Teach Soap

Hi everyone, my name's Zak, pretty new to soap making having been researching pretty much most of this year and finally deciding to start out with a professional soapmaking class a few months ago (making a palm/coconut/olive oil soap under supervision), and then finally making my first batch of 100% olive oil soap on my own a few days ago when i finally bought all the equipment for it (a lot more than i thought!)

Anywayyyyy iv'e been looking more and more into all the different oils you can use for soapmaking, and was wondering if there are any rules for soap recipe making? Provided i enter the oil weights into a lye calculator (been using exclusively MMS so far), could i decide to choose a completely random combination of oils, calculate the lye/sodium hydroxide, and make soap? Or are there some oils that just won't work together???

sort of going a bit off topic to this, but also i have seen a few oil usage % recommendation charts, however there are a fair amount of discrepancies between charts, some say you can make soaps (other than olive oil of course) out of 100% Rice bran oil, sunflower oil, avocado oil, cottonseed oil, macadamia oil, etc, whereas other charts limit the usage to 20% - 40%???

With that in mind, are the charts just a guide??/ for experimental sake, could you make soap out of 100% any oil??? provided it isn't a suspected irritant like castor oil ( or so ive been told "if used over 10%" ), or isn't just too expensive (avocado oil), i'd definately have fun experimenting with 100% soaps, even if people say they don't lather up too well (i like to see things for myself )


And thats it from me, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

_________________
Learning to make soap for 1 year and counting!

CP Bar Soap ✓
CP Liquid Soap ✓
HP Bar Soap ---
HP Liquid Soap ---
Other Soaps ---

Hi Zak,

The short answer is, yes. You CAN make soap out of any oils that will saponify. Any percentage, and any oil. As long as it has a SAP value and will saponify.( I believe that mineral oil and one other I can't think of off hand do not.) You can be as random as you want. Some will be favorable and some will not. Playing around sometimes can arrive at unexpected results that are very good!

So when it comes to formulating a recipe, you consider the qualities you want in your finished bar of soap and you create a recipe for it. There are "guidelines" for each oil to follow so that your bar is not too drying, soft, sticky, etc. But there are no hard and fast rules. Generally speaking a good bar of soap is one that will be: hard, have great lather, moisturize, and clean. How much of each of these will depend on the different oils you use.

I played with soap calculators for months making recipes and trying them out. This is my favorite calculator because once you make a recipe it tells you just how much of each quality your bar of soap will have.


Here is a link to an experiment that Soap Queen did once using 100% of different kinds of oils.


And then I learned a lot from the book: The Soap Maker's Companion

You can easily find that at your library or buy it on Amazon. But the best way to tell what kinds of oils you like and what they do is use a great calculator and then test.

Good luck and have a great day!

_________________
Amanda

"We rise by lifting others."

Awesome as thanks Amanda!

ahhh so now i see...more of just guidelines rather than Must follow set usage rules, and oh nice awesome recipe maker! wow...tons easier and faster than calculating oil %'s manually

Thanks for the help! definately will check the book out as well since been looking for more soap making books at bookstores all over but it seems none have any so gotta order online X(

Thanks again Amanda!

_________________
Learning to make soap for 1 year and counting!

CP Bar Soap ✓
CP Liquid Soap ✓
HP Bar Soap ---
HP Liquid Soap ---
Other Soaps ---

If you want to play around with some soap recipes, I would suggest getting Everything Soapmaking Book by Alicia Grosso.

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

oh nice thanks will definitely check it out when i find it!

unfortunately not many soapmaking books available in my local bookstores/library X(
only ones iv'e ever seen were melt and pour ones so pretty much no help at all in regard to CP/actual soapmaking from scratch
gotta go on another ebay book shopping spree one day it seems

_________________
Learning to make soap for 1 year and counting!

CP Bar Soap ✓
CP Liquid Soap ✓
HP Bar Soap ---
HP Liquid Soap ---
Other Soaps ---

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

Thanks Linda!

hmmmm 2 recommendations.....should check it out

_________________
Learning to make soap for 1 year and counting!

CP Bar Soap ✓
CP Liquid Soap ✓
HP Bar Soap ---
HP Liquid Soap ---
Other Soaps ---