 

[ClaraSuds]

i've never used cupuacu butter so i really dont know anything about it, but lumping jojoba with shea? you cant even use jojoba as 100% of the oil in soap because it will separate into a caustic mess, probably do to being a liquid wax and all, so how can it be interchangeable with shea? :crazy:

Because both have high levels of non-saponifiables, as does lanolin.

 

[SoapBro]

Because both have high levels of no-saponifiables, as does lanolin.

But in this recipe it isn't 100%, so we are looking for the effects of an oil at these amounts rather than something that can always be swapped out - sometimes it can, of course, like palm-lard-tallow being pretty much there. But when something has no direct match, we can still find possible things to use instead.

As an example, castor has no real substitute, but some sugar can get more bubbles in there if that is what the castor is being used for.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...you cant even use jojoba as 100% of the oil in soap because it will separate into a caustic mess..."

And lanolin would also be a disaster at 100% of the soaping oils. But you're comparing apples and oranges. This recipe has only a small % of lanolin, so it would only have a small % of jojoba if the OP does a direct sub. So no disaster likely.

 

[Dahila]

I doubt jojoba will make any difference in this soap. Why beginners (I consider myself the beginner too) why they want that complicated soap. What's wrong with 3 or 4 oils soap?

 

[DeeAnna]

There's nothing wrong with it. Most of my recipes generally have 3-4 oils. But it sounds to me like the OP is using someone else's recipe, probably out of a book or blog. I think many authors of books and online blogs feel obligated to create complicated recipes with exotic ingredients to dazzle and amaze their readers. How is a new soaper to know that she's being asked to run before she can walk?

For example, the first two recipes in one "beginning" soapmaking book call for beeswax to be added, with no instructions on how to use it properly and no caution that beeswax is difficult to work with so not the best ingredient for a person to use in her first soap. Another book directed toward beginners also called for beeswax in a shampoo soap recipe. In the notes, the author explained how the wax would make cute little lumps in the soap, which tells me he had no clue about how to work properly with beeswax, and he's passing on that misinformation to his readers.

Frankly, I can see why it's hard for a beginning soaper to have a good sense of perspective about where to start, unless she's lucky enough to find a ~real~ beginning soapmaking book that's honestly slanted toward beginners. On top of that, it's also hard (speaking from experience) to rein in one's newbie enthusiasm and start with a simple, classic recipe.

 

[TRBeck]

I was a homebrewer before I started soaping, and the tendency is the same. It's tempting to want to just throw every ingredient in the book into a batch - this one for conditioning! this one for bubbles! this one for making the waters part! - especially since you can find descriptions on various sites for most any oil in the world that make it out to be the Best. Thing. Ever.

Just as you'll never get all homebrewers to start with a simple pale ale, you'll likely never get first-time soapers to make a simple tallow-olive-coconut bar. A shame, too, for just as there's little better than a well-made pale ale, the pleasure of using a simple bar of handmade soap is hard to beat.

DeeAnna, I nominate you to write the beginner's guide filled with simple, straightforward recipes that work.

 

[DeeAnna]

"....there's little better than a well-made pale ale, the pleasure of using a simple bar of handmade soap is hard to beat...."

Um, well, what about a simple soap made with that simple pale ale? :angel:

 

[Susie]

"....there's little better than a well-made pale ale, the pleasure of using a simple bar of handmade soap is hard to beat...."

Um, well, what about a simple soap made with that simple pale ale? :angel:

It will overheat and take away from the simplicity of the 3-4 oil soap, LOL.

OP, truly all you need right now is 3-4 oils. Period. I have been making soap a couple of years now, and I still only use 3-4 oils. It just works so much better now that I know what each ingredient brings to the soap.

Here is a basic good bar of soap:

Coconut 15-20%(I use 20%)
Olive Oil 20-30%(I use 20%
Castor Oil 5%
Lard/Tallow/Palm-whatever amount is left over(I use 55%)

Next, you must learn to use a soap calculator. You can't trust any recipe that you have not run yourself. Here is an excellent tutorial by LunaSkye:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/show...ww.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=49627

HTH

 

[dixiedragon]

I doubt jojoba will make any difference in this soap. Why beginners (I consider myself the beginner too) why they want that complicated soap. What's wrong with 3 or 4 oils soap?

Because they are excited and want to try ALL THE THINGS!!11eleventy

My first batch I split in half and colored and scented each half seperately. It may have been 100% olive oil, which gave me time to do all that.

I encourage newbies to color and scent their first batch if that's what they want to do. With the right scents and colors, it's totally doable.

That being said - there's a lot of pricey stuff in this recipe, and I think the OP is going to spend a lot of $ for very meh soap.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Or worse, think that all that $ is giving the best that a soap can be and so would think that a plain old trinity soap would be terrible. I also agree, basic scent is more than doable and a colour if you must - it makes the first soaps interesting

 

[BekkahBoo]

I would just replace the soybean with more sunflower and the lanolin with more cocoa or palm. To be honest I can't imagine that soap is going to be anything fantastic. It has so many different ingredients in small quantities that no one of those ingredients will really shine. My guess is you'll end up with a more expensive version of a soap you could have made with palm, cocoa butter and apricot oil.

I can understand these kinds of recipes if you have a heap of ingredients on hand and just want to use them all up. But if you were starting out and had to buy all of that for a small batch of soap....expensive and unnecessary. The soap I used to buy was a 8 ingredient one. Yeah it was nice soap, but so is every other bar of soap I've made since, with just 1-2 oils in them.

You're completely right, and I've actually decided to start with a few, far more simple, recipes. Thank you

 

[BekkahBoo]

Thank you all so much for your help and advice. I've decided against this particular soap recipe because I'm still so new to soap making and this became way too complicated far too fast. I'm definitely using all of the advice from this for future soap batches though.

 

[dixiedragon]

Bekkah, check out wwww.millersoap.com. She has a lot of good recipes using easy-to-find ingredients.

Here's a good one:
20% coconut
40% lard
35% olive
5% castor

And you can get all of these oils at Walmart. The castor oil is in the pharmacy section, usually on the bottom shelf, with the laxatives.