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trilloneal

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Hi.. i am new to soaping, ive only made 4 batches so far. i was wondering where can i learn how to create a recipe (book,video,website). I really don't get the soap calculator either.. :(

By creating i mean pick out the oils and %'s
 
There are some good books, even free ones on kindle. I played with soapcalc... a lot. I know its a little intimidating but you really only need to plug in your oils, percentages, and size of your batch and you should be OK. I hope that helps. Welcome!
 
If you could be a little more specific on what you don't understand, then there are lots of us that are willing to help.

Some basics for using Soapcalc.net are available by clicking the colored numbers on the actual calculator page. It will literally walk you through the process.

If you are having trouble figuring out what oils do what, then use the links provided above.
 
Hopefully you are running those recipes through a calculator anyway, so take some time and adjust the amounts to see what the difference are to the numbers. Then take some more time to look at the other oils and what their numbers are which gives you an idea of what it adds to the soap. For example, palm, lard and tallow are rather similar, so using more than 1 of them in a recipe makes very little sense.

Have a play with the calculator and then post an idea for a recipe here and ask for feedback - state why you were looking at certain oils and what you were looking to have as a result and people will (in a polite way) help to correct any issues and encourage the good parts.

It's what I did and it really helped. Also, look at the feedback that other people get for their recipes and you can start to build up a picture of what certain oils can do and the usage ranges that go with them.
 
Great links in the posts above.
But to get you started the following:
People used to make soap of those oils and fats that were available locally. That means that in the Mediterranean countries Olive oil was the main, if not only ingredient in soap. In Other countries that could have been , coconut, tallow, Palm and lard or Shea butter. Now that everyone virtually is each others neighbour, tharre are a lot more resources.
A basic recipe could be:
45% olive oil
25% coconut
25% palm or tallow
5% castor oil
Decide the size of your batch (for example 16 oz/500 grams of oils), put the amounts given above in the % fields in soap calc (standard settings) and it will give you the amounts of NaOH and Water. If you want to add fragrance, the standard amount is 5% of the weight of the fats. But I would make my first soap without fragrance or colour, just to get the hang of it. Then for your next soap play with the percentages, or add a new oil or replace one and see what soap calc gives as a prediction of the outcome, regarding to hardness, lather etc.
Hope this helps
 
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You really do need to get comfortable with a lye calculator, even recipes published in books can have errors. Besides, once you get the hang of it they are a lot of fun to play with. When I first started I used this calculator to design my first recipes: http://naturalsoapboutique.com/soapcalculator/
Its more simplistic than soap calc, and might get you into the swing of things.
 
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