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Barnabus

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Hello everyone,
I stumbled across this website looking for information on Soap making.
I do not intend to ever sell soap, or market it, I just want to do a family project, and with that said, I have a budget that will allow me to spend willy nilly without hopes of ever getting my money back out of what I make, just use.

I was researching of various oil properties and their qualities in soap.

I have a list of the ones I liked what they seemed to do, and also have used in the past that I would like to incorporate into some soap.

Oils:
Argan (5% of total oil used)
Shea (12% of total oil used)
Coconut (16% of total oil used)
Castor (5% of total oil used)
Babassu (10% of total oil used)
Evoo (40% of total oil used)
Cocoa Butter (12% of total oil used)

I also would like to possibly make milk soap instead of water soap. However, I wonder if I can use Almond Milk? Or am I limited to animal milk only? If animal milk, I'd probably go with Goat milk, there is a farmers market locally that sells it.

What I want the soap to do:
-Lather and make lots of suds and bubbles
-Be Extremely moisturizing, but also very cleansing
-Not smell bad, but also I don't want any strong scents, I'd prefer if the scent comes from the oils used alone.
-Last quite a while and still be firm

Ideally I'd like to make 36 to 60 bars total.

Will someone with experience please suggest to me an edit of the percentages of oils I listed, and also any substitutions that need to happen, as I do not know if any of the ingredients I listed will interact with anything else, or if they won't go well together or whatnot.

I'd like to have a decent recipe prepared by Sunday so I can go pick up everything and start then. (I'll probably do this 4 times, so my recipe will be 25% of the total yield each time, just in case I fudge it up, I don't fudge up the whole project )

Thank you very much!
Barnabus
 
Welcome!

I don't have time right now to answer all of the questions here, but I can do some.

Yes, you can soap with almond milk as a water replacement.

No, the natural scent of the oils will probably not come through much in the final bar. You may smell a vague oil-like scent. And I do find that raw shea can come through a bit, but not as much as you might think.

Lye-based soap will never be "moisturizing" to the skin, but you can make fine bars that will not strip your skin of all their natural oils.

Babassu and coconut oil are the main "bubblers", but should only be used in a combo of 20% or lower to avoid that icky dried-out feeling I mentioned above.

For firmness, you'll want a decent amount of hard oils (40-60%ish). The holy trinity of hard oils are Palm, Tallow and Lard. Use one, or a combo of them.
 
Welcome to the forum!

You may want to check out this kit:
https://www.brambleberry.com/Natural-Soap-Kit-for-Beginners-P6607.aspx

If you like the way that soap turns out, you can simply buy refills. Or you can build your own recipe.

Re: this recipe
Oils:
Argan (5% of total oil used)
Shea (12% of total oil used)
Coconut (16% of total oil used)
Castor (5% of total oil used)
Babassu (10% of total oil used)
Evoo (40% of total oil used)
Cocoa Butter (12% of total oil used)

IMO this is not a good recipe for a first time soaper. There are a lot of expensive oils that don't really add anything to soap.

here's a good base recipe:
40% lard, tallow or palm (I like lard)
20% coconut
5% castor
35% olive oil (no need to waste extra virgin on soap).

If you want to play with some of those nicer oils - argan, shea , cocoa butter - you may want to check out whipped butters, lotions and lip balms. Whipped butter and lip balm are VERY easy. Lotion is slightly more difficult, but very doable.
 
I'm all for a simplified recipe, especially for the first time. If you make small batches, you can start with a base recipe. Then, in subsequent batches, you can add "fancier" oils and butters to see what difference they make. I personally think shea and cocoa butter DO make a difference. I also like avocado oil. As a family, you could compare the different batches and see who likes what in their soap.
 
Of the oils in your initial recipe, I would simplify it to:

Coconut 15%
Shea 15%
Olive oil (doesn't have to be EVOO) 55%
Babassu 10%
Castor 5%

Unless you add fragrance, it should smell like soap. Very neutral.
 
"I would like to pick up everything"..... I agree with everyone else. Since you plan to shop locally you will spend a small fortune for the specialty oils - especially the argan, which like others have said is wasted in NaOH soap.

Walmart Oils readily available - Lard, Olive oil - don't buy EVOO, Avocado Oil, Castor oil (pharmacy section), Coconut oil.

I love milks in soap - I rarely prepare a batch without it, but I wouldn't recommend for your 1st batch of soap. As a matter of fact, I think you should try an experiment - do 2 small batches (1 lb) - 1 with almond milk and 1 without and see if you can tell the difference. - Do the 1 without first.

The tricky part about milk soaps is burning it when you add the sodium hydroxide. Many (including me) use a 50/50 method. Add 1/2 of your liquid milk to your oils and freeze the other half to use with your sodium hydroxide. A good video is milk soaps with Natures Garden - [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeREoysTzDg[/ame] She goes through all of the basics.

I'm hoping your shopping list also includes a good scale and a stick (immersion) blender. Also all available at Wally World.

For your final recipe you also need to learn how to use a soap calculator like soapcalc.net or soapee.com They are both relatively easy to use, but don't use anyone's recipe before running it through a soap calculator.

Hope this helps
 
Ditto what said above. You have been given great advice.
Babassu serves a similar purpose like coconut oil, which in total do not exceed 20% to avoid too stripping your natural sebum.
The fancy oil should be add-in after you got your first very basic good soap made. I like Dixie dragon's for a first-timer. And you should experimenting with a fancy oil at a time, then you'll know what you like and why.
 
Welcome to the forum. You have been give some excellent advice above and I agree with keeping it simple. Leave the Argan out too expensive and really adds nothing to soap. Use it for leave on products. Dixiedragon's recipe is top notch I highly recommend trying it. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how good it its.
 
I forgot to address using milks!
Vegetable milks - almond, coconut, etc, are pretty easy to use. You can just straight replace them with water.
Animal milks are trickier and things can go wrong easily, so I don't recommend those for a first batch. IMO, though, you could easily substitute a veg milk for water in your first batch. Be sure to read the ingredients - for example, Vanilla Almond Milk has added sugar and flavor that may make things go awry.
 
The split method for using milk is to mix just over half the liquid amount as water with your sodium hydroxide then add the other half of the liquid as milk directly to your oils. There is no freezing involved and it prevents the milk being burnt. You can mix powdered milk with the milk to bring the total liquid percent up to 100% milk. I think you will find there is very little difference between a soap with milk and one without. Infact most of my tester who wanted milk soaps actually preferred those without in blind testing.

Dixie's soap makes a good hard bar. Instead of the coconut and some of the palm you could use 10% coconut and 20% Avocado and 10% cocoa butter for a more conditioning bar.

The annoying thing about soap is that something that suits my skin might not suit yours so it will be very difficult to come up with the perfect bar for you and your family the first few tries.
 
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