Trying to make a more luxurious hard bar of soap and eliminate scum

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DrewsSoaps

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Aug 27, 2024
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Savannah, Ga
Hey,
I’m newer to bar soap and would appreciate any help that y’all had on my issues. I’ll post my recipe below in a picture. The issues I’m having is I’ve noticed my soap bars leave soap scum in the bathtub. I’m just trying to figure out if there’s a way to eliminate that or if that’s just what happens with soap. I have added citric acid, to form sodium citrate in hopes that would chelate some of the hard water, but maybe I don’t know what I’m doing there or talking about.
I’m also trying to find tweaks to my recipe to make it a more luxurious bar. If y’all have any opinions on some oils that I need to exclude/additives or even something I need to remove, I’m really just trying to work on the bubbles and I’m trying to work on the moisturization and cleansing properties. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much
Drew
 

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Have you tried using a percent calculator? You can plug in your amounts and it will kick out the percent of each oil/ fat. It's hard to view a recipe written in amounts because most of us here work with percents.

Here is a calculator that works well.

Be sure to only put in the fats, you can then use the percents in lye calculator like soapmakingfriend.com. that will help with calculating the amounts of additives you need.
 
It's not clear to me whether you are still struggling with soap scum even after adding citric acid, or if you haven't tried it yet. It normally is fairly effective for reducing soap scum, but if you have hard water, you may need to use sodium gluconate or EDTA, or both.

As a new soaper, it is best to start with smaller recipes - 500 to 900g - and less ingredients, especially beginner-unfriendly ingredients like lauric acid, stearic acid, and beeswax. These are not necessary for making a nice bar of soap. They also add a lot of complexity to the process, because they trace almost immediately when you pour in the lye solution.

If you want more stearic acid in your recipe, increase the shea butter, or add some cocoa butter, tallow, or lard.

If you want more lauric acid, simply increase the coconut oil. Just remember that a high or even medium cleansing number is not usually a good thing. The higher the cleansing number, the more drying the bar will be to the skin. Soaps with lower cleansing numbers will still get you clean without stripping the skin's natural oils.

It is not clear to me why you are melting some fats to one temperature, and other fats to another temperature. That is another unnecessary complication. Just heat the solid fats to 160ºF (to prevent stearic spots), then add in the room temperature liquid fats to help the mix cool down a bit. That's assuming you are doing CP; if this will be HP, then obviously no cool-down will be needed.

Do not use both salt and sodium lactate. You only need one or the other to help the bar harden (which isn't needed if you still planned to use beeswax and stearic - which hopefully you won't do). More importantly, you don't want to add too many different forms of salt to your recipe, as that can cause problems. As written, the recipe would have salt, sodium lactate, and sodium citrate.

The numbers in the calculator are not the be-all and end-all of any recipe, because the calculator only takes into account the fatty acids, and not any additives. For instance, the extra bubbles and nice lather from using sorbitol in your recipe will not be reflected in the "Bubbly Lather" number at all.

With all that, using the oils you listed, I would rework the recipe as follows:

25% olive oil
20% coconut oil
20% palm oil
20% shea butter
10% grapeseed oil
5% castor oil

For CP, try a 33% lye concentration with no extra liquids, and a 3% SF (lowering it will help reduce soap scum). Be sure to account for the extra lye used by the citric acid. Also, dissolve the citric acid and the sorbitol in the batch water, before adding the lye to it. There is no need to add additional glycerin, as glycerin is a natural byproduct of saponification. I'd also skip the vitamin E, since the benefits aren't likely to survive the lye or the heat of saponification. ROE is helpful to prevent rancidity, but the usage rate is extremely low. I prefer to add it to each container of oil/fat when it is opened, and not at the time of making soap.

The Instagram pics of oat flakes on top of soaps are pretty, but unrealistic. Make sure your oats are very finely ground, or they will go moldy and also clog your shower drain.

I don't mean to discourage you by writing all of this out. I do want to encourage you to step back and start with the basics. You can make very nice soap without adding all these ingredients and taking extra steps that don't add anything to the final product. I hope you will give it a try with a simpler, smaller recipe that won't be as expensive or frustrating as the original idea listed in your post.
 
1. I agree with @AliOop -- that is a huge batch to make as an experiment. 450-500 g of oil will give you about 5-6 bars to try while you come up with more soapy ideas.

2. Have you calculated this by hand? I ask, because when I ran it through the lye calculator, it looks like the super fat comes out to .8% when I would've expected something between 3% - 8%

3. Go ahead and melt the Shea with the other solid fats.

4. When you say "oats" do you mean colloidal oatmeal or whole oats?

5. If you did calculate this by hand-- wow! I am not a math person. Thinking of doing this with my own brain makes my head spin.
 
Follow the advices above - your recipe is way overcomplicated and unnecessarily huge in this state
 
It's not clear to me whether you are still struggling with soap scum even after adding citric acid, or if you haven't tried it yet. It normally is fairly effective for reducing soap scum, but if you have hard water, you may need to use sodium gluconate or EDTA, or both.

As a new soaper, it is best to start with smaller recipes - 500 to 900g - and less ingredients, especially beginner-unfriendly ingredients like lauric acid, stearic acid, and beeswax. These are not necessary for making a nice bar of soap. They also add a lot of complexity to the process, because they trace almost immediately when you pour in the lye solution.

If you want more stearic acid in your recipe, increase the shea butter, or add some cocoa butter, tallow, or lard.

If you want more lauric acid, simply increase the coconut oil. Just remember that a high or even medium cleansing number is not usually a good thing. The higher the cleansing number, the more drying the bar will be to the skin. Soaps with lower cleansing numbers will still get you clean without stripping the skin's natural oils.

It is not clear to me why you are melting some fats to one temperature, and other fats to another temperature. That is another unnecessary complication. Just heat the solid fats to 160ºF (to prevent stearic spots), then add in the room temperature liquid fats to help the mix cool down a bit. That's assuming you are doing CP; if this will be HP, then obviously no cool-down will be needed.

Do not use both salt and sodium lactate. You only need one or the other to help the bar harden (which isn't needed if you still planned to use beeswax and stearic - which hopefully you won't do). More importantly, you don't want to add too many different forms of salt to your recipe, as that can cause problems. As written, the recipe would have salt, sodium lactate, and sodium citrate.

The numbers in the calculator are not the be-all and end-all of any recipe, because the calculator only takes into account the fatty acids, and not any additives. For instance, the extra bubbles and nice lather from using sorbitol in your recipe will not be reflected in the "Bubbly Lather" number at all.

With all that, using the oils you listed, I would rework the recipe as follows:

25% olive oil
20% coconut oil
20% palm oil
20% shea butter
10% grapeseed oil
5% castor oil

For CP, try a 33% lye concentration with no extra liquids, and a 3% SF (lowering it will help reduce soap scum). Be sure to account for the extra lye used by the citric acid. Also, dissolve the citric acid and the sorbitol in the batch water, before adding the lye to it. There is no need to add additional glycerin, as glycerin is a natural byproduct of saponification. I'd also skip the vitamin E, since the benefits aren't likely to survive the lye or the heat of saponification. ROE is helpful to prevent rancidity, but the usage rate is extremely low. I prefer to add it to each container of oil/fat when it is opened, and not at the time of making soap.

The Instagram pics of oat flakes on top of soaps are pretty, but unrealistic. Make sure your oats are very finely ground, or they will go moldy and also clog your shower drain.

I don't mean to discourage you by writing all of this out. I do want to encourage you to step back and start with the basics. You can make very nice soap without adding all these ingredients and taking extra steps that don't add anything to the final product. I hope you will give it a try with a simpler, smaller recipe that won't be as expensive or frustrating as the original idea listed in your post.
Your reply is exactly what I was looking for. I have a chemistry degree so I often think I can reinvent the wheel and thank you for saying all that you said. I wanna get back to the basics of bar soap making because I think I was complicating my bar soap recipe way too much. I’m use to making liquid soap, so I am use to adding alot of additives. Thank you again so so so much and I am going to reword my recipe to a simpler starting point That you mentioned. Thanks again like so so much!!
 
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1. I agree with @AliOop -- that is a huge batch to make as an experiment. 450-500 g of oil will give you about 5-6 bars to try while you come up with more soapy ideas.

2. Have you calculated this by hand? I ask, because when I ran it through the lye calculator, it looks like the super fat comes out to .8% when I would've expected something between 3% - 8%

3. Go ahead and melt the Shea with the other solid fats.

4. When you say "oats" do you mean colloidal oatmeal or whole oats?

5. If you did calculate this by hand-- wow! I am not a math person. Thinking of doing this with my own brain makes my head spin.
Thank you! re-working the batch now. Thanks so much!
 
You’ve received great advice on this thread - I’d just add that if you have hard water, and are using your soap to take a bath, you are going to have soap scum. Chelators to lessen scum, and lower or zero superfat, will not compensate for the amount of hard water to fill a tub! Prepare to scrub the tub now and again🤨

Also - it’s good practice to include the exact essential oil/s you are using. Make sure you aren’t exceeding the safe usage amount for any EOs
Good luck with your reworked recipe!
 

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