Teach Soap

Hello,

This may be a dumb question, but I have been searching high and low and just can't find the answer on the information overloaded highway. I can't even find it in my book I purchased by Cavitch that I would assume had the answer.

When you are making a cp recipe, how do you know or determine how many pounds of soap your batch will make? See, it's silly, but I just can't understand. Is it all of the ounces added together of fats, sodium hydroxide and water?

Thanks,

Amy

I only count oils... now I may be wrong.

If you go to Summer Bee Meadow lye calculator and plug in the size of your mold, it will tell you have many ozs. your soap mold will hold. www.summerbeemeadow.com

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

I generally count the weight of the oils plus the weight of the water.

Thanks so much! I bought a 5 lb mold, and it only holds about 4.5 lbs. I guess my issue most of all is seeing all these recipes that call for certain amounts but don't say how large of a batch it will make. I'd like for my batches to at least fill up to the 3/4 in. mark they say to pour to. I also got the molds in CP kit from Brambleberry and am not sure what they hold. They seem like only 1 lb. I don't want to waste soap that doesn't fit in the molds either.

So, my goal is to make 4.5-5 lb batches, and I just need to make sure I won't make too much or too little. If I have a batch that seems small, I'd like to increase the oil amount so it will make the 5 lb batch. Therefore, based on what I'm reading, I should leave room for the water because that will contribute to the overall fluid ounces. Right?

Would this recipe yield 3.6 lbs?
Coconut oil: 12 oz
Canola oil: 18.5 oz
Olive oil: 13 oz
Lye: 6.1 oz
Water: 14.4 oz

How do I increase it to 5 lbs considering the oils and what type of lather/bar they will create?

I am so thankful for the lye calculators out there! I'm too lazy to do the math mentally.

If you get desperate, line the mold with a trash bag, then pour water into it. Then pour the water into a large jug which has been tared on the scale. Now this might not work for large batches, mind you.

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

My molds are desinged to hold a 5 pound batch of soap. All of the recipes I use in these molds consist of approximately 60 oz of assorted oils 20-24 oz of liquid and the appropriate amount of lye based on the recipe ( usually between 7.5 to 9.5 oz depending on oils used ). This usually makes just enough to fill my mold to the top plus a couple oz that I pour into silicone cup cake molds to use as a sample for testing or giving away. The interior dimensions of my mold are 3.5 inches wide 2.75 inches high and 15.5 inches in length. I tested with various amounts to finally make the recipes always fit but after having done that I simply added up 60 + 22 ( average liquid amount ) and lo and behold it comes out to 5.125 pounds. So after my testing I simply add up the weight of oils plus the weight of liquid to determine how much soap a recipe will make.
Hope that helps

So the answer AKM would be 63.5 oz if my addition is correct divided by 16 would yield you apx 3.97 lbs of soap. TADA!

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

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