Palm oil: refined or not?

[blue hill]

Hi all! For my second and third batches of soap so i decided to go ahead and use unrefined palm oil which as you may know is orange in color and quite different in consistency from the refined type. I found that it stained my white spatulas and one batch of soap turned out the same color as the oil, orange(but i guess thats good because it is a citrus soap??). Im worried it might stain the skin of the person who uses it (im guessing that will be me). The orange colour in the other batch was only covered up because i used coffee and so its brown at the moment.
So, do you use refined or unrefined palm oil and do you notice a difference in the results?

 

[kellistarr]

I've got a huge tub of unrefined palm oil. I've used it in the past and while it does turn your soap a bright yellow or orange (depending on the amout used) it will not stain your skin. Actually, the big tub that I bought was by accident, as I've used this oil before, but because of the color, didn't necessarily want a huge tub, but that's what I got, so I'll use it, of course. It does make for a hard bar of soap.

 

[Sonam]

I just got a pound bottle from the indian grocery. Glad I read this before I used it, online it says that orange color goes away after being heated.

Does palm contribute to faster / thicker tracing? I tried a batch with palm in it for HP and it was quick to trace and slow to cook.

 

[blue hill]

Regarding tracing, it seemed to me (mind you, ive only done CP soap 3 times so im not that experienced) that when ive used unrefined palm oil tracing has ohappened quite fastm ,maybe after 10 min or so. Also there seemed to be little droplets of fat or water on the surface. I think ill go for the refined next time...

 

[kellistarr]

Color does not go away when heated.