Teach Soap

I've always heard it's very important to melt palm oil completely, stir it well, then measure it for my soapmaking. But I have a large quantity of palm oil right now and I can't melt it all every time I make soap. So what happens if I just just scoop it out and use it in my soap?

You could have the stearic settle to the bottom and when you reach the bottom, you could have soap on a stick, since it would be mostly the stearic. Is it homogenized?

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

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

Is it necessary with 92 degree oil to do this?

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

I'm not sure what you mean by 'soap on a stick' but I'm sure it's not a good thing! I got a big 5 gallon pail from a company called The Golden Barrell after I saw people on this forum talking about it. It's way too big to melt it all down every time it's used.

Here's the link for that company. I can't tell if it's homogenized or not: http://www.goldenbarrel.com/soap-making-oils.php

I bought 5 gallons of palm and coconut oil from the same company. I used a large canning pot and melted down the whole bucket in sections and then re-poured it into another 5 gal bucket, stirred and then divided into smaller plastic containers. I t tooked quite a while but I had 2 pots on the stove at once so that helped. I found the heavy duty wide ice cream scooper from wal mart very helpful!

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Melissa

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

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

I bought an enormus pail of palm oil one summer from Soapers Choice and asked them how was I going to melt all that at once. They said to put it into a car parked in the sun on a hot day . It worked, then I ladled it into smaller tupperwere containers .

So if I buy another 5 gallon pail of Palm Oil in the future, I should melt it all down, stir it well, then pour it into smaller containers? And then every time I get anything out of those smaller containers, I should melt them down completely, stir and then take out the amount needed? Do I have that right?

So that makes me wonder about the pail I have now. If it were summer, I could put it in a hot car and melt the remainder of what's in there, but since it isn't summer, I'm not sure what to do.

Does soap that has seized still work okay to bathe with? Or are there other changes that make it not as good as soaps that did not seize?

Yes, melt it all down, stir it well, then pour it into smaller containers. If/when a soap seizes, it's possible that not all the oils/lye/fragrance got completely incorporated. It's best to rebatch.

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

Maybe you could try a very hot bath for the bucket. But if you need to scoop it out to melt, instead of an icecream scoop I use a very large stainless spoon rest so it doesn't take as long or you can find garden tools that are nice and big that will scoop it out much faster.

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"Maintaining Balance Between People and Nature"

This is what I purchased to heat buckets. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... ket+heater
When the bucket of palm is new it takes about five hours to melt. Then I have eight containers that I measure melted oil into for use. Now that the bucket is half empty it takes about 3 hours to melt down. It is a much cleaner process then removing and heating on the stove. This is my second bucket to use this heater on and so far I like it.