Pine-Tar Soap Recipe Feedback

[DomTheDillyHoo]

Hello! Its been a hot minute since I've created some soap, and I found this beautiful blend of essential oils and I just knew I had to turn it into a soap. Please review my recipe and let me know if you think there are any flaws, or there is anything I can do to make the process easier. Decided to add some Pine Tar to fit the theme of the bar, figured I'd move the range at which I'd start working with the lye and oils to a much lower temp than usual to keep the tar from seizing my soap.
INGREDIENTS:

• WATER: 269.34g
• LYE: 132.66g
• OLIVE OIL: 374g
• PALM OIL: 235g
• COCONUT OIL: 235g
• SHEA BUTTER: 94g
• PINE TAR: 50g
• CEDARWOOD ESSENTIAL OIL: 7g
• BALSAM FIR ESSENTIAL OIL: 11g
• CYPRESS ESSENTIAL OIL: 4g
• LAVENDER ESSENTIAL OIL: 11g
• YLANG YLANG ESSENTIAL OIL: 1.5g
• TEA TREE ESSENTIAL OIL: 3g
• DANDELION SALVE: 3 tbsp (optional)
• BALSAM FIR POWDER: 2 tbsp (optional)
• CHARCOAL: 1 tbsp (optional)
• KAOLIN CLAY: 1.4 tbsp

INSTRUCTIONS:​

1. Mix essential oils into a cup, add your kaolin clay, stir and set aside
2. Fill a cup with your water.
3. Slowly and carefully add lye to your water. Stir until the lye has fully dissolved and the liquid is clear. Set aside to cool.
4. In a large pot, combine your oils and pine tar and set on stove on low heat. Turn off stove once oils have fully melted and have been stirred.
5. Add Dandelion Salve, Charcoal, and Balsam Fir Powder to oils
6. Using a Laser thermometer, consistently check the temperature of the oils and the lye-water. Once the oils and the lye-water have cooled to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or below, and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other, add the lye-water and oils to a lye-safe bucket, and stir with a rubber thing quickly until thin trace.
7. Add your mix of essential oils to your soap.
8. Pour into a mold and let sit. Remove soap from mold and cut soap 1-3 days after pouring into mold.

 

[Firefly24]

I am new to making soap but I would think that your recipe has entirely to many essential oils. How did this turn out?

 

[AliOop]

Just ran this through the soap calculator, and that is 4% usage rate on the EO blend. As long as you've run that blend through EOCalc.com to confirm you are within the safe usage rate for soap (category 9), you should be good to go.

I will say that with ylang-ylang in there, that blend will likely accelerate trace. Also, remember that cooler temps can also create issues with false trace with ingredients like pine tar. To avoid that, I like to use the pine tar method used by Elly's Everyday Soapmaking on YT.

Other than that, my personal preference would be to use less CO, but if you know that percentage works for you, then go for it. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[jessica kiefer]

Hmmm.....I've been making pine tar soap with my granny for almost 40 years(Well, watching her)......pine tar can accelerate trace and will. Adding all those essential oils could cause you to lose the soap(Rock hard) before you ever get it into a mold. Seems like you're trying to cure something - what is it so we might be of help??

 

[DeeAnna]

Do you realize that pine tar will accelerate no matter what you do as far as temps and water content?

I'd be mixing all ingredients into the fats at the very beginning of soap making. I would never wait to add anything at trace when making pine tar soap.

Every batch of pine tar soap I've made stays at a normal pudding-like "trace" thickness for mere seconds. After those few seconds, the soap is rapidly turning into unpourable brownie batter.