Always use a soap calc, even when...

marilynmac · Sep 21, 2014

The first few batches of soap I made came from a recipe in a published book. Pretty pictures, text seemed to make sense.

I've been using the soap, and gave some away for testing. Started wondering why my skin felt so dry, so I ran the recipe through the soapcalc. Turns out it was pretty Lye heavy. Urrrrrg.

[Both soaps passed several zap tests and a pH strip test.]

Susie · Sep 21, 2014

Always, always, always run every recipe through a reputable lye calculator...no matter where you get it from. Sorry you learned this the hard way.

Meganmischke · Sep 21, 2014

If it didn't zap it shouldn't be lye heavy. Low to no superfat is much better than lye heavy. Ph test strips really don't give me any usable information. sounds like a good laundry soap.

marilynmac · Sep 21, 2014

the recipe
510 g crisco
170 g OO
170 g coconut O
42 g beeswax

The recipe, as copied into my notebook, says 142 g of lye. soapcalc says 127 with 0% superfat. I don't have the actual book anymore, it went back to the library.

Wondering why it passed the zap test. Maybe I wrote the Lye amt wrong in my notebook but actually used the correct amount. Maybe I read the wrong amount from the book to start with. Maybe my arms feel sunburned and dry because they ARE sunburned and dry.

cmzaha · Sep 21, 2014

In soap calc this would give you a -12 superfat. If you used what is considered full water 38% water as percent of oil you could probably just stick them on a top shelf for at least 6 months to cure out. Soap will become milder with age. Or if you can retrieved the bars you gave out you could rebatch and add in an additional 70 grams of oil, which will take it up to around a 5% superfat. The recipe you started out with would make a nice soap with the proper amount of lye. That is why you want to verify all recipes with either a soap calc or manually

marilynmac · Sep 21, 2014

cmzaha said:
That is why you want to verify all recipes with either a soap calc or manually

When I started this, I didn't have internet access. I checked out all the books on making CP soap, read them, and did what they said. What they said was ... "make this recipe". There is also a chance that I wrote the wrong number in my soapbook, and used the right amt of lye.

Always use a soap calc, even when...

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Always use a soap calc, even when...

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