Mike, I agree, that calculator seemed useless. Most of us just use
lye calculators or figure it out ourself based on maximum safe usage amounts (for the RE lemon verbena it says the maximum safe usage amount for soap is 4.38% as the top limit) and then our own preferences. For someone like me who likes fragrances strong and typically uses 5-6%, I would go to the maximum of 4.38%, so that's what I'd put in the fragrance box in soapcalc, which would then tell me the amount of FO to add.
Another thing that can be helpful is to look at the reviews for a scent, sometimes you'll find people repeatedly saying that an FO is strong or weak, or sticks well or vanishes during cure. Because I have used RE's LV many times I know that it sticks well and is nice and strong. But 1.5% is really very low. Maybe people who like fainter smells will chip in here, but I would imagine most people don't go lower than 3% (I think that's about half an oz per pound of oils)
I used soapcalc.net to fill out your numbers and am cutting and pasting the results below. You MUST figure out a way to use a calculator, you won't be able to make soap without it, you might as well give up right now. There are tutorials for soapcalc
, I know, I believe one of them was linked on another of your posts. For other questions, such as the fragrance oil one, I would go to the search symbol/magnifying glass in the top right hand corner here and type in whatever your question is, eg "how much fragrance oil to use", there is an enormous amount of information available on this site if you look for it.
The first screen print is the page you get if you go to soapcalc.net and click "recipe calculator" on the top bar. As I said, I used the numbers you decided on for your soap below so you'd have a model of what it would like/what information goes where. The second print screen is the actual recipe you will use to make your soap. The Explanation discusses why I chose what I entered, ie, what you'll be doing the next time you wanted to create a recipe if you used soapcalc.
View attachment 76196
Explanation of Recipe Calculator above:
For #1/Type of Lye, I left it on NAOH, the default.
For weight of oils, I chose oz and put in 53, your total (I always use grams, it is more precise, but this is a personal preference.)
For #3/Water, I chose lye concentration and put in 30%. That means that your lye liquid will be calculated at 30% lye and 70% water. The lower the lye concentration, the more water will be in the lye liquid, and vice versa. Also the more water you have, the slower the batter will be to come to trace, which is good when you have things that are going to cause faster trace (hard oils, higher temps, honey, milks, certain Fos/EOs) and you want to lessen that speed, or if you want the batter to stay more liquid for longer because you are doing complicated swirls.
30% is a fair amount of water (generally 33% lye concentration is a good sort of average amount, that’s what I usually use because like to do lots of swirls, often recommended for newbies as well) but since you are making a milk soap, which can overheat, I put in a lower lower lye/higher water %.
For #4/Superfat, I put in 5% because that’s what you had on your printout, and left the fragrance amount at .5% oz/lb of oil (the default) because that works out to about 3%, which is what the more moderate FO people use (see my comments in my reply to your post regarding fragrance.)
For #5, just leave it alone, no need to do anything there.
For #6 I added in the oils and amounts you specified in your formula.
For #7 you hit calculate recipe, that will calculate the exact water amount (based on the lye concentration you’ve entered in #3) and lye amount (based on the oils and superfat) that you need in your soap.
Finally you go to right underneath #7 and hit view or print recipe, that will give you the final recipe including the final lye, water, and FO amounts you will be adding based on what you’ve put in when you hit “calculate recipe”. Save and/or print that screen so that you have it work from.
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Printout of Final Recipe Below
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