Struggling to come up with a pourable HP recipe for birch tar soap

[Kasap]

Hey everyone! It's my first post here so sorry for any mistakes.

I'm trying to make birch tar, sulphur and zinc soap at home for dermatitis and it's wonderful but having problems with it.
My bars are really melting off too much in bath so tried adding different additives and now my new batch is crumbly haha! Also would love it to be easily pourable when hot.
It's gloppy at best and hard to mold, im using a pvc pipe to mold with a funnel and loving the disc shaped bars so i'm planning to keep it.
I saw fluid hp videos online but don't know which additives are important besides the sodium lactate.
I kinda don't know when to mold it either, my oily applesauce stage takes too much and when i stick blend at that moment it starts to solidify really rapidly and begins seizing slowly.
Would love to hear from the experienced people, i'm open to any advices about ingredients, technique and temperatures etc. thank you for reading!

I know this recipe is not that ideal, kinda experimented with the solid fats and it didn't go well lol.
My last batch recipe: 500g total oils, 2:1 water to lye solution, 3% superfat, no fragrance
coconut oil 125g
palm oil 200g
soy wax 50g
shea butter 100g
castor oil 25g

water 150g
NaOH 79,9g

added these in the lye solution:
salt 5g
sodium lactate 10g
sodium ascorbate 5g
sodium citrate 7,5g

added these post saponification, birch tar not included in the superfat amount:
birch tar 30g
sulphur 20g

 

[Servant4Christ]

Welcome aboard!

I'm sorry I can't be much help because I don't use the HP method, but from just looking over your recipe:

You're recipe is 95% hard oils, so I don't think you need 4 different salts. That can set up soap batter pretty quickly, or at least it does in CP.

Also, if birch tar is anything like pine tar, you don't even need a stickblender because it accelerates trace so fast.

I hope others who can be more helpful chime in. Good luck and happy soaping!

 

[bookworm42]

I also don't HP but I've never seen a liquid version. They always looked gloopy when I've researched it.
If it's crumbly that could be the salt or the amount of hard oils. I would half the shea butter and soy wax and sub the other halves with a liquid oil (rice bran, olive, avocado, sunflower, lots of options).
I would leave out the salt. With your 3 other salts that's a lot and not needed. Also sodium lactate is great at just 1% so you could reduce it to 5g.
Hopefully someone who HPs will see this and can offer more advice!

 

[AliOop]

Hello, and welcome! Here are my thoughts:

1. Definitely get rid of the plain salt - not needed with sodium lactate.

2. What is the purpose of the sodium ascorbate? I'd get rid of that, too. Too many salts will definitely mess up your recipe.

3. You are not using enough water; it was not even a 2:1 water:lye ratio. For HP, typically water is at least 3x the amount of lye (or, 3:1 water:lye ratio, aka 25% lye concentration). Less than that, and you definitely won't have a fluid batter. For this recipe, your water should have been 320g not 150g.

4. Is there some reason you didn't include any liquid oils, such as olive oil? That will also help your batter remain more fluid.

5. You mentioned zinc but I didn't see it in the recipe.

6. I've never used birch tar and don't know if it consumes some lye like pine tar does. If so, and if you don't account for that, it will increase your superfat.

7. Are you warming up all of your post-cook additives to the same temperature as the soap, before you add them in? If not, that's going to make your soap batter go cold and firm very quickly. You can also add HOT sugar water with those additives, to increase fluidity.

 

[artemis]

I have some questions.

1. How long are you letting your soap cure before you use it?
2. You say, "it starts to solidify really rapidly." Then you say, "and begins seizing slowly." This sounds contradictory. Can you rephrase?
3. How much of your additives are you including in your recipe?

 

[Cindy D.]

My only question is what type funnel are you using? If your pipe is large enough a canning funnel (there are 2 sizes, one for regular jars and one for wide mouth) would allow the batter to slide down through easier than a narrow funnel.