olive oil % advice

[wisoaper1]

Hello

I really enjoy this forum and hopefully you will be able to help me out.

I have been soaping for about 6 months the current recipie I use is as follows: coconut 15oz, (25%) Palm 15 oz,(25%) Olive 10 oz,( 16.55%) Castor 15 oz (25%)and shea 5 oz (8.35%)

These oils plus my water come to almost exactly 80 oz which is the size of my mold

I was looking at some recipies online and I noticed that there was a big difference in the amount of oils used the oils used for the recipies consistently had olive oil at about 40% of the recipie

I came up with these amounts by looking at other soap brands and seeing which ingredients were listed first ( having the higher %)

so,...my question is what do you think about my recipie?
My soap turns out relatively hard but the lather is nothing to write home about

other than reducing costs, what effect would increasing the % of olive oil in the recipie have on the soap?

 

[judymoody]

Personally, I would cut the castor down to 5% and add the balance to my olive oil.

What % superfat are you using?

 

[wisoaper1]

I'm superfatting at 9% the book I used said anywhere up to 10%
I noticed the soap does melt away pretty fast so maybe I should go down to 6% for a harder bar

 

[AlchemyandAshes]

I'm surprised with 25% Castor that this bar isn't sticky and soft. I use up to 10% Castor and lower my Olive Oil the higher Castor I use to balance it out. I'm also surprised you don't have much lather with that much Coconut & Castor since both are used for bubbly lather. Your soap qualities in SoapCalc all fall within the normal range, so if you're happy with your soap, then soap on!

 

[Mildreds.naturals]

I have been trying to find a good liquid soap recipie and have used a similar one: 35% coco, 25% soybean 20% olive and 20% castor but the soap was drying to my skin. It had tons of suds! i'm surprised yours didnt :/

 

[Mildreds.naturals]

I actually figured out last night why it was drying: it was too concentrated

 

[sistrum]

Sorry I'm a little late here, but could you explain what you mean by "to concentrated".

I don't think I've heard of that before.

 

[AlchemyandAshes]

Sorry I'm a little late here, but could you explain what you mean by "to concentrated".

I don't think I've heard of that before.

I think Mildreds.naturals was referring to her LIQUID SOAP being too concentrated and being drying...not her Olive Oil, as suggested by the thread topic I had to go back and reread the post myself to make sense of it :grin:

 

[sistrum]

Thanks,