Please help in Palmolien and canola oil recipe

[fnddoctor]

I am a beginner in Cp soap making
Now I am planning to make a cp soap.
My available oil s.
palm olien, Canola, coconut oil, castor oil and rice Bran oil.
Can any one make me some perfect, moisturizing and nourishing recipe from these oils?
Thanks in advance

 

[Ekuzo]

If this is your first time making, my advice would be to keep it as simple as possible. If you have access to olive oil, try combining it with coconut and palm (with each of the 3 at around the same %) and see how you like it. Then take it from there and change whatever you don't like - in the meantime you'll get more knowledge on the soap qualities and what they mean, you'll know the cause and the effect to a certain extent.

If the canola you have is of the high oleic type, you can use that instead of olive oil - but you'll have to check to be sure. If there's high oleic sunflower oil around you, you can use that too (instead of the olive oil, that is).

I see people on the forum like to use rice bran as substitute for olive, even at high % - but it's too high in linoleic fatty acid for my taste. Check the label for the monounsaturated/polyunsaturated ratio to see if it can successfully be used as olive oil substitute or not.

Castor oil at low % is good, but keep it simple the first time - later you can add it in your recipe as well and see how you like it. Unlike the other 3 oils I mentioned in the first paragraph, castor oil is not a necessity (while the other 3, arguably, are).

Don't expect the soap to have moisturizing or nourishing properties. Usually the difference you'll notice is that some soap can clean more 'aggressively' than others, but it doesn't give you the feeling from using balm or lotion - it's purpose is to cleanse after all.

HTH and good luck!

 

[artemis]

... and, if you are a beginner, also stick to small batches.

 

[Ford]

Hi, basic Trinity recipezee....
33% olive oil, 33% palm oil, 33% coconut oil
You could sub canola or rice bran, or split the two. For the olive oil. Using what's on hand. Is a good way to start. Any access to butters, Cocoa, Shae, Kokum? If you add castor or a butter or both. Take from the coconut oil first.

 

[fnddoctor]

If this is your first time making, my advice would be to keep it as simple as possible. If you have access to olive oil, try combining it with coconut and palm (with each of the 3 at around the same %) and see how you like it. Then take it from there and change whatever you don't like - in the meantime you'll get more knowledge on the soap qualities and what they mean, you'll know the cause and the effect to a certain extent.

If the canola you have is of the high oleic type, you can use that instead of olive oil - but you'll have to check to be sure. If there's high oleic sunflower oil around you, you can use that too (instead of the olive oil, that is).

I see people on the forum like to use rice bran as substitute for olive, even at high % - but it's too high in linoleic fatty acid for my taste. Check the label for the monounsaturated/polyunsaturated ratio to see if it can successfully be used as olive oil substitute or not.

Castor oil at low % is good, but keep it simple the first time - later you can add it in your recipe as well and see how you like it. Unlike the other 3 oils I mentioned in the first paragraph, castor oil is not a necessity (while the other 3, arguably, are).

Don't expect the soap to have moisturizing or nourishing properties. Usually the difference you'll notice is that some soap can clean more 'aggressively' than others, but it doesn't give you the feeling from using balm or lotion - it's purpose is to cleanse after all.

HTH and good luck!

Olive is too costly that's why I am not able to use olive . Any suggestions for a recipe from my given oils

Thanks

 

[DeeAnna]

...palm olien, Canola, coconut oil, castor oil and rice Bran oil...
...perfect, moisturizing and nourishing recipe from these oils?...

There is no such thing as a perfect soap. What is nice for you might not be for me. And vice versa.

Also the five fats you listed will require more compromises than I'd prefer. You won't get a soap with an ideal blend of these qualities -- abundant lather, physically hard, long lasting in the bath, and also mild to the skin.

If you want something that moisturizes the skin, you won't get good cleaning. If you want cleaning, you can't get good moisturizing. Let soap do what it does best -- cleaning -- and depend on a lotion or other leave-on product to do the moisturizing.

And soap does not "nourish" the skin, no matter what the internet bloggers say.

So getting back to your first question, of the five fats you have, here's a blend of fats I would suggest:

5% castor oil
15-20% coconut oil
50-65% palm olein
with the rest being canola or rice bran. I personally would keep the total % of these two fats no higher than about 20%

If your skin tends to be dry or sensitive, use the lower % of coconut. If you like a "squeaky clean" skin, then use the higher %.

Based on these fats, the soap will be more soluble in water and thus it will not last as long in the bath. If you use a higher % of palm olein, it's more likely the soap will somewhat be longer lived.

Keep your superfat on the lower side -- no more than 5%.

Use 33% lye concentration to start with.

Learn to use a soap recipe c@lculator to get the correct weights.

 

[Relle]

You can go to Hollys soapmaking and she supplies recipes at the end of her videos, usually with a lot of the same oils, if there is one not the same you could substitute one as long as you run the recipe through a soap calculator.

 

[fnddoctor]

There is no such thing as a perfect soap. What is nice for you might not be for me. And vice versa.

Also the five fats you listed will require more compromises than I'd prefer. You won't get a soap with an ideal blend of these qualities -- abundant lather, physically hard, long lasting in the bath, and also mild to the skin.

If you want something that moisturizes the skin, you won't get good cleaning. If you want cleaning, you can't get good moisturizing. Let soap do what it does best -- cleaning -- and depend on a lotion or other leave-on product to do the moisturizing.

And soap does not "nourish" the skin, no matter what the internet bloggers say.

So getting back to your first question, of the five fats you have, here's a blend of fats I would suggest:

5% castor oil
15-20% coconut oil
50-65% palm olein
with the rest being canola or rice bran. I personally would keep the total % of these two fats no higher than about 20%

If your skin tends to be dry or sensitive, use the lower % of coconut. If you like a "squeaky clean" skin, then use the higher %.

Based on these fats, the soap will be more soluble in water and thus it will not last as long in the bath. If you use a higher % of palm olein, it's more likely the soap will somewhat be longer lived.

Keep your superfat on the lower side -- no more than 5%.

Use 33% lye concentration to start with.

Learn to use a soap recipe c@lculator to get the correct weights.

Thanks
Please can you explain why using 33% lye concentration?
And can palm oil or palm olien soap make skin black?
Like I heard from some one that using palm olien or palm oil on hand or face they make them black..

Thank again

 

[artemis]

And can palm oil or palm olien soap make skin black?

Thank again

No. Palm oil will not affect your skin color.

If you use red palm oil, it will make your soap yellow/orange and may tint your lather. Some say it can stain a wash cloth, so I suppose it's possible that red palm might temporarily stain your skin. However, I never had either palm or red palm stain my skin.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Can you get palm (solid at room temperature) instead of Palm olein ( the liquid fractions of palm oil)? It would be better for soap than palm olein.

 

[Ford]

Hi,
taken from info posted so far....

Palm olien 60%
Coconut oil 20%
Rice Bran oil 15%
Castor oil 5%
33% lye concentration.
3% super fat

Run this thru a calculator. To get your quantities. Start small, as suggested. 500 grams / 16 ounces is a good place to star.

Good Luck.......

 

[DeeAnna]

...why using 33% lye concentration?...

It's a lye concentration that works well for many soap recipes. There is no magic to 33% lye concentration, however. If you want to use a different setting, that's fine too.

 

[Ekuzo]

Olive is too costly that's why I am not able to use olive . Any suggestions for a recipe from my given oils

Thanks

In that case what I'd do is as follows, in %:

Palm olein 55
Coconut 25
Canola 10
Rice bran 5
Castor 5

Not far from from what the rest suggested. I ran it through a calculator and the result seems pretty decent to me. The 33% lye concentration is a good starting point for beginners, as you have enough liquid and therefore 'should' have enough time to work with the batter, usually. As you get better you can increase the concentration to suit your needs. If this is your first time, keep the SF% at 4-5. Once you get more familiar with measuring the ingredients and figuring in which direction to round your numbers (because you will have to do that with most consumer grade scales and given it's sometimes really hard to separate really small amounts of certain fats without going crazy), just give yourself a good safety margin. Once you are comfortable with that, you can decrease the SF to 2-3%, unless you find a recipe with too much coconut too drying - in that case, you can keep the % or even increase it slightly to your taste. Or you can decrease the coconut content. It may be one of the most used oils in soap making, but some people just don't like it when it's over a certain %.

If possible, find regular (solid) palm oil, as the rest suggested. Its fatty acid profile may look close to the liquid one (according to the calculators we use and which you need to get familiar with before making your own soap), but I'm pretty sure there will be some difference in the finished soap and overall, using regular palm oil should be a better choice. But if olein is all you have, you can try with it and share how it goes and how your soap turns out - I'm curious how it is since I haven't used it in soap, and maybe the difference is too small to notice, who knows?

The forum has tons and tons of information, make sure to explore and research some more. Once you are able to make your own recipe from scratch (if that's what you are going for), you'll be like 'ahaaaaa, so that's how it works!'. And after that you won't listen to people telling you rumors like soap darkening your skin and such

 

[Chaiat5]

Hi @fnddoctor … WELCOME!

I’m new at this too! I can’t give much in the way of soap making advice — there are loads of very talented people who can give you that help.

I just wanted to encourage you Be patient about collecting a good stash of ingredients. It can be a pricey passion — ingredients like cocoa, shea and mango butters are so expensive here in Pakistan, where I am based (taxes!!), never mind olive oil… so I get your difficulties.

My son and I practised a lot with 100% coconut oil soap (25% superfat) using Elly’s Everyday Soap Recipes (she is on YouTube and has a lovely, soothing manner about her). It’s a forgiving sort of soap and helped us gain confidence before trying more expensive ingredients.

Elly has also made a 100% rice bran oil soap as a substitute for olive castile soap. I don’t like all olive oil soaps, so I’ve not tried this. Maybe you can try it?

 

[Ekuzo]

Hi @fnddoctor … WELCOME!

I’m new at this too! I can’t give much in the way of soap making advice — there are loads of very talented people who can give you that help.

I just wanted to encourage you Be patient about collecting a good stash of ingredients. It can be a pricey passion — ingredients like cocoa, shea and mango butters are so expensive here in Pakistan, where I am based (taxes!!), never mind olive oil… so I get your difficulties.

My son and I practised a lot with 100% coconut oil soap (25% superfat) using Elly’s Everyday Soap Recipes (she is on YouTube and has a lovely, soothing manner about her). It’s a forgiving sort of soap and helped us gain confidence before trying more expensive ingredients.

Elly has also made a 100% rice bran oil soap as a substitute for olive castile soap. I don’t like all olive oil soaps, so I’ve not tried this. Maybe you can try it?

I think you are giving yourself less credit than you deserve - you are already trying different stuff and it works well! I'd say anyone can learn something from anyone

I really like Elly's videos and I decided to check on that specific one, with the 100% rice bran soap. And I wanted to point out 3 things I noticed, which I think are important. And here's the link for those interested:



1. She said that rice bran and olive oil have pretty close profiles. While the SAP values are close and substituting one for the other while using the same amount of NaOH won't produce that visible of a difference (don't forget those are estimates after all, having enough SF should give you enough safety margin in most cases), their fatty acid profiles are actually quite different - rice bran has around 3 times more linoleic/linolenic combined than olive oil (again, those are hypothetical estimates, depending on when you get your oils from they can differ a lot even from batch to batch). If you typed in a recipe with 100% rice bran in the calculator it would say the overall combined linoleic/linolenic content would be 36. For comparison - most soapers limit that number to 15, while I limit it to only 10. Again, it depends on where you got your rice bran from and what its actual fatty acid profile is, but if it's close to the theoretical one in the calculator - with that much of it you'll get DOS. And she didn't add anything to her soap aside from the EO (I mean any additives that can help in preventing DOS and prolonging the soap's life). If you have access to rice bran oil that has a fatty acid profile closer to that of high oleic sunflower oil or high oleic canola oil - go for it, a Castile soap will work well - but otherwise I would say, don't do it and keep its % in your recipe to a minimum. While it's still a better choice than regular sunflower oil when it comes to soaping, it's far from the best one, IMO.

2. She used filtered tap water in her recipe - which is fine, if the water she has is soft. If you have hard water, I'd say use distilled/deionized water (whatever you have access to) instead. When I first started making soap, I used filtered tap water. I have hard tap water, which gave me DOS for almost all the batches I made that way. If no additives are used, in addition to the idea of a 100% rice bran soap and the possibility of hard water, that spells unavoidable disaster.

3. Near the end of the video she tested the soap with pH strips, which won't tell you much even if done properly. And rubbing wet fingers on the soap's surface and putting a strip on it to soak some of the liquid is not the proper way.

With that being said, anyone can try anything - what works for me may not work for the others, and vice versa. We learn from our mistakes after all. I just thought the video would be a good topic for discussion and I'm curios what the others may think of the batch that was made in it

 

[AliOop]

Very good points, @Ekuzo about the DOS and the pH strips. Thank you for calling those out. I generally like Ellie's videos but that level of misinformation from someone of her reputation harms the entire soapmaking community.

 

[Ekuzo]

Very good points, @Ekuzo about the DOS and the pH strips. Thank you for calling those out. I generally like Ellie's videos but that level of misinformation from someone of her reputation harms the entire soapmaking community.

I don't mean to discredit her, I've watched several of her videos before and I like the 'soothing manner' of the tutorials as Chaiat5 mentioned - they're just made accessible and easy to understand. I still like that about her, but I'll definitely take her words with a grain of salt down the road

 

[Chaiat5]

@Ekuzo Thanks heaps for the detailed write-up! I was sorely tempted to give Elly’s rice bran oil soap a whirl at one point because I had seen something about a local company producing rice brand oils. I swear, I am forever grasping at straws I think it went bust, so that was the end of that.

I am terribly afraid of DOS… I returned from a 2-month visit with family thinking soaps I had made prior to that would be all cured and delish, only to find that several bars were dossy. It was so discouraging! Definitely the water, so I totally agree about using distilled water for soap making. Elly’s from Brisbane — very hard water.

 

[Ekuzo]

Elly’s from Brisbane — very hard water.

If she's really using hard water, it means she's pulling off some magic trick to get away with things she's not supposed to - who gave her this privilege, now I'm mad

 

[AliOop]

She does say that she uses "filtered" tap water. Than can be anything from a store-bought water container with a filter on it, to a water softening system, to a reverse-osmosis system... or a combination thereof. So it's possible that her water is filtered enough to avoid DOS. Again, I find this irresponsible, but I guess that's on her.