How long do you cure your CPOP soaps? HP?

Max your problem may be the amount of coconut you used even with the higher superfat. It would dry my skin out. I would probably superfat that recipe at 15% or a bit more even. However, I did make a 100% CO but i also superfat that at 20-25% and it works well without drying. I cure all my soaps 4-6 weeks at least. I too have found that it becomes a much better bar after a good cure. More lather, bubbles and is harder and milder.

pamielynn said:

Properly made CP should be safe to use right away, just like HP; and sticking CP in the oven only forces gel - doesn't lessen the need for curing.

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Did you mean should NOT be safe to use right away? cause it kind of contradicts what you just said. safe means it won't dry the skin.

I'm confused some say that once it goes through HP soap is ready for use if it doesn't zap. For CP I red after 48hr saponification is complete and therefore it can be used to.

max_ime said:

Did you mean should NOT be safe to use right away? cause it kind of contradicts what you just said. safe means it won't dry the skin.

I'm confused some say that once it goes through HP soap is ready for use if it doesn't zap. For CP I red after 48hr saponification is complete and therefore it can be used to.

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your skin might be a bit sensitive to co, a 12% SF might not be enough for a recipe with 45% co. that is why it felt drying. to some ppl, this amount of SF might be enough, but to others might not.

my basic understanding of safe soap is that it has finished saponification process, therefore no active lye is present in the soap.
essentially, your soap is safe to use since it was done HP, but how your skin reacts to that particular recipe is another story. have you made soap with high co before?

i totally agree with pamielynn.. my hp soaps ended up cured even longer than my cp, coz i used more liquid. you could try giving the soap a bit more time to cure (2-3 weeks minimum) and try it again on your skin. i have a feeling you might be a bit sensitive to the high co amount.

max_ime said:

Did you mean should NOT be safe to use right away? cause it kind of contradicts what you just said. safe means it won't dry the skin.

I'm confused some say that once it goes through HP soap is ready for use if it doesn't zap. For CP I red after 48hr saponification is complete and therefore it can be used to.

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Saponification in CP can take longer than 48 hours. It depends on the recipe and how you made it (prevent gel, force gel and so on). When it stops zapping, it is safe.

With HP, you cook the soap and saponification is completed before you even mould it up, so it is safe.

Safe does not mean that it won't dry the skin - a badly made, but non-lye heavy soap can still be drying. A well made soap can still dry some people, too.

Note, I am excluding silly recipes and things like too much EO and so on when I say "safe". I am assuming a good recipe.

^^^^^
What seven and Gent. say

In my understanding a 'safe' soap is a soap which will not burn the skin through being lye-heavy. A properly made, appropriately cured soap will not be lye heavy.

Drying the skin IMO is a different issue. High cleansing soaps, such as those with a high % of coconut oil, may cause skin dryness in susceptible people.

Eg my OH cannot use soaps with higher than 20% coconut oil on his face, as they dry out his skin to such an extent that his face erupts in large bright red patches which feel tender and sore, crack and flake, and take time to heal.
Just his face is affected though, the rest of him is fine.
Also with other soaps I make he's fine.
But he's not sensitive to coconut oil itself though, and uses it as a moisturiser.

Edit: I haven't to date used EOs or FOs in my soaps, so his face is affected by the high cleansing alone.

seven said:

my basic understanding of safe soap is that it has finished saponification process, therefore no active lye is present in the soap.
essentially, your soap is safe to use since it was done HP, but how your skin reacts to that particular recipe is another story. have you made soap with high co before?

i totally agree with pamielynn.. my hp soaps ended up cured even longer than my cp, coz i used more liquid. you could try giving the soap a bit more time to cure (2-3 weeks minimum) and try it again on your skin. i have a feeling you might be a bit sensitive to the high co amount.

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I have been using dr Bronner for years and it is mostly coconut, but I don't know their SF%. It is not drying at all on my skin and the liquid version is good for my skin too. It's around 80% coconut because KOH is the 2nd ingredient, + it is not SF more than 3-4%, otherwise I red it would go cloudy.

AnnaO said:

^^^^^
What seven and Gent. say

Eg my OH cannot use soaps with higher than 20% coconut oil on his face, as they dry out his skin to such an extent that his face erupts in large bright red patches which feel tender and sore, crack and flake, and take time to heal.
Just his face is affected though, the rest of him is fine.
Also with other soaps I make he's fine.
But he's not sensitive to coconut oil itself though, and uses it as a moisturiser.

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What is you SF% in CO soaps? perhaps a 25% or higher Sf would fix the issue for him?

max_ime said:

I have been using dr Bronner for years and it is mostly coconut, but I don't know their SF%. It is not drying at all on my skin and the liquid version is good for my skin too. It's around 80% coconut because KOH is the 2nd ingredient, + it is not SF more than 3-4%, otherwise I red it would go cloudy.

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i was gonna say that bronner's liquid soaps have lower ph (i noticed citric acid in the ingredients list) than cp soap (which is more alkaline), but i ain't too sure myself. someone who is more chem savvy should answer your question

btw, where did you get the number 80%? is it possible that the percentages of co, koh, and olive are not much of a difference from each other? a similar topic is being discussed in
.

max_ime said:

What is you SF% in CO soaps? perhaps a 25% or higher Sf would fix the issue for him?

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Some people just have skin that cannot take high cleansing, irrespective of SF, and my OH is one of them.
So because my OH's face is so delicate, I make him low cleansing facial bars, which he loves. So it's not really an issue, it's just the type of skin he has
(Re your suggestion... 100% CO 20% SF had the same ultra drying effect on his face).

"...lower ph (i noticed citric acid in the ingredients list)..."

Ahem. Citric acid in the ingredients list for a soap means there is sodium citrate (or potassium citrate) in the soap and there might be a higher % of free fatty acid or free fat in the soap. It would be incorrect to assume the pH is necessarily lower.

seven said:

btw, where did you get the number 80%? is it possible that the percentages of co, koh, and olive are not much of a difference from each other? a similar topic is being discussed in
.

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Well just because ingredients are listed like this : Coconut, KOH, Olive, hemp, jojoba Because Koh has to be around 15% (or else there would be way to much alkali for it to make a good soap) therefore olive has to be only around 10% making obvious that the coconut is around 70-80%

max_ime said:

Well just because ingredients are listed like this : Coconut, KOH, Olive, hemp, jojoba Because Koh has to be around 15% (or else there would be way to much alkali for it to make a good soap) therefore olive has to be only around 10% making obvious that the coconut is around 70-80%

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If you take the % of water contained in the liquid soap into consideration, then it follows that the coconut oil percentage is a lot less than 70 - 80%.

(Edit: yes this is a daft comment. My brain is tired. Sorry all.)

AnnaO said:

If you take the % of water contained in the liquid soap into consideration, then it follows that the coconut oil percentage is a lot less than 70 - 80%.

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I think it's 70-80% of the oils in the recipe, dr Bronner bar soap is 5% water, liquid is 61% water (it's written on their website in the difference between bar and liquid)

I thought you meant the liquid stuff
Mind you the olive, hemp and jojoba could all be 15% each... which would mean the coconut would then be less than 40%... but anyway I'm signing off now, and turning in, as it's nighttime here in Blighty :yawn:

max_ime said:

Did you mean should NOT be safe to use right away? cause it kind of contradicts what you just said. safe means it won't dry the skin.

I'm confused some say that once it goes through HP soap is ready for use if it doesn't zap. For CP I red after 48hr saponification is complete and therefore it can be used to.

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No. There is a difference between "safe" and "drying". I read lots of posts where newbies claim that they make HP or CPOP because "it is safe to use right away". This makes no sense to me. You can safely use fresh CP soap, too. Or should be able to, if it's made correctly.

Your soap should never be lye-heavy, because it will always be lye-heavy no matter how long you cure it. Cure will not fix this problem.

AnnaO said:

I thought you meant the liquid stuff
Mind you the olive, hemp and jojoba could all be 15% each... which would mean the coconut would then be less than 40%... but anyway I'm signing off now, and turning in, as it's nighttime here in Blighty :yawn:

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Well I did mean the liquid stuff when saying around 80% coconut, but when breaking it down again taking into account the 61% water/39%soap I realized coconut must be around at least 57% of the oils to around 84% to the most and from what I red liquid soap cannot be clear if there is more than 2% jojoba in it, and Bronner doesn't smell like hemp oil so the hemp percentage has to be around 2% (I made bars with 6% and they really smell like hemp) unless they use refined hemp oil, but again I never smelled refined hemp oil. or maybe the smell fades away after a month, can anyone experienced tell? (% are % of the oils)

I will break down :

Dr Bronner unscented :
THE % ARE OF THE WHOLE CONTENT OF THE LIQUID SOAP

water 61% source : http://lisa.drbronner.com/?p=675

coconut 18% - 26.4% = (57% - 84% of the oils in recipe)

because:

KOH 7.8% (has to be around 13% of the paste recipe's including the water to make KOH solution using a 26% solution (with 90% pure KOH) see below my first attempt's proportions

olive to the most about 3-7% = (9 % - 22% of the oils)

hemp to the most around 7% but probably more like 1% or less because of the absence of hemp smell and colour unless they use refined which I am not familiar with I guess they do use refined, I will try it.

jojoba 0,5% (I red it has to be less than 2% of the oils for it to be a clear LS)
citric acid (no time to break it down now)
vitamin e (same for now)
(not written on label but I think there's 0.005% rosemary EO from what I red and comparing the smell with the result of my first attempt, it makes sense)

Here's my 1st attempt at making a liquid soap like dr Bronner, I did use cheap store bought sunflower oil this time because I had no vitamin e but I will try the next batch without it, I don't think it's helping much. + I replaced olive by avocado, don't know if this is a good thing yet, will try with olive too. avocado are the olives of the new world? kind of... avocado oil has no smell almost compared to olive, I am going for an unscented soap right now.

total fat 650g
CO 78.69% of fats = 511.48g // 90% KOH needed is 142.64g
avocado 7% of fats = 45.5g // 9.41g
sunflower 6.5% = 42.25g // 8.87g
hemp 6.2% = 40.3g // 8.55g
jojoba clear 1.61% = 10.47g // 1.12g
// total 90% KOH= 170.59g
// -3.33% discount -(5.69g)
// =164.70g
takes 469.33g of water to make a 26% KOH solution
I cooked for about 6.5 hr then turned it off and let it overnight in the crock, it's clear but has a very very slight haze, more obvious under light, it's a tiny bit less clear than Bronner's, Bronner's is not totally clear either compared to a clear beer. I cannot tell you how good or bad the soap is yet, I did not add the citric acid yet, and I think it needs to cure to get good, maybe in a month? I don't know. I cannot really tell if it is drying right now, I already dried my skin with my attempts at bar soap, so I will only try my Liquid soap when my skin is back to normal, just being easy on myself.

So I will try to break it down further by breaking down the bar soap soon, probably this will get clearer, I'm sure an experienced soap maker out there can tell the % of Bronner's recipe just by experience and knowledge of oils.
In bar soap I notice that there must be less than 1gr of salt per bar because it doesn't taste salty. I made some with 1 gram per bar and it was noticeable to taste. so that gives a hint of the amount of citric acid. Lye must be around 12% unless there's a huge lye discount to make a 15-25% SF. Experienced soaper out there probably can tell what's the SF of Bronner bars just by using them, feeling them. I think Bronner soap is milled with machines, might be wrong about that... Coconut and Palm probably represent at least 62%, lye around 12%, water 5 % (so the following oils should all be below 5 or equal, unless they can label it that way because they use more than 5% but the resulting product has 5% in it?) olive 11% or less, hemp 10 or less, jojoba probably 5 or less.

pamielynn said:

No. There is a difference between "safe" and "drying". I read lots of posts where newbies claim that they make HP or CPOP because "it is safe to use right away". This makes no sense to me. You can safely use fresh CP soap, too. Or should be able to, if it's made correctly.

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If it makes no sense to you, are you saying that you can safely used CP or HP right away if it is properly made but while being safe, it will dry your skin, maybe severely because it has not cured for weeks yet? Or, that a higher SF would ensure that the soap won't be drying even if used right away, assuming that you aren't abnormally sensitive to the oils involved. Someone here told that you need to wait 3-4 weeks because of some crystal realignment or something of the sort still going on, after this wait, then it's not drying anymore.

A soap can still be drying, after a cure. They become milder with time, of course, but a 100% CO soap at 1% SF would still be drying when Charlton Heston is weeping and screaming in front of the destroyed statue of liberty!

There is a difference between safe, drying and "ready"

Safe means that saponification is finished and no lye is present (and no other dangerous ingredient amounts, eg too much EO)

Drying means that someone's skin reacts to the soap in a certain way. New soaps can be more drying than when they are older, some recipes work with some people and not others

"ready" is a less tangible value - to some (including me) it is 4 weeks for most soaps, maybe 8 weeks for a salt bar and at least 6 months for a Castile. For others, "ready" for a Castile is 12 months! For yet more people, "ready" for all bars is 2 weeks.

DeeAnna said:

"...lower ph (i noticed citric acid in the ingredients list)..."

Ahem. Citric acid in the ingredients list for a soap means there is sodium citrate (or potassium citrate) in the soap and there might be a higher % of free fatty acid or free fat in the soap. It would be incorrect to assume the pH is necessarily lower.

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i have a feeling it was a bad guess, lol

thanks for the clarification DeeAnna

check this out

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( source for a lil more details: http://forum.thesage.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=99)

2) You can lower your soap's pH by adding Citric Acid but then you must also up your lye to compensate for the CA or your soap will separate. Tricky, but it can be done. Here's a formula from my files:

Add 0.571 oz. of NaOH for every oz. of CA.

Example: If you use 0.25 oz. of CA ppo (Per Pound Oil) for 32 oz. oils:

2 (lbs) x 0.25 = 0.5 oz. CA

0.5 x 0.571 = 0.2885 oz. extra lye (0.29 oz. rounded off)

3) Citric Acid can be used to reduce soap scum, especially useful if you have hard water. It reacts with the lye to form sodium citrate.

Use rate is 0.1% to 0.5%. Up to 1 tsp. (1-5 grams) ppo

SAP value is 0.571 for monohydrate citric acid.
SAP value is 0.625 for anhydrous citric acid.

Add citric acid to oils before adding lye water. If you add it to your water, add the lye slowly and carefully. The citric acid will cause some excess bubbling and splashing.
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I used this info in my attempt to perfect my bar soap. Unfortunately, I couldn't find more info on how to use citric acid. For me, it seems it is defintely not working to stir in a solution of citric acid and dead sea salt mixed together after HP at the moment of SF just before pour. The problem is that the soap won't be smooth and well mixed(or maybe it will if I used a 2nd stick blender) . So I tried to put my solution in the dissolved lye solution and it did something like a kind of separation when I put about 1/4 tsp in it (probably due to dead sea salt only), so I went on and put my dead sea salt + citric acid in the already melted oils before adding the lye solution so that as I expected once stick blended, it came out great, nice smooth texture, but lots of air bubbles, ( I cooked the soap, it was around 150-170F which was to much I think, causing air bubbles) BTW I used about 1.37g per bar in the first attempt, 1.61g in the 2nd(smooth one).

Dead Sea Salt isn't really good to use in soap. It's got too many minerals that react with the lye in the soap.

I use citric acid in nearly all of my soaps. I dissolve it in my water before I add the lye, and I use the much easier conversion of 6g lye for every 10g citric acid. I use 5g citric acid for every 500g oils.