Teach Soap

WOW, I am full of questions at 7:00am on a Sunday morning! My wonderful dog gets me up at 5am on the weekend, believing it is the work week...UGH!

My question for beeswax is...how much to use in CP soap PPO? I would like to try to eliminate using palm in most of my soaps, even though I get it from BB & it's environmently sustainable. I purchased some beeswax from a local beed keeper. I think using beeswax would harden the bar?! Would I melt it in the oils before adding the lye solution? HELP......

I'm still new to CP soapmaking but I'll throw my 2 cents out here anyway..

I'm not sure beeswax can be used at such a high rate (I don't know how much palm you use in your recipes but I usually use it between 20 and 30%). I have a friend who keeps bees and he keeps giving me large amounts of beeswax, so I incorporate it 2-4% in my recipes to keep from getting ash and to make a bit of a firmer bar when I use a lot of soft oils.

I usually just throw it in with my hard oils to melt it in. I have had great results so far with my method. I'm sure soapbuddy will be along shortly to have a solid answer for you!

HTH

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ween rules

I put some in every recipe at about 3% and it seems to work fine. I throw it into my oils/butters and just melt it in.

I use beeswax at around 1% along with sodium lactate. If you use beeswax at a high ratio, you will loose lather. If you don't want to use palm you can recalculate with coconut, palm kernel or olive. Or add about 3% of mango or shea butter.

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

Excellent, thank you! I'll try 2%, the average of the suggestions. If I add castor (5% or under) will that boost the lather w/o making the batch soft? I was thing about making a batch with Olive, coconut & soybean. I know no more than 30% of coconut is recemmended, how about soybean?

Thank you all again for being so helpful & supportive of each other. It's amazing that may of you sell soap, but there is no feeling of competition, or the need to "one up" the other. My kind of people!

Castor at 5% or under should be fine. Just balance it out with some of the harder oils.
And yes, we're a good bunch.

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

cocoa butter also lends hardness to soap, so does stearic. I agree with soapbuddy - beeswax is ok to use 1-2%, otherwise your lather will be lacking.