Soap dries out my hands - confusing.

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Q-Lee

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I can't really understand why this soap dries out my hands. Some suggestions to what I did "wrong" ?

Total oil weight=800 grams

15% Coconut Oil ,92 deg
10% Shea Butter
70% Olive Oil (15% of this total is olive infused wheat grass)
5% Castor Oil

Superfat 6%

Additions (given as percentage calculated from total oil weight):
0,85% Sugar, 0,65% Table salt (increasing hardness)
2,3% Kaolin clay and 1,75% Wheat grass powder

Fragrance (EO's) Rosemary, Lavender and Peppermint in a total of 24 grams
 
Couple of questions -

How long has it been curing?

Do you have hard water?

Can you describe the drying? Are the hands actually getting dry and flakey, or just the skin feels tight? Does that feeling last?

Does the soap zap?

On another note, I use sugar at 3% and salt at 2%, I am not sure how much of an impact too small amounts of things like that will have. I haven't, however, used clay or wheat grass powder, so I don't know if they would be having an impact
 
Did you zap test it to make sure it's not lye heavy? If it's not lye heavy, then how long has the soap been curing before you tried it? It may just need more time to be it's best. Also some people; myself included, find clays in soap to be drying to the skin. Your recipe looks ok to me.
 
Your recipe looks fine to me - in fact, I have a lot of recipes that look quite similar! How long has your soap been curing for?

I had a similar problem when I first started out soapmaking, and it was a combination of several things:
Testing my soap too early (soap that doesn't zap [~2 weeks] is safe to use but not necessarily mild enough for everyday use)
Hard water leaving soap scum on my skin and irritating it (adding sodium citrate helped MASSIVELY)
Too much coconut oil (some people discover that anything above 5% is too drying, other people discover that their skin does not like coconut oil at all)
Superfat too low for my dry climate
Just literally washing my hands too much
Not rinsing off soap well enough when washing

It looks like Norway wouldn't have hard water or a dry climate, so if those aren't an issue, I'd look into lowering the coconut oil percentage further. Increasing the superfat for such a soft recipe seems risky.

Lastly, your soap may simply get milder over time. Lots of olive oil means more reliance on aging for the quality of the finished bar.

Edit: Beaten squarely to it. Pretty much agree with TEG's initial assessement.
 
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Thanks for very quick response :)

The soap batch was made 09.02.2017 - cured for almost 8 weeks.
It does not zap at all
My tap water is at ph 7.2 (info found on my towns web site)
The skin of my hands only feels uncomfortably tight - but my husband hands get more dry and...a hint of white shine ( difficult to describe but a bit like when you have dry white skin under your feet - but then again...he has psoriasis)

I do have another soap batch - (the first I made) containing a 30% coconut oil and pretty much many other oils + goats milk that don't act like this one on our hands.
But in that batch I did not add anything except EO's. So..maybe it's the Kaolin clay....:think:
 
It could be the clay. I found that I do not like kaolin clay in any soap because it leaves a fine residue that is difficult to get rid of.

It could also be that high amount of olive oil. Give the soap 4 more months, and give it a re-try, then another 4 months after that. High OO soaps are notorious for taking forever to cure properly.
 
I know soaps with high amount of OO can take quite a time to cure,but didn't know it could cause the drying sensation! Thought OO was one of the gentle oils to use in formulas?
As mentioned I'm quite satisfied with the soap - some suggestions what oils i can use / replace instead of OO in my next batch?
(so I have some alternative soap to use when waiting for this one :p )
 
...
As mentioned I'm quite satisfied with the soap - some suggestions what oils i can use / replace instead of OO in my next batch?
(so I have some alternative soap to use when waiting for this one :p )

Do you have any requirements we should know about first? Are animal products and palm okay?
 
Clay is the worse additive I've ever used in soap, it dries me out terrible, even in small amounts.
High OO is also hard on my skin, more then 30% makes my skin really tight.
I like a recipe high in lard or palm, lard being prefered.

Lard or palm 50%
Coconut 20%
Olive or avocado 25%
Castor 5%
 
Clay is the worse additive I've ever used in soap, it dries me out terrible, even in small amounts.
High OO is also hard on my skin, more then 30% makes my skin really tight.
I like a recipe high in lard or palm, lard being prefered.

Lard or palm 50%
Coconut 20%
Olive or avocado 25%
Castor 5%

My favourite bar right now has bentonite clay in it! I was surprised that I love it so much. It's a very hard, smooth, creamy bar. I used 1 tsp PPO. I wouldn't go higher than that though. And I actually used a very similar recipe to the one you posted above.
 
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Thanks a lot for all helpful answers and tips. Using tallow or lard isn't an option because it's difficult to come by here in Norway (believe it or not).
I have Palm Oil and Palm Kernel - but been a bit skeptic to use those in combination with Coconut Oil since I've read it can be tough on the skin.
But then again..I thought Olive Oil should be very gentle :mrgreen:
 
Obsidian: Have you tried to substitute some Palm with Shea butter,and some Olive Oil with Rice Bran ?
If so at what amount?
 
Thanks a lot for all helpful answers and tips. Using tallow or lard isn't an option because it's difficult to come by here in Norway (believe it or not).
I have Palm Oil and Palm Kernel - but been a bit skeptic to use those in combination with Coconut Oil since I've read it can be tough on the skin.
But then again..I thought Olive Oil should be very gentle :mrgreen:


Palm oil is great if you don't want to use or can't get lard. Is your palm kernel a liquid or flakes! If it's the flakes it can be used in conjunction with CO by splitting the amount between them. They are both cleansing oils. Palm Oil isn't drying.
 
Obsidian: Have you tried to substitute some Palm with Shea butter,and some Olive Oil with Rice Bran ?
If so at what amount?

I have a vegetarian recipe that uses 20% shea instead of palm or lard, its not too bad but has quite a lot of coconut to help counter the lather killing properties of shea.

I've only used rice bran a couple times, around 30%. I honestly don't know how it compares to OO as I didn't use that particular soap.

I used to use PKO in place of coconut and I liked it quite a lot. I only went to coconut because its so much easier for me to find.

If you want to try the recipe I posted earlier, use the palm in place of the lard and the PKO in place of the coconut. I don't really understand why so many people use PKO and coconut in the same recipe when PKO is just fine on its own.

Olive oil does make a gentle soap, it won't strip too much of your natural oils. The tightness some people experience with it isn't because its a harsh soap, something else it at play, I just don't know what.
 
Palm oil is great if you don't want to use or can't get lard. Is your palm kernel a liquid or flakes! If it's the flakes it can be used in conjunction with CO by splitting the amount between them. They are both cleansing oils. Palm Oil isn't drying.
My Palm Kernel Oil is solid..a bit like 92 deg Coconut in texture.
 
It looks like Norway wouldn't have hard water or a dry climate, so if those aren't an issue, I'd look into lowering the coconut oil percentage further. Increasing the superfat for such a soft recipe seems risky.

Norway does have a very dry climate. Hard water, I don't know. But in the winther, absolutely every single drop of water freezes, so the air is as dry as it can get. But that depends again on where in Norway you live. I guess the rainy western area are not so dry. But most parts of Norway is crisp dry in the winther, if it is cold degrees outside.

My hands gets so dry that they will bleed in the winther that I have to use a special cream to make them soft again (Kerodex71, the best I have tried). So we definately have a dry climate, but dry in another way that in the desert or hot areas. Like freeze dried.

My first soap was also drying to the skin, even if it is 100% olive oil and with a superfatting (I don't remember the %, but it was under 10). But I did some strange things since I did not have ingredients, so it can be a lot of factors. I did zap test both the soap and the lather, but I'm not sure how this zap is supposed to feel. I did not feel like battery licking. So what I suspect, is that a homemade soap is way stronger and more consentrated that store bought liquid soap. They do water it down a lot. But homemade is not watered down, so maybe that is the thing. It is stronger than we are used too. But I don't know. The next time I will use 15-20% superfat and some wax, to see if that helps.

I don't have dry skin at all, except from on my hands. They are notorius for drying out instantly. So now I can actually see a difference in dryness from the left hand to the right, where I hold the soap in the shower. More dry on the right hand. But, better luck next time.
 
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