Teach Soap

Hi there, im brand new and want to make soaping my hobbie. I took a one day crash course and made some wonderful oatmeal honey goats milk soap.

Now that i want to try on my own im finding recipes on line that look like alien talk to me. They are in percentages sn sf%. Im lost. I tried to find how they arr grtting these convertrd from grams etc. I will post a sample of what i used. It was easy to understand. I will be going to buy that book everyone recommends. Id be happy to call long distance as well if someone wanted to explain it. Ive tried those lye converters those dont make sense either at this point. I should get my money back from that course but i have nice soap lol. I also have access to copius amounts of goat milk and still want to go that route.

880g of goats milk
2.4 litres of sunflower oil
350 grams of lye
2 oz of honey.

What the heck?

Thanks for this help in advance. I want to love this so bad!

You can't go by liters, you need to go by weight. If you normally go by kilograms or grams, you will need to convert the whole recipe into that. If you work with pounds and ounces, then I would change the recipe into that. Since I don't know how much 2.4 liters weigh, it's hard to know how much lye you will need. I'll presume that your sunflower oil is 81 ounces. For that size batch you would need 20 to 30 ounces of milk and 10.3 ounces of lye for a 7% superfat. If you are just starting out, I would make a smaller recipe like 2 lbs. You won't get much bubbles with just sunflower oil. Do you have any coconut or castor or mango or shea butter?

You always have to superfat, so your soap isn't lye heavy and harsh. Try this calc and play around with it. It gives you a graph of what your recipe looks like against a standard recipe.
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp

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

Welcome to the forum and the addiction!

That is odd. Metric volume, metric weight, and english weight all in the same recipe? How did they come up with that one?!?

This is what I can tell you about it.

It would definitely be easier and give you less chance of making a mistake to convert the amounts all to the same units. Like soapbuddy said, weight units are best to use, as they are more accurate and consistent. Thus, in your case, you need to convert your ingredients to either English unit ounces (by weight, not fluid ounces), or Metric unit grams. Whether you choose oz. or g. is your preference.

Because different substances have different densities, and therefore different volume-to-weight conversions, you need to find the specific conversion rate for each of your ingredients when converting from volume to weight or vice versa.. This is especially true in CP soap making where accuracy is very important (to avoid a lye-heavy batch). If you are converting from weight to weight (for example, from oz. to grams), one conversion rate fits all, and you just need to use a little math.

For example, for a volume to weight conversion, 1 liter of water (volume measurement) = 1000 grams of water (weight measurement).
But 1 liter of sunflower oil (volume measurement) = 928 grams of sunflower oil (weight measurement).
This is because different substances have different densities. Therefore, it is important when you are converting to be using the correct conversion rate for your specific substance.

However, for weight to weight conversions, the conversion rate is the same for all substances.
1 ounce of water = 28.35 grams of lye
1 ounce of sunflower oil = 28.35 grams of lye
1 ounce of goats milk = 28.35 grams of lye
1 ounce of lye = 28.35 grams of lye

And so on and so forth. This is one reason using weight measurements is better than volume measurements.

This website is helpful. It has a conversion calculator for many different substances, including several common soapmaking oils. This will give you accurate conversions that use the correct conversion rate. It does not have lye, however. But since in your given recipe, lye is listed by weight, it will be easy to convert it from weight to weight, and thus you do not need a specific conversion ratio.

http://convert-to.com

Goats milk
http://convert-to.com/742/goats-milk-va ... facts.html

Sunflower oil
http://convert-to.com/550/sunflower-oil ... facts.html

Honey
http://convert-to.com/246/honey-amounts-converter.html

If we do all the conversions, your given recipe by weight converts to:

Ounces
31.04 oz. of goats milk
78.56 oz. of sunflower oil
12.35 oz. of lye
2 oz. of honey

Grams
880 g. of goats milk
2227 g. of sunflower oil
350 g. of lye
57 g. of honey

Lye calculators are used to calculate how much lye you need to add to your oils in your recipe. Again, because different oils have different densities, the rate that determines the amount of lye needed to saponify the amount of a given oil is different for each oil. Lye calculators are used to formulate or reformulate your own recipes.

Most soapmaking books should have consistent units of measurement in their recipes. Bramble Berry has some good recipes on their Teach Soap page as well.

http://teachsoap.com

I hope this helps and doesn't confuse you more. Weight and volume always did confuse me!

Good luck, don't give up, and have fun!!!

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Olivia :)

Thanks to you both for your responses, i most definately wont give up. I just ordered the soapmakers companion and im going to give it a go.

So we can agree that this recipe i had was not the norm. How do you get the superfat percent? I will play with this calculator a bit more to see if it makes sence. Thanks for the help. And for the record, whatever formula they did use for the recipe i posted, it was awesome the soap felt great, smelled good and yiur right tho, no bubbles. Id like to put the coconut in then as well to get bubbles.

Lisa

The calculator should show you the difference in superfat. Superfat is also called lye discount, which means not all the oil molecules have saponified, making for a milder soap. I superfat at 7-8%.

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

Congrats on your successful soap! Having access to so much goats milk sounds delightful...! A lot of people run into issues making soap with milk in it, so the fact that yours turned out so well is awesome!

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Olivia :)

I have been researching on the computer FOR HOURS!!!! Some super beautiful soaps out there. So I think Im understanding more and more. It seems there is a general consensus that the super fat ranges are pretty standard. Does anyone have a recipe with goats milk, NO PALM OIL, and any other oil is fine. Something I can get started with that I can add fragrance to and color? Something I can always swap out different fragrance and colors. I then promise to get on it and show you all the first batch! I will Show you the pieces I have made with the goats milk, I thought it did turn out ok, but again I don't know what am doing quite yet, just followed the instruction.

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Shanon
Woman, wife, mother, entrepreneur,etc, etc.
"....with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26
http://www.tousheabodyboutique.com

Shannon thank you so much. I will use this recipe because its been tried. I can hardly wait. I just ordered some mica and fragrance from bb. Thanks for converting that to oz for me, those percents is what im haveing a hard time wrapping my head around. If i punch it in the lye calculator does it give me the amount of lye as well as the amount of goatmilk? How do i get those? All you seasoned soapmakers must feel like you have to babysit us newbies eh?! Lol. And i dont know what goats milk costs there but here i got raw milk, 4 gallons for $20, that should do it eh lol.

If you want to start out simple, you can go with 95% olive oil, 5% castor, 7-8% superfat and use the milk as your liquid.

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

The lye calculator will tell you how much lye and water to use, you can then decide how much goats' milk based on whether you want to replace all your water with milk or just some of it (I generally do 50/50 water/other liquid mixes, for example).

Last question I promise. I found a calculator on bramble berry website, I liked it because I can put in those percent like so many recipes have wrote down. I have entered in the percents for that recipe above from Shannon but I am stumped on this question. What Will The Oils In Your Finished Product Weigh? Is this for a 5lb mould or a 10 lb mould? I have both. I inputed the super fat as 7 % as well. If it's just for the oil weight is that 100% because all those add up to 100?

Thanks a lot, Today Is the day, I will make soap!!!!

Pick which mold you want to use (I'd recommend the 5-lb, although honestly I'd recommend getting a smaller mold and starting with 2-pound batches while you're learning), that's what you put for "what will your finished oils weigh".

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Shanon
Woman, wife, mother, entrepreneur,etc, etc.
"....with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26
http://www.tousheabodyboutique.com

Amazing you all are. Ok, im set, im going to play and hopefully in a couple days show you some pictures of how it turned out. Youve all been extremly helpful and what i aspire to be, a soapmaking machine! Thanks again. Lisa.