Supper fatting for lather?

[Soap Techniques]

...she suggests testing your cook with phenolphtalein by dropping it into the pot. Though it's just a drop in a big pot PhenolP is a skin and eye irritant and sensitizer ...

You don't have to drop it into the pot - just scoop out a portion of soap onto a piece of paper towel. Check how it's done here:
http://sudsnbuds.com/?p=244

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Aye. Plus, I always think of the time aspect - let's take 24 hours for saponification as our benchmark. Adding something at trace is 30 minutes after the lye is added to the other oils, also just a benchmark.

So, our superfat oil is not part of the other oils for 1/48th of the time. Even considering that the majority of the saponification happens early on in the process, that is still such a negligible amount of time to make the idea farcical.

 

[boyago]

Unfortunately Boyago the science doesn't support this assumption. Consider this, you are going to be just as badly burned by soap that hasn't reached trace as well as soap that has reached trace. The lye doesn't care what oils are in there, or when they were added as long as it remains active which it will until saponification is complete.

Oh, I totally agree and don't really hold a torch for the this theory especially when it comes to which oils are going to get it from the lye monsters (in cp). I don't really buy it but what I thought the author was getting at was that by doing the trace SF thing there was some safe guarding of of the magic je nais se quoi of "precious" oils, and was curious if there was a valid debate about that.
But what the original question was before we got sidetracked was will an actual SF of castor give better lather and it seems the consensus is no fats reduce lather.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

....................some safe guarding of of the magic je nais se quoi of "precious" oils............

via Imgflip Meme Maker

 

[IrishLass]

I have the same book, Boyago, and it is one of the few that I recommend as being a good book, but with a few important caveats, such as the now debunked super-fatting misinformation, as well as her way/manner of using phenolphthalein, which is faulty on a couple of different levels. For example- testing soap with pheno only works properly if a 1% solution is made out of 1 gram soap dissolved in 99 grams distilled water, and then you add the pheno drops to that. And even then, it is hard to judge exact pH unless you have a really good eye for different shades of pink since pheno turns various shades of pink from 8.2 pH to 12 pH (and is clear from 0 - 8.2 pH and also over 12 pH).

Otherwise, the book has wonderful soap-design ideas. I can't really blame the author for the super-fatting misinformation, though, as the definitive science debunking the myth had not come out yet when the book was written (at least not in the edition I have, which is the 2nd edition. She may have changed it in later editions, but I don't know). She was just repeating what we all (mistakenly) believed at the time via the science of guessing, but no one had ever really checked it out until Dr. Dunn came along and put it to the test.

That's why I greatly prefer gleaning my soaping info from the forums instead of books, which are only as good as the info that was available at the time they were written.

Oh- and based on Dr. Dunn's work, I highly doubt (okay, I don't believe) that adding castor after-the-fact will increase bubbly lather. :mrgreen:


IrishLass