What do you think?

[crazyk]

Lemon Scented Avocado Soap.

I made a batch with the following, and am looking for opinons.
My batch had been sitting for 24hrs and was still a little soft, I managed to be able to cut it but I want to know if people think it will get harder or if I used too may soft oils.

Alond Sweet Oil - 97.8 gramsz
Avocado Oil - 112.3 grams
Coconut Oil - 179.3 grams
Palm Oil - 97.8 grams
Sunflower Oil - 317.9 grams
Lemon Cold Pressed E/O - 35 grams

When I run it through sopacalc it gave me
Hardness = 32
Clensing = 15
Condition = 63
Bubbly = 15
Creamy = 17
Iodine = 85
INS = 125

Note: bars are a pale greeny yellow look fantastic

The bars smell really good, lather well, found this out when washing up from cutting the bars.

Here are some pictures of my first 3 batches.

Batch 1- top left (this didn't turn out too good stinks !)
Batch 2- top right Lavender soap nice and white
Batch 3- bottom Avocado Lemon Scented



This is a picture of my Avocado Lemon Scented while it was still a block

 

[IanT]

nicee! avocado is so good for your skin!

 

[Guest]

They look great! I am a fan of Avocado oil.

 

[Guest]

They look great Crazyk!

In fact I'm planning on an avocado soap very soon, maybe within a few days. I like your idea of lemon scent. Or to play on the green color, what does everybody think about me using a lime EO?

Interesting mold there. It's setting off my cardboard detector! Actually I'm giving serious thought to doing a batch of pure Castile today and put it in a cardboard mold.

Oh yes, about hardness. If you can trust SoapCalc (and I don't know if you can since I'm a newbie) your hardness is 32. My first batch, Castile with coconut and palm comes out at 30 and you can make a mark in it with your finger nail but it's very usable at the sink or in the shower. I have no complaints at all about the hardness. A later batch (lard-olive-coconut) is much harder (44) and it is quite noticeably hard even after only 3 days curing. In fact I'm a bit fascinated by the hardness which is comparable to commercial soap, but I don't feel it's necessary to be this hard. Most of my purchased natural soaps are similar to my own Castile.

I think your hardness will be fine. Can anybody tell me how reliable those SoapCalc quality numbers are? I mean in terms of translating into real life observations.

 

[crazyk]

Hi all, just to clarify, that is just the lining from inside my mould. It's not cardboard it's what we call coreflute plastic.

I find that the soap likes to stick to it though so I have to find a way to stop that, other than that it slides out of my wooden log mould easily and then you just have to peel off the liner.

Thanks for your comments too !

Cant wait to start using my soap.

 

[Guest]

Oh yes, I know that stuff. It's more or less corrugated plastic instead of corrugated cardboard. Sounds like good stuff to make a DIY mold out of.

I just put my 4th batch down in a cardboard box. But first I lined it with freezer paper to prevent sticking. I'm betting that the soap batter is thick enough that little or none will leak, and I put down some plastic in case it does. My, my... My first four batches and in less than a week.

Today it's pure EVOO Castile. Nothing but oil, drain cleaner and water. Mmmmmm.

 

[crazyk]

people I checked my lemon scented avocado tonight and it still feels fairly soft. Do you think that if it hasnt started to develop decent firmness by now that it will stay soft?

 

[Birdie]

Lemon Scented Avocado Soap.

...

Alond Sweet Oil - 97.8 gramsz
Avocado Oil - 112.3 grams
Coconut Oil - 179.3 grams
Palm Oil - 97.8 grams
Sunflower Oil - 317.9 grams
Lemon Cold Pressed E/O - 35 grams

...

That is a really high percentage ratio of "soft" to hard oils. And all of the "soft" are really soft in a resulting soap. It is soap but it may not harden to what you want it too.

 

[sarahjane]

It will harden up in time. It won't be "rock" hard as birdie stated but it will harden. I made a facial soap with a lot of soft oils and it took a few months but now it's fine!

Beautiful soap. I love the color!! Congrats!

 

[Guest]

Please be reminded that I'm a newbie and I'm just learning, so my attempt to analyze your formula is not only to help you but to learn from possible critiques of my analysis by the experts.

Now in fact yes, I do think your soft oils have predominated over your hard oils, but primarily it is one oil: sunflower. It contributing conditioning but it's pretty soft and it's your biggest component (40%). I think you need to replace it with a hard oil. Here is my take on the contribution of each ingredient:

almond: conditioning
avocado: conditioning, creamy lather
coconut: hardness, cleansing, bubbly lather
palm: hardness, conditioning, creamy lather
sunflower: conditioning, is it inexpensive?

The most obvious change is to change your sunflower to lard. This single change bumps your hardness from 32 to 44 which I know from my limited experience produces nice hard bars. You lose some conditioning (63 to 49) but you gain some creamy lather (17 to 29). You lose some iodine which I believe implies harder soap, and your INS goes from 126 to 156 which appears to be an improvement to me. I hear 160 is a nice INS goal.

I don't know if you are one of the "no animals" crowd. I kind of like the idea of "no animals" but 2 of my 4 batches had some animals harmed (lol) and produced nice soap. So perhaps pardner you need to switch that sunflower to lard to get your harder soap. Lard is a nice hard oil that contributes some conditioning and creamy lather too.

As far as whether or not your soap will harden, can't answer that, no experience, but I wouldn't give up until a few weeks have passed. And what is the humidity there? If you're in a high humidity area you may need a dehumidifier. If all else fails and you still feel like saving your batch, perhaps you could make a batch of lard-only and then rebatch the two together to produce a harder combination.

So that's this newbie's take on your soft soap.

 

[Guest]

Wow! I've got to learn to type faster. There was just Crazyk's question when I started my reply but by the time I finished, you two fast typers beat me to the punch!

 

[Birdie]

I wouldn't say you would have to totally replace your sunflower but I would drop it to around 20% of your recipe. I don't use lard so can't help you out with that. You could increase your palm and add some olive oil.

 

[crazyk]

Just adding abit more into the thread.

Sunflower oil In Aus is quite Cheap, I think I paid AUD$12 for 4L compared to $25 for Olive Oil.

When I do the analysis on the numbers between the two they are matched closely, hence my experiment here with Sunflower.

Anyhow, i take on board the ratio of soft to hard oils and since starting this thread I did another batch, not with the same ingredients but including sunflower, and followed the %60 Hard oils and %40 Soft Oils.
This is harder than my previous batch but I'm guessing it will get harder with time.

Thanks for all your comments. I guess this is the bit where experimentation comes in !!

 

[happyday]

Keep in mind, when you rely on the hardness score on a soap calculator, that olive oil calculates as a soft oil, but in reality it hardens up more than the score would indicate. You can't really develop expectations of soaps based just on the hardness score, if you're comparing a soap with lots of OO with a soap with no OO. A cured no-OO soap with a score of 32 will be softer than a high-OO soap with the same score.

If I take your recipe and put it through a calculator subbing olive for the sunflower, the hardness score doesn't change much, but the INS score jumps by a full 18 points to 144, indicating a harder, more balanced bar. You might find that you get better results with your formulas by using the other scores as a guide, but keeping an eye on INS and trying to keep it as close to 150 as you can.

They DO look wonderful! Love that green color.

 

[crazyk]

Thanks Happyday for that insight i will definetly look at that in my calcs.

I will compare that to other recipes I have.


The colour I believe has come purely from the Avocado oil. I did not add any colours at all.

It smells great too ! If only they had a sniffometer on here !

 

[Guest]

I just did my first avocado soap today, gellin' in my ABS pipe as I type, and I'm curious if we used different oils. My avo was refined avo, and was a light straw color. Perhaps you used unrefined avo? I actually used an "apple pale green" mineral to give my bars enough tint to be perceived as avocado, but I used only the barest amount, 1/4 tsp ppo.

Was your avo unrefined?

I didn't notice any scent from the oil either. It appeared to be totally unscented. Actually I'm not sure what avocados smell like. I haven't noticed any avocado aroma using them in food.