Recent content by Red Kev

Hi ButterDiesel, I'm a newbie to this soaping thing too, and I love the experimentation part of it. I've been experimenting with temps a bit, and while I probably don't have enough data under my belt to say anything definitive, in my short experience I have found that: Temps between room temp...

Hey, no worries :D You've answered my quick Q's and now giving me lots of good, related information that I'm reading with relish :D It's like a new car that's been upgraded to the Sports Pack for free :wink:

Didn't really finish my chain of thought last night: one of the other things I am wondering is if a an HP version of a given recipe is a good predictor of its CP counterpart. This would make it ideal for experimentation as you could do a small HP batch, know the resuits quickly, and decide...

Thanks Hazel, that answers perfectly. I will try your suggestions at 2 and 4 weeks and look for differences. Might CP the same recipe and do a direct comparison.

I overheated my oils the other day (melting some of the hard oils and took my eye of the ball), but proceeded as usual with the recipe with the oils at about 100*C+ (212*F+). Well, it did the whole volcano thing I've read about with HP (no further heating, just its own thermal mass kept it...

Thank you, all, for your valued opinions and suggestions. Enough of flogging a lame horse, so to speak; I'll re-evaluate the ingredients and quantities in line with your comments and recast the recipe entirely. Lindy, the lye dissolves fine and doesn't seem to cause any problems with other...

Thank you, Hazel, for you suggestions and experience. So it has been six days since the last experimental pour. Here are the results. All of these soaps (except the very last) were made to the same recipe, and oils and lye combined at 70*C: The oven soap kind of exploded: not in a Mythbusters...

Thought I'd revisit this thread as I did a bit of experimenting yesterday. To return to the topic, this soap was very soft when I first made it. Even after a couple of weeks in the mould, the individual bars would not demould cleanly; instead, the mixture would cling to the bottom of the mould...

Hi Cosmo, can you explain what you mean by a "50/50" solution? And how can you tell if oils are "soft"? My thinking was the olive oil and coconut would harden things up a bit ... Loolee, all the oils come from various soap making or trade suppliers so I'd be very disappointed and a tad cranky...

Thanks all. Sounds like I must have done something wrong -- mismeasured or left something out. I'll give it another lash and see what happens.

Hi Genny, full ingredients as follows: Olive oil 57% Coconut oil 12% Castor oil 10% Flax seed oil 5% Cocooa butter 5% Camellia oil 4% Apricot kernel 5% Rosemary oil 2% ---------------------------- Added at light trace Sweet orange EO 1.1% Olive leaf extract 1.1 % ----------------------------...

Hi All, I've just tried a new recipe and it's been sitting in mould for about a week. I tried to turn one bar out the other day and it's very soft and wouldn't release from the mould in one nice piece. I am wondering if anyone could hazard a guess as to what's causing it. My first guesses (just...

Thanks all, there's some good ideas there. We've only tried store-bought pine tar soap, and it hasn't had much effect, but maybe a home made version with significantly more pine tar might help. I'll certainly be formulating some recipes around ingredients mentioned here and on other posts...

HI all, forgive the cynic in me as I am new to soap making, but am searching for an answer to my wife's psoriasis (and my dog's eczema, but wife comes first, right) and am wondering about the efficacy of active ingredients in cp soap. For instance, from my reading some of the prime ingredients...

IrishLass, thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my questions. Really is appreciated. The reasoning behind the high levels of beeswax and stearic acid in the same batch was I wanted to end up with a really hard soap, and I thought these might get me there. I know the proof will be...