Teach Soap

Hello all, I'm new here and never made CP soap before.

I've been doing a lot of research and I'm finding some aspects of soap making confusing. I'm in the UK and while I work in lb and oz myself, the rest of the country seems to prefer g and kg.

So I worked it out that if I make a 1.5kg batch of soap it should be about 3lbs.

so my question is, how do I make my recipe so I know it will end up being 1.5kg or 3lbs in weight. On soapcalc and similar calcs, it asks for the weight in oils, is that also the final weight of the soap?

I'm only making soap for myself and my family, so it doesn't matter that much, I just want to make sure I have the right size moulds etc before I spend a fortune on things I don't need!

Thank you in advance for any help

The weight soapcalc gives you is the total weight of oils. To know the weight of the soap, you need to add the weight of water/lye/scents to it.
A system I use is to calculate the total oil weight as 2/3 of the total soap weight. If when I run the recipe I get more weight than my mold can handle, I adjust the recipe accordingly.

Welcome to the forum.

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"Quick to judge, quick to anger
slow to understand.
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Ah, so the weight of the complete recipe will give the finished batch weight, i.e if I use 4lbs in weight of oils, lye, water and frangrences/essentials/additives etc, the final batch of soap will weigh 4lbs when it comes out of the mould?

_________________
A book for those who want to learn new things.

"Quick to judge, quick to anger
slow to understand.
Ignorance, and prejudice, and fear
go hand in hand..."

Neil Peart - Rush.

Hi Geranium! If you have molds already---- fill the empty molds you intend to use with water and weight the water to give you the amount of soap to make. Also,
http://www.summerbeemeadow.com
has a recipe resizer which pops up after you use their lye calculator. That's helpful when you have a recipe you really like and are getting a different mold. You just have to plug in the size of the mold you want to use and it automatically gives you the new recipe amounts.

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You may be only one person to the world, but you may also be the world to one person

Thank you, and don't worry I'll be boring you all with pics! And then I'll be asking you all why it went so wrong, lol!

And thanks for the link

_________________
A book for those who want to learn new things.

"Quick to judge, quick to anger
slow to understand.
Ignorance, and prejudice, and fear
go hand in hand..."

Neil Peart - Rush.