Soap newbie question

AshPea · Sep 16, 2013

Hi everyone! I'm new to soap making, just made my first batch Saturday and unmolded yesterday. I had a question about lye calculating. I used a shoe box for a mold and decided to make around 3 lbs of soap (47.13 oz to be exact), so I put a basic recipe from SoapQueen into the lye calculator on brambleberry and basically my actual yield is 45.3 oz. Is this normal to lose a few oz in the process? Here's the exact recipe:

10% almond oil - 3.2 oz
30% coconut oil - 9.6 oz
30% palm oil (I used red palm oil, all I could find) - 9.6 oz
30% olive oil - 9.6 oz
5% lye - 4.57 oz
10.56 oz water
Yield - 47.13 oz

Barbara AL · Sep 16, 2013

I don't use Bramblebery's calculator. I added up your oils and you have 32 ounces of oils that is 2 lbs you need 48 ounces of oils for 3 pounds. I don't count water amount and weight for my mold. try calculation in Soapcalc 9 and put in 48 ounces of oils and use your percentages in your recipe.

AshPea · Sep 16, 2013

Barbara AL said:
I don't use Bramblebery's calculator. I added up your oils and you have 32 ounces of oils that is 2 lbs you need 48 ounces of oils for 3 pounds. I don't count water amount and weight for my mold. try calculation in Soapcalc 9 and put in 48 ounces of oils and use your percentages in your recipe.

Ohh thank you! Why don't you use Brambleberry's? Is it bad?

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