Soaps with beeswax

[TVivian]

And now it's at (almost) a full gel at room temperature in under 20 minutes.



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[karenbeth]

Crazy8 I reckon the ingredient that causes colour change is honey rather than beeswax. All my recipes with honey go in the fridge to prevent gel. I've not noticed nice clean beeswax change the colour of my soap.
This website has some interesting ideas about what beeswax adds to soap.
http://www.tonitoni.org/soap/soap_the_bare_bones.pdf

 

[Lindy]

When I add beeswax to my soap I melt it with my hard oils.... no problem. I'm at about 1%.


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[dixiedragon]

I use this recipe:

http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soaprecipes/ss/Beeswax-And-Honey-Soap-Recipe.htm

• 13.5 ounces olive oil
• 13.5 ounces coconut oil
• 13.5 ounces beef tallow
• 2.4 ounces castor oil
• 4.4 ounces almond oil
• 1 ounce of beeswax
• 6.8 ounces of lye (a 5% lye discount/superfat)
• 14.5 ounces of water (more water than I normally use in recipes, but the extra water helps things not get to trace so quickly)
• 2 ounces of fragrance or essential oil - but be sure to use one that you know will not accelerate trace!

Instead of beef tallow I use lard, or I use a combination of lard and tallow.

I like it b/c I think it boosts the natural honey scent of honey soap and oatmeal, milk and honey soap. The high melt temp is a bit of a pain.

 

[TVivian]

That's the one I used too, but substituted the tallow with Palm.. Worked great! I was admiring my beeswax soap just this morning


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[dixiedragon]

Karen, a friend gave me some beeswax, I would love to try it in my CP soap. She said I should heat it up over a double boiler. Could it also be melted in the microwave, or is that asking for trouble? What temp do you get your oils and beeswax to, to get it to work? I would do love to give my friend a bar of soap made with her bees honey and wax.
Thanks.

Thanks to the combination of wax and honey and it's high melt point, beeswax is very difficult to get off of anything. I take a tin can and use some pliers to bend a spout into it, and use that to melt my beeswax. I do use a double boiler method - I put some water in a saucepan and put the can in there. Then I pour the melted beeswax into the pot of oils. if the oils aren't hot enough, the wax will harden into a long, delicate coil of wax suspending in the other oils, which is pretty cool looking! Then I slowly heat the oils to melt the beeswax again.

 

[karenbeth]

Boiling water will get the wax off easily. I just boil a kettle take the pot outside somewhere and pour heaps of boiling water over it. The wax will melt off. Domestos with a scourer does a pretty good job of getting off a film of beeswax