Teach Soap

Im currently making my soap with olive, coconut, Palm, canola, sunflower, Shea/cocoa butters. Respectively 27/27/27/15/15/5/5 percentages. I would like to stop using Palm oil. I don't want to use sodium lactate in my soaps. I've heard of using salt in the water before lye to make the soap harder. I think this would work. I know I could use lard, but I promote my soaps as vegan. Any help would be helpful. Also, am I using too many oils? I like the way the soaps bubbles/lathers, but if I reduce my oils I could lower my prices.

Also, I know that olive oil is a soft soap, but if is a "soft" soap how can it make a really hard bar? I'm wondering if using olive and coconut oil, and then Shea butter would be a baR. What would be a good percentage breakdown? Olive 70% coconut 25% and Shea 5%?


Thanks for helping!

Take out the palm and recalculate your recipe at soap calc. Olive oil is not a "soft" soap. If you make a pure 100% olive oil soap, it will be so hard you could use it as a lethal weapon lol. Canola is a soft oil. I don't use it as it has a short shelf life, is too soft and can give your soap DOS.

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

I use salt for exactly that reason. I use 13% salt by weight to liquid. I don't do the full 25% of normal brine bars because I don't want to have to increase coconut oil to 30%, which is what I saw a lot of online to offset the lather-reducing impact of the salt. High coconut oil soap bars do not feel good to me.

Olive oil becomes a hard bar of soap with a longer cure time. It is soft at first.

I use 50% olive, 15% coconut, 10% castor. For the last 25%, I use whatever I happen to have around, except grapeseed, which gave my bars DOS one time. The lather is ok. If you find a mix of oils that lathers well with the salt and doesn't have too much coconut oil, please let me know.

The obvious solution nobody's said is to add 30% coconut oil. I love olive oil but find coconut indispensable in all but a few recipes.

I always add a little sea salt for hardness. 13% sounds like way way too much. I just add a couple of tablespoons for a batch with 160 ounces of oil. No need to overlook it on the salt.

100% olive soap is great and gets totally hard. The coconut adds nice foam tho, even at 10-20%.

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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!

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

I think I super fatted @ 6 %.

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

Alright, Thank you!!!

I know that castle soap has to cure longer, but I wasn't sure about soap mostly of olive oil and with other oil.

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

I know some people have mentioned they don't want to use sodium lactate but I've bought some after watching many clips on YouTube. I'm confused :-
* as to how you calculate how much to use . at present I only make enough for a 2lb mould
*Do you run it through the lye calculator
*When you should add it.

Any advice would be great.