Salt Bar Recipe Check

[whitewitchbeauty]

Hello, I wanted to run my salt bar recipe through the forum before I started making it. So here it is in all of its glory. I messed up last time and did 5% super fat instead of 20% super fat. Whoops!

 

[Obsidian]

I would drop the shea and lard, neither are really needed in a salt bar and I've found both to reduce lather. Use 70-80% coconut, 5-10% castor and a liquid oil of choice. You don't even really need castor, my basic salt bar is 80% CO, 20% OO.

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Ok thanks

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Getting the lye calculator for 2# with 80% co and 20% oo is rather tricky!

 

[IrishLass]

How much salt ppo are you going to be using?

Salt bars are typically made with high amounts of oils rich in lauric and myristic acids, such as coconut oil, PKO or babassu- aka, the high bubbling oils (at least 80% of these kinds of oils in your salt bar formula). The reason why is because salt is a lather killer. If a salt bar is made with a predominately larger amount of oils that are low in lauric and myristic acids, it just won't lather much, if at all.

Also- if you make your recipe 'as-is' with a superfat of 20%- the lather will suffer even more.


IrishLass

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

I was going to make a 2-2.5 lb loaf with 70% salt at trace.

 

[Obsidian]

Getting the lye calculator for 2# with 80% co and 20% oo is rather tricky!

why is that? Its 25.60 oz coconut, 6.40 oz olive oil. If you have hard water, you might want to drop the salt amount down to 50%

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

I have some brain damage from an accident so doing math is difficult for me at times.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Sorry to hear that - but you don't have to do any maths as the calculator does it for you. Set it to % and put in 80 for co and 20 for oo. Set the total oil amount to the total amount of oils that you will use......it does the hard work for you

 

[Seawolfe]

I would say that a good rule of thumb is to have your coconut oil and salt percentages roughly equal to each other. So if you only have 25% of your oils as coconut, you can't have more than 25% of the oil weight as salt. Salt NEEDS coconut or babasu oil, or no lather.

Thus the popularity of an 80% coconut oil / 5% castor / 15% other oils recipe with 80% salt & 20% superfat.

If you're having problems with using percentages in the calculators, re-read some of the tutorials stickied at the top of the beginners forums. You can define a whole recipe by percentages, once you enter the total weight of oils and define a super fat amount.

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Thanks

 

[luebella]

Can you use Himalayan pink salt in these?

 

[Obsidian]

You can but make sure its the fine ground kind, in fact you should always use fine salt in your soap.

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

The SoapCalc app ive been using doesnt have a percent option. I can look for one that does.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Try soapee - works well enough even in browser mode

 

[kumudini]

The SoapCalc app ive been using doesnt have a percent option. I can look for one that does.

The mobile app doesn't have a lot of options but you could go to the website soapcalc.net and click on the lye calculator. It has all the options and also the soapee.com that TEG mentioned is equally good. Try either one.

 

[kchaystack]

Here are screen captures from the soapee.com mobile site. They show how to set it up

 

[whitewitchbeauty]

Thank you for the visual it helps
I will Check out the website as well.