Teach Soap

Hi there!
I am relatively new to CP soap making. I have made a few batches but this was my first attempt at my own recipe. I entered it in the Brambleberry recipe calculator and forgot to add the beeswax! I tried to melt the beeswax on its own and add part of the traced soap mixture to it but the beeswax didnt melt properly and it started clumping in the soap mixture. Then I started worrying about heating the lye and soap mix-is it dangerous or a bad idea to reheat it again after trace? I ended up not using the beeswax mix and saved what i had and put it in a mold. The soap actually looks OK however its definitely softer and has a different texture than i was hoping for. I guess my questions are: Is it bad or dangerous to reheat traced soap, will my soap turn out OK in the end or does it have too much lye in it since a significant ingredient is missing? Would love any input on this. thank you!

My made up recipe was

45% coconut oil
35% avocado oil
10% shea butter
5% beeswax ( this was not added)
5% jojoba oil

I am also not sure if this was even a good ratio of ingredients? I just made it up and went with it, lol. Is there a better way to know how much of what to put in the recipe?

Thank for your help everyone, I love this new hobby of mine!

First of all - don't panic.

Second, what was your superfat %?

Reheating traced soap - it is not bad or unsafe to do that. In this case, it would not have worked b/c beeswax has a high melt temp, and it would not have been a good idea to re-heat the soap to that high of a temp. In this case, you could have replaced the beeswax with a liquid oil - olive, avocado, soy, etc - just to make sure your soap wouldn't be lye heavy.

In a day or two, touch the tip of your tongue to the soap. If it doesn't zap, it's fine (meaning not lye heavy). If it does zap, you can wait a few more days to see if the zap goes away, or you can shred it and rebatch it, and during rebatch you can add extra oil to make up for the missing beeswax (not beeswax, though).

Regarding your recipe - it's not a terrible recipe. You may love it. Seems like a lot of fancy and expensive ingredients, though. 45% coconut oil is a lot - the "standard" is 20%, b/c coconut oil is a very cleansing and thus very drying oil.

I would rebatch at this point. Beeswax has a SAP value like an oil or butter. Recalculate your recipe without it and see where you are superfat wise.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.