Which of the two is better

[Chispa]

I bought two containers of oil at the supermarket today, mainly as a result of reading about the wonders of sunflower oil and RBO.

I formulated a recipe for each. I am after nice feeling skin after the shower. Both soaps are a bit low lather, and a bit on the soft side. The CA, sugar, and salt hopefully will help with that. They both also contain lanolin, which I see as a superfat that actually sticks around to help your skin. Which recipe do you reckon is the best? The numbers for both recipes are pretty close to each other, is there a difference that will emerge despite this?

http://soapee.com/recipes/3848

http://soapee.com/recipes/3849


Rice-a-roni
5% Castor Oil
3% Lanolin liquid Wax
92% Rice Bran Oil, refined

Sunflower Power
5% Castor Oil
3% Lanolin liquid Wax
45% Lard, Pig Tallow (Manteca)
47% Sunflower Oil

Additions to both
2% Citric Acid (10g)
2% salt
2% sugar
6.24g addl Lye

 

[Saponificarian]

Sunflower Power. I tried an experiment with Sunflower oil at 50%. I love it in soap. It 'improves' the bubble. The soap is at its 4weeks mark and I can still dent it. Skin feel? It's still curing so can't help with that, sorry.

ETA: I used mid-Oleic Sunflower oil.

 

[lenarenee]

Big no on the Rice bran at 95%. When people say they use rbo in place of olive, they don't mean in terms of making a castile. Rbo is prone to dos, and I doubt it would be a pleasant bar as rbo seems to make a waxy bar. Try using it at 20% or lower.

Is the sunflower oil high oleic? I've never used it at 45%, and I'd be nervous with dos and bar softness. Maybe increase your lard a lot, and lower sunflower to 15 20%. (My go to recipe is usually 65ish lard, 20 co, 10ish ho sunflower and 5 castor.I waffle around a bit depending on how much I have on hand)

I've never used lanolin in soap before so have no idea if that affects anything I just wrote!

 

[Nao]

I would lower the citric acid to 1%, more than that and you might get crystallization on the outside of the soap.

 

[Chispa]

Rice-a-roni is in the oven. $6 of oils down the drain if it doesn't turn out, but it looks like it's turning out so far. It took about 15 seconds of blending to start to trace (warm oils and lye water). Lanolin might speed up the trace too. I'll do Sunflower Power tomorrow night I think. DOS in a lot of oils seems to come down to oil freshness, and both containers of oil had at least a year left on the Best Before Date. Both bars have a similar percentage of Linoleic, but the RBO comes with a big dose of vitamin E, which might keep it good longer. It will be interesting to see how they compare.

I've been using 2% CA on my last three soaps without a sign of crystalisation. I think I can tell the difference in performance against 1% too. Until I start seeing problems with it, I will keep using 2%.

 

[earlene]

I've used lanolin in bar soap and like it myself, although some people don't. My husband doesn't seem to like the feel as much as I do. I understand that too much will make the bar draggy on the skin, and that's what my husband said he felt the soap was doing that had lanolin in it. I think 2% or 3% is about as high as I've gone with it, so apparently a little goes a long way in bar soap.

I add ROE to my oils when I open them and also use EDTA in each batch, and happily that seems to be working for keeping DOS away.

 

[DeeAnna]

I've never used lanolin in soap before so have no idea if that affects anything I just wrote!

At 5% in shave soap, lanolin leaves a faint but definite coating on the skin. Mind you, this soap stays on the skin for a bit -- it's not like bathing where you lather up and rinse right off.

Lanolin used at 1.5% to 2% in bath soap ... I don't see a big difference vs. the same recipe with no lanolin.

To the OP -- I'm not sure if this is what you're doing, but I'll say it just in case you are --> Don't confuse the qualities of a particular fat with the qualities of a soap made with that fat. It's an easy mistake to make, but it's one that will lead new soapers astray.

 

[Chispa]

To the OP -- I'm not sure if this is what you're doing, but I'll say it just in case you are --> Don't confuse the qualities of a particular fat with the qualities of a soap made with that fat. It's an easy mistake to make, but it's one that will lead new soapers astray.

It certainly is a bit confusing. For these two soaps I was trying to maximise the skinfeel of the soap, even if some of the other aspects of the soap bar are degraded to some extent (lather and longevity). From what I've read, high linoleic oils have high conditioning properties, even after saponification.