Teach Soap

i have 8 recipes and i find the simple oo, co, po, and cator oil. recipe performs as well or better than the recipes with butters and extra oils. what im trying to acheive is a hard, long lasting bar of soap. my hardest bar is a 48 in a range of 29-54. the soap is hard but gets soft towards the end of the bar. my 5oz bars may last 3wks to a month. is that normal? what oils make a really hard bar?

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JILLY

Funny, I was just talking with someone about that today. My experience isn't as extensive as many here, but this is my 2 cents:

Superfatting 5-&% gives a harder bar than 10%
A looong cure gives a longer lasting bar. While 4-6 weeks is fine, a 3 month old bar will be even better, especially if you don't shrink wrap it. I have some over a year that really are rock hard.
Sodium Lactate makes the bars harder and longer lasting.

I'd say a 5 oz bar lasting a month is the shower (assuming two adult showers a day?) is pretty good. I usually have 3 or 4 bars going, so it's hard to judge.

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Lesli Sagan
Avital's Apiaries
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thanks for the two cents, Melifera. how long does soap last? i thought it expired after a year. i have a few bars expiring in november. i didn't want to give them out with such a short date on them. when is the lastest you would hand out almost expired soap? didn't know that about superfatting. i will consider superfatting percentage more. do u lose the qualities of soap by superfatting less than 5%?

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JILLY

I have castile soap that I cure for a year and I have soaps that I made years ago that I've found and used. They smell wonderful (no off smell to them at all) and work great. I don't know that soap actually expires. The scent may fade or the color may change. Now if you have dos on your soaps, then that's a different story.

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Genny

Soaps don't expire. I have my mother's 20 year old handmade soap and it's fine.

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

what is dos? why am i putting an expiration date on my soaps?

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JILLY

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

I don't think I've ever seen an expiration date on bar soap before. Next time I go to the store, I'll have to take a look.

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Genny

Powell, I had to respond to your thread since I am a hard bar junky..lol. I love hard soap and have made some beautiful bars and since I am a guy I happen to love the larger bars of soap…up to 7 to 8 ounces each…I use a lot of the white oils and butters to make my soaps. CO is at the top of the list, then Cocoa butter, PKO, PO.

You’ll still want to use a soap calc to find the hardness in the oils you want and don’t forget to super fat about 5 %. One other oil that is really important to me is Castor Oil…It will make your bars really bubbly, and creamy…but don’t use to much, only about 5 to 7 %....If you use the above oils and butters you will find that the total hardness numbers will be up around 60 or 70 and the bars will last a long time.

As far as EO’s and FO’s be careful not to use ones with any amount of vanilla….it will turn your bars a tan to brown even if you use a whitener in your batch such as titanium dioxide…I just happen to hate brown or tan soap, but if you don’t mind that then use any FO that you like…
If you choose to you can discount the amount of water that you use but don't mess with the amount of lye soap calc tells you to use...that way your soap will cure a little faster....say 4 weeks, but still the soap will get harder the longer it cures. Good luck
Jerry

thank you so much, hard bar junky. i will make a recipe with those oils. i am using colorant for the first time and i think the new recipe will be better for a true color result. i was concerned that the oo i was going to use would add too much yellow to the color. thanks again for your reply. i can't wait to try this hard bar recipe, for this is one of my priorities also.

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JILLY

Lilly, you can use a little OO but your right about using, say 30% that may yellow your bars a little plus OO will keep your soap from being in the hard soap ranges of the 60's or higher...
jerry

A tip: the hardness number in soap calc is not about whether or not you can dent the soap with your finger or pound nails with it. The hardness number refers to solubility, or how quickly the soap will dissolve in contact with water. So year-old castille bars will be very hard to the touch but will still dissolve relatively quickly.

That said, oils and butters that are high in stearic acid and are solid at room temperature contribute to bar hardness.

Three or four weeks for CP soap sounds pretty good to me! But I also have more than one going at the same time. I think my husband goes through a bar in 2-3 weeks.

ETA: I find that the inclusion of cocoa butter at 5-10% of my recipe makes my soap harder and longer lasting.

I always let my CP soap cure for 6 weeks. I suppose those who have just started making soap will be a bit impatient and want to use their soaps within a shorter time. My answer to them is to try HP (hot process) instead and then they can use it after about 2 weeks. But for the newbie I think that starting off making HP soap can be a little challenging.
I have never heard of an expiration date on soap…but then I’m no expert, but have been making soap for about 15 years. I have bars of soap that are 2 years old and they are just fine. The bars which lean toward Castile…..those with a high content of OO are better used after they have cured 6 months or longer.
My mother, a Minnesota farm girl used only lard in making soap and it turned hard as a rock, white as snow and I know some of the bars we used were 2 to 3 years old. She used no coloring or scents of any kind.

As far as hardness in oils is concerned I have read stearic acid tends to be a hardening agent in soaps, lotions and other cosmetic products. However, I use Cocoa butter, Coconut Oil, Palm Kernel Oil and Palm Oil, in my “Hard Bars”. They have high hardness values on the Soap Calc. chart yet low marks on steric acid. I have used Shea Butter and Lard which have medium values on the hardness chart, ie.,40’s but are higher in steric acid.
Judy, on a lark you should surprise your husband with some hard bars, put a nice FO in them and make them about 7 to 8 ounces each. They should last longer than 2 to 3 weeks.
jerry