Properties of oils or of acid fats ?

[rjalex]

When you vary the properties of a new soap recipe in SoapCalc are the hardness, cleansing, bubbliness etc. a byproduct of the fatty acids only ?

If so is there a table showing which fatty acids contribute to each of these properties ?

I was trying to introduce new oils into my proven recipe to see if there's a difference and sometimes have an hard time to "steer" the new recipe towards the values I'm seeking.

TIA

 

[lsg]

Use the SoapCalc lye calculator. While it is not 100% accurate, it will give you a good idea of what combinations are effective you the soap you want to make.

 

[tryanything]

The different properties depend on different elements of the oil. I'm on my phone holding a baby but I'm pretty sure if you click on an oil it'll list its profile on the side showing values like lauric and stearic and such (again on my phone and don't have this all memorized). Changing these values changes the hardness bubbling, cleansing values. I'm pretty sure on the home page is a walk through that details what each of these brings to your soap. Play around with different oils and different percentage to see what happens. But remember its a guide. 100% olive oil soap has a cleansing value of 0 but it will still clean you. And 100% coconut oil soap will look very harsh but with a high superfat it is actually quite nice. Don't use the recommended values as die hard requirements.

 

[DeeAnna]

Here is the info it sounds like you want: http://www.soapcalc.net/info/SoapQualities.asp

The numbers in SoapCalc are the approximate percentages of the amounts of various fatty acids in the fats in your recipe. When you look at the table on the page linked above, you'll see "cleansing" is the myristic and lauric fatty acids. So a cleansing number of, say, 10 means your soap recipe has about 10% of these two fatty acids combined.

You can get a sense of the "long lasting" property of your soap by subtracting the "cleansing" number (myristic + lauric) from "hardness" number (myristic + lauric + stearic + palmitic) to find the approximate percentage of just the stearic and palmitic acids. The larger this number, the more likely your bar will be longer lasting in the bath.

 

[rjalex]

Hey tryanything I just put down my own baby after a looooooong walk in the living room to have him fall asleep so I can really empathize !
Thanks DeeAnna that is just what I was looking for.