Sanity Check/Recipe Review

[GemstonePony]

Hello! This is a long post, just wondering what you guys think of the recipe. I don't have goal of selling, this is just for personal use/fun, so I'm more concerned with what I want in a soap than what I can recoup my money on. I'm going for a roughly 2-2.5lb batch that way any minor measuring errors aren't catastrophic.

Beginning of Lengthy Explanation:
So I identified some soap recipes I thought I wanted based on "That sounds nice", ordered some of the ingredients accordingly, looked at the recipes in soap calc to see what they did, decided I didn't want that, and started making my own recipe. I'm still constantly tweaking it while learning things and waiting for my stuff to arrive.

Things I'm minimizing/avoiding:
-Avoiding Olive oil, my skin doesn't react well.
-My skin tolerates coconut oil a little better but still trying to minimize
-I would like my bars vegan
-I'm avoiding sodium lactate
-I would eventually like to minimize palm oil, but also.. 7lbs of palm oil is on its way to me. *Sigh* it's the renewably sourced roundtable stuff at least.

Things I want to accomplish:
-A fairly (edited to say mild) bar
-Fluffy lather (I'm aware this contradicts the mild a bit)
-handles hard water as well as possible
- recipe I can swirl or make soap dough from
- bar that doesn't feel like hard plastic (though some longevity would be nice)
-if I could unmold in under 48 hours that would be nice, but I'm more committed to the other goals than this one. I'll be using a loaf mold.

As mentioned, a lot of these ingredients are on their way. I know my recipe is way more complicated than is recommended for beginners, but I'd rather make more mistakes with a bar I'd want to use than no mistakes with a bar I wouldn't want. Buying Hazelnut oil was probably a mistake, but I'll either soap it or eat it. In the recipe it would be replaced with avocado oil.
End of Lengthy Explanation

If anyone sees something that would interfere with my goals or has suggestions of how to do something better, I'm all ears.

I know much of workability depends on my technique/any FO, I'm just hoping to find any glaring/potential problems with the batter before they find me.

Recipe attached, planning aloe vera juice for 100% liquids. The recipe is also public, but know that I'm frequently tweaking it. That's why I'm only requesting advice for the screenshot, otherwise it's a moving target.

Any tips, tricks, advice, thoughts, speculation, input, and questions welcome, and feel free to laugh at my mistakes so far. I'm sure they're the first of many for me in this hobby.

Thank you for reading!
~ GemstonePony

 

[Anstarx]

The recipe looks decent. I'm not sure how moisturizing you want it to be. It's good enough for a shower bar for me but many will keep CO under 20%.
If you want a facial bar this might be too cleansing. Usually my facial bars are at 10% CO/PKO.
It should be slow moving enough for swirl but then again different swirls requires different trace. For a super fluid swirl technique I usually just use 10% shea at most and drop the cocoa but this one is slow enough for a regular swirl.
For soap dough I'd usually just up my water to 1:2.3, pour in individual molds, and cover after it's in the mold. If you want more lather you can add some sugar/honey/syrup but that could potentially make the batter trace faster.

Don't stress yourself out too much! If this is your first batch of soap, it doesn't has to be perfect. There is always room for improvement.

 

[artemis]

Don't stress yourself out too much! If this is your first batch of soap, it doesn't has to be perfect. There is always room for improvement.

@GemstonePony This is a good point to bring up: is this your first batch of soap?

I have never used hazelnut oil or safflower oil, so I wonder about how prone they are to rancidity. Have you researched these oils here on the forum?

Also, the hazelnut oil that I've found has always seemed to be expensive. However, you don't list cost as a concern, so maybe that's not been your experience.

 

[shunt2011]

Safflower is fine as long as it’s High Oleic. If you have sensitive skin I would lower the CO to 20% or less. I’ve never used hazelnut oil due to its short shelf life and I avoid those as I don’t want to increase the risk of rancidity. I would increase the Palm. I don’t use Shea and Cocoa bitter at the same time but I do use Shea at 10%.

Soap is not moisturizing. However, it can be formulated to be less stripping of the Oils from the skin.

I would make a small batch and see how you like it. Oils out of the bottle are totally different once in soap. Then tweak your recipe until you find what works for you. It took a lot of testing till I found what I like.

Jump in and have fun.

 

[GemstonePony]

@Anstarx I appreciate the info on what others are using with coconut oil, I've been really conflicted about what level to put it at. For now I'm aiming for a bathroom/kitchen bar, since bath/face bars are (for me) a narrower target.
Aloe Vera Juice will have sugar, and more importantly, salicylic acids, which could easily contribute to trace, so between that and the oils I'm trying not to set myself up for the soap to run away on me.
Thank you for the tip on the soap dough. I'm probably going to get my recipe figured out before getting too fancy, but I have quite a few designs planned for when I get there.

@artemis I'm planning for my first batch while waiting for my materials to arrive so I can finally begin soaping.
After looking it up, Safflower is supposed to have a shelf life of 1 year. Hazelnut apparently has a shelf life of 3 months, and I would not have purchased the stuff knowing that, and I don't plan on ever soaping it.

@shunt2011 thank you for letting me know where to sort the coconut percentages.
The cocoa/Shea amounts are because I'm using citric acid, which I've heard causes soap to disintegrate at a faster rate. Granted, I'm only using it at about 2%ppo, but rapid disintegration would be particularly undesirable going into the holiday season, since I have a large immediate family.
I know moisturizing soap is a misnomer, but it seems like most fluffy lathers are harsh/stripping, and I was trying to explain wanting a very mild soap with a very fluffy lather. I'm sorry to have furthered any confusion about the abilities/limitations of soap, and have amended my original post.

 

[Anstarx]

I've made a aloe soap once with frozen aloe juice I got from blending fresh aloe leaf as liquid. I add syrup to almost every batch so I added to that soap as well. It didn't really accelerate trace much, not as obvious as I would observe anyway so.
As for fluffy lather, I once made a soap using kumis (fermentated mare's milk, boiled to get rid of the alcohol) and after curing for 3 months, it lathered beautifully with big fluffy bubbles. That recipe only had 10% CO. Using it did accelerate trace by quite a bit (the drink and also the fact I was a newbie then and didn't think of cooling the lye down before mixing with oil) but I was able to do a basic layer and I imagine I could do a simple drop swirl if I tried. I know this is a bit advanced for first time soapers but maybe consider using alcoholic beverage in the future for that beautiful lather.

 

[GemstonePony]

Thanks, @Anstarx honestly the Aloe was my biggest unknown. I know beer has a fantastic and terrible reputation for lathering and acceleration, respectively, and morbid curiosity has me considering designing a hard apple cider soap(with the carbonation out). Fall is coming up, after all. I impulse bought a maple leaf silicone column mold to make an embed for a fall soap. I also wonder if it's possible to make dough from an alcohol soap.
For my very first soap ever, I'm trying to avoid rapid acceleration to give myself time to work calmly and safely, but I have so many ideas I would like to eventually try!