Waiting on an ingredients parcel!!!

[Chickenpoopshoes]

I haven't made soap in a while but I've really got the itch again and it is annoying me every time I look at the shop bars that my husband bought. It's like they are saying "Hey! Lazy bum! You could be using a home-made soap but instead you will be having to use me, ha ha ha ha!!!"
So, I have made a teeny tiny order from Soapkitchen - just some micas (never used mica before), some TD (never used TD before...), some fragrances and some ground almond shell for a scrub I have been plotting.
The idea is to start experimenting with Suet to see what works and what doesn't. I havent yet made a single fat soap and I feel like it's a path I need to go down in order to decide which additives I want, if any. Is plain suet soap the best? Do I like it better with Kaolin? or with Oat milk? I'm going to make three small batches of each -Plain Suet, Suet and Kaolin, Suet and oatmilk, cure them for 6 weeks and then hand them out to my chosen minions for testing. Hopefully I can keep some bars aside to see how they fare with storage in the long term - do they improve with curing? Do they develop DOS? do they start smelling gross? etc...
Since they will all be coloured with mica I am going to go ahead and assume that this will be a constant across the batches but I am beginning to wonder about the fragrance oils.
Not all oils are created equal but aside from accelerating/slowing trace, ricing and affecting colour - are there any differences in the oils that might affect things like shelf-life or DOS? I may need to re-think the fragrancing (I was going to give them each a different fragrance) if it is a variable that will affect these things.
I'm excited, though!
I have plans to try soaping with single vegetable/plant oils, too. I know Olive oil obviously makes a fab castille soap and I have heard of people making castille-type soaps with rapeseed oil but I'm wondering about why these two would work so well (although I believe a loooooong curing time is necessary before the soaps are really good).

 

[shunt2011]

I make lard soap. I love my soap as does my family and customers. I do make a vegan bar but my lard is my favorite. I've not noticed fragrances affecting DOS. I've had it appear a few times but different scents. So, I don't think that's an issue. I'd be careful with rapeseed oil, it's got a short shelf life and prone to DOS unless you can get the HO version. You can use it but I would keep it below 10-15%. I'm one who hates high OO soap. It dries my skin out. Some love it, I don't. I quit making it last year, plus the long cure is a pain. I already cure my salt soaps a year or so.

 

[Chickenpoopshoes]

yeah, honestly I thought I might NEED to make vegetarian soaps incase my customer base ends up being too squeamish about the animal fats. perhaps if I focussed less on the origins of the ingredients and more on design I could avoid the vegan crowd altogether. I knew there was a reason rapeseed oil wasn't great for soap - same as sunflower oil, eh? you need a high oleic oil to reduce problems...