Palm free harder bar??

[busymakinsoap!]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to soap making and have tried a couple of batches - some with huge success, others not

I'm currently trying to create a recipe which is Palm free, but I'm having issues with soap hardness. I dont want to add to much coconut oil for fear of creating a drying soap, and dont want to use large quanties of butters for cost reasons.

I have read that bees wax is good for hardening the bar, however when I enter quantities into the soap calc, the bees wax actually decreases the hardness??!

I'm confused, any ideas??

 

[dcornett]

Palm and lard are supposed to add similar qualities to soaps if your not opposed to using it, and I've found that using tallow in your recipe can produce a hard, long lasting bar.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

thanks for the quick reply

Hadnt thought of lard! mite give that a try.

Still keen to use bees wax tho, if possible

 

[c.a.p.]

Why no palm? Is it the environmental issue? You can buy organic, sustainable palm from CF.

I use lard in most of my soaps and love it!

 

[agriffin]

Olive oil makes a nice hard bar...though you'll need extra cure time. Babassu is supposed to make a hard bar...I've never tried it. I do love lard though and it makes a nice hard bar.

 

[carebear]

hard = coconut, palm, lard, olive, long cure, babassu, pko, sodium lactate, less water, less "soft" oils, gelling...

I've actually not found beeswax any help

you don't need palm to get a hard bar

 

[AmyW]

My 100% olive oil is turning out harder than my 100% lard bar, and my other varied oils (palm, coconut, etc) bars, only 2-3 weeks since I made them.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Wow Amy that is incredible, I'm even more confused now cause according to soap calc olive oil is bellow recommendations for hardness?

c.a.p yeah is an environmental thing, I'm really new to this and live in New Zealand, as far as I can see we only have one wholesale supplier and their Palm oil does not claim to be organic or sustainable.
(the whole country stoped eating Cadbury's Chocolate when they switched to using Palm oil, Cadbury's had to change their recipe!!)

Anyway I did a couple of 200g trial runs with 2 recipes I invented, and they seem to be harder than my palm ones!! But I guess I have to wait another 4 weeks to 'really' find out.

My recipes are as follows: (wanted to use caster oil but none available)
oo 25%
co 30%
Avocado oil 7.5%
Cocoa butter 7.5 %
Crisco 30%

I tried this a couple of times with different colours and fo, seemed fine

and without olive oil
Avocado 11.5%
co 22.5%
beeswax 1%
cocoa butter 10%
crisco 55%

I used goats milk and added honey and oats at trace. Wanted a recipe with real gentle cleanse

Any feedback or predictions??

 

[carebear]

Wow Amy that is incredible, I'm even more confused now cause according to soap calc olive oil is bellow recommendations for hardness?

yea, soapcalc gets olive oil all wrong - says zero cleansing, yet it's soap and DOES cleanse, and says it doesn't get hard yet it results in rock hard soaps (given sufficient time).

 

[busymakinsoap!]

It sucks that soap calc has it wrong, it really is a trail and error thing....

I just unmolded my soaps, and if what you say about olive oil is right I think I will replace the avocado oil with olive oil when colouring. Its way too green and my colours are awefull! :twisted: (lucky I didnt do full batches like all my other muck ups!)

This soaping thing is so much fun, but can be so unpredictable.

 

[DMCC]

Wow. It does say zero cleansing and low hardness. So how should we go about formulating if soapcalc is incorrect??

 

[busymakinsoap!]

and it says 0 hardness for beeswax, luckily I found info on here that suggested adding 1% to honey soap to increase firmness, which seems to have worked

 

[soapbuddy]

I use beeswax in every batch and people love it. I take the results of soap calc with a grain of salt.

 

[Relle]

Busymakinsoap, I'm in Sydney,you might be able to get castor at a chemist. We have it here in 100ml bottles for $4.99, not cheap at the chemist, but some is better than none. There are plenty of soap suppliers here if you want to pay postage. One in WA, few in Qld, Sydney, just google them.

Relle.

 

[judymoody]

My recipes are as follows: (wanted to use caster oil but none available)
oo 25%
co 60%
Avocado oil 7.5%
Cocoa butter 7.5 %
Crisco 30%

I tried this a couple of times with different colours and fo, seemed fine

and without olive oil

Avocado oil 23%
co 22.5%
beeswax 1%
cocoa butter 10%
crisco 110%

I'm not sure how to respond because your recipes don't add up to 100% But the CO seems high in the first recipe and the Crisco seems excessive in the second.

I rarely use PO and haven't had a problem with bar hardness. I tend to go low on cleansing and high on conditioning because I live in a dry climate. I tend to use PKO as my hard oil along with lower percentages of CO because I find too much CO drying, even at high superfat.

I agree with Irena - Beeswax is great for helping to reduce ash and to add a little more hardness but I wouldn't use it at more than 1% of your recipe. If you use too much it will inhibit lather. It also has a very high melt point.

And yes, soapcalc is a useful tool but use it as a guide, not an authority from which you can't deviate. I've made some very nice soaps that are off the charts according to soapcalc. How much you superfat also can make a huge difference.

Good luck!

 

[turnedlight]

Sorry to maybe put a spanner in the works, but I am keen to not use anything that is of a questionable source too, and if Crisco is anything like Trex (what we get here in UK for veg shortening) then it's probably made using Palm.. I haven't even managed to get confirmation on that because the company wouldn't respond to my enquiries, but I have read that it probably is because it's cheap.. and it won't be the sustainable sort either.. :?

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Sorry to maybe put a spanner in the works, but I am keen to not use anything that is of a questionable source too, and if Crisco is anything like Trex (what we get here in UK for veg shortening) then it's probably made using Palm.. I haven't even managed to get confirmation on that because the company wouldn't respond to my enquiries, but I have read that it probably is because it's cheap.. and it won't be the sustainable sort either.. :?

Yes I have heard that, I live in NZ and have purchased 'Kremelta' which is veg shortening that contains hardened coconut and soybean

 

[busymakinsoap!]

My recipes are as follows: (wanted to use caster oil but none available)
oo 25%
co 60%
Avocado oil 7.5%
Cocoa butter 7.5 %
Crisco 30%

I tried this a couple of times with different colours and fo, seemed fine

and without olive oil

Avocado oil 23%
co 22.5%
beeswax 1%
cocoa butter 10%
crisco 110%

I'm not sure how to respond because your recipes don't add up to 100% But the CO seems high in the first recipe and the Crisco seems excessive in the second.

I rarely use PO and haven't had a problem with bar hardness. I tend to go low on cleansing and high on conditioning because I live in a dry climate. I tend to use PKO as my hard oil along with lower percentages of CO because I find too much CO drying, even at high superfat.

I agree with Irena - Beeswax is great for helping to reduce ash and to add a little more hardness but I wouldn't use it at more than 1% of your recipe. If you use too much it will inhibit lather. It also has a very high melt point.

And yes, soapcalc is a useful tool but use it as a guide, not an authority from which you can't deviate. I've made some very nice soaps that are off the charts according to soapcalc. How much you superfat also can make a huge difference.

Good luck!

Oh my goodness - I see what you mean! Obviously it had been a long day of soaping and I was weary from all that trial and error!!
I am so embarrassed

While trasferring data I confused some of the %'s with grams used :?

I have corrected the recipe to what I trialed and yes you were exactly right! Coconut and crisco were excessive and the amount I trialled was actually 1/2 that

Any way trials came out o.k perfect to cut, fairly good texture, but the colour is awefull - too much green from avocado messing with my colourants, so think I will take that out and play around with something else.

Another thing, I mad goats milk honey and oats from the 2nd recipe and it stinks! Not like burnt honey (I've done that before) I left it uncovered and it is a beautiful creamy yellow colour (with a hint of green )
but........I did use manuka honey I'm wondering if that is the cause??

 

[SudsyKat]

I've heard that sodium lactate helps with hardening the soap as well. I've never used it, but that's what I hear.

 

[carebear]

I've heard that sodium lactate helps with hardening the soap as well. I've never used it, but that's what I hear.

I'll be trying that out this weekend. My soaps are seriously rock hard, but for some that's because I've had the luxury of a looooooong cure time (for others it's the 75% coconut oil LOL).