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Nikko

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Hi All,

Firstly, thank you for having such a wonderful forum - I'm a member of a lot of other forums and well they're only as good as their members, so from my first impressions all here need a good pat on the back.

I do dislike folks who ask questions rather than using the search function so I WILL TRY not to ask obvious or easily found things - apologies in advance if I do.

A few of my questions are just seeking confirmation/or swift rebuttal of thoughts I have - so please feel free to just say YES or DEFINITELY NOT! ;-)

1) I've made a rectangular wooden mold from 15mm ply - the ends are not fixed in place, thus allowing me varying batch sizes (max interior size L: 53cm W: 9cm H: 8.5cm) - I'm aiming for a 9cm x 6cm x 2.5cm bar. So ~2862ml is a full batch.

Should I curb my silly male instincts do do a FULL batch at first and do say 50% of mold capacity?

2) The molds are made of Formply (more on that later) - raw edges painted with varnish/estapol - then I've lined it on all interior and top with the thickest polyethylene 'builders film' I could find - all stapled in place. My thought is this is a permanent backup liner but I would line the mold with a double layer of Gladwrap/Saran Wrap for each batch (discarding this after use).

Should this be acceptable?

3) I've a decent amount of oils on hand and haven't settled on a good initial recipe. I should flag that I'm an avid shaving buff (old style safety razors, brushes etc) and as such have an appreciation for the properties beef tallow brings to a soap (it's very much sought after in shaving soaps).

The oils I have onhand and shortlisted for my first batch are:
- tallow (via the red wrappered Superfry sold in Australia)
- palm (via the yellow wrappered Frymasta sold in Australia)
- coconut (refined varient)
- canola (seems to get a bad rap but I'd like to add say 10%)
- rice bran
- olive
- castor (which people say they superfat BUT I read it has to be saponified to get the benefits???)

So I'd like a hard soap thats otherwise well rounded in it's qualities.

After reading a LOT of recipes I was thinking this as a rough starter:
- 25% tallow
- 25% palm
- 20% olive
- 15% coconut
- 10% canola
- 5% castor

5% superfat (unsure if it's better to lye discount or manually calculate and add 5% EXTRA nicer oils at trace to achieve this?)

Was going to add a little green clay powder (to initial oils to get easy mix) and a little ground oatmeal at same time.

Is that all reasonably feasible or glaring issues?

4) RE: scent - I didn't want to go too crazy but have a large selection of essential oils onhand. Initially I was thinking just some rosemary (mid note) + a SMALL amount of eucalyptus (top note) + Neem oil (as the base note plus for it's medical properties). I have scent tested and it works ok as long as you keep the Euca % well down.

Some say to add the EO's initially and others say only at trace, which one is more logical?

Thank you in advance for any assistance/feedback you might be able to give.

Nick


PS. This may be of benefit to other Australians or others but I made the molds of an building material found at Bunnings (in the trade/bulk materials section - I got a 1200 x 595 sheet) called Formply - which apparently is Formply is made of a high-density overlay (HDO) of phenolic resin impregnated paper bonded to plywood. It's specially made to have concrete applied to it in building work and was the same price as normal 15mm ply.

Being that it's made to have concrete put on it I'd imagine it's quite alkali resistant. The surface has a hard black coating that might even be able to be used without lining for soaps? If nothing else it should save people having to paint/varnish/oil their wood before use and provide an extra layer of protection against spills etc.

I've never heard of anyone else using it but from my preliminary investigations and it's zero marginal cost I would theorise there's an upside there for it in a soap mold.
 
I would start with a smaller batch, maybe 26 ounces of oils or so. That would give you about 6-8 bars from each batch. SMall batches are great, like 16 ounces batches but you have to be very certain about your scale and all since a small error could give you more problems. Gives you a chance to test your recipe and how it works before you have tons of soap that you may not like as well as you hoped. I didn't convert your measurements to our lovely Imperial system to gauge how big your batch is, so I would endorse the 50% batch.

I'm unfamiliar with the building wrap you are using, but people line their wood mold with butcher's paper (with the plastic shiny surface on one side- that's the side you want in contact with the soap), plastic bags, or saran. You will have more wrinkles with the plastic but that's just aesthetics. Your soap will be fine.

You recipe looks fine, but I am a fan of keeping it simpler. I would consider getting rid of the canola (more prone to DOS too) and increase your percentages of tallow or palm, and Olive. Or just add that 10% to one of those oils. No point in adding the extra oils at trace; it does nothing to preserve those oils as the SF oils. Just discount the lye- much easier and you won't have to worry about forgetting to add those oils at the end, which can happen. No probs with the clay.

Adding scent at trace or in the oils is a matter of preference. It won't affect the scent at all. SOme people prefer to work witht he batter without the possibility of acceleration due to the scents and just put them in at the end and others find it easier to work with scents in the oils from the beginning, so they can adjust to any speediness the scents bring. Your call on that one!

Good luck and post a picture of your soap when you're done!
 
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1) I can't do math to save my life, so you need to wait for someone else to speak to this one. However, your min-max batch size for right now should be in the 500-1000mg of oil size.(All soaping is done by weights)

2) You might do better to line your mold with parchment paper or freezer paper. I have never heard of anyone trying to line with Saran Wrap, and there is probably a reason why. I would hate for you to figure it out on your first batch.

3) You did not say whether you are doing HP or CP. Remember that HP takes as long to cure as CP. Superfat is only applicable in HP, as the lye will saponify all oils equally in CP. We mis-label our lye discount as superfat all the time, but it is confusing to newbies, sorry.

3A) The basic recipe I suggest to newbies is this:

Lard/Tallow/Palm Oil 55%
Olive Oil 20%
Coconut Oil 20%
Castor Oil 5%

Superfat 5%(It is what the lye calculators calls it, and it is default on Soapcalc.net.)

This will give you a good, basic batch of soap that is well behaved. You would be smart to stick with 3-4 oils, lye, water for a first batch. Remember that you need to learn the process, and too many ingredients just adds more complication than you need. Once you get the process down, you can add and subtract different oils to that mix, but you need a baseline batch any way.

4) Scent. The usual amount of EO called for by Soapcalc is 0.5 oz(14 gm) Per Pound of Oil(PPO). Stick to that for the total amount and you should be safe with those EOs. Not all EOs are created equal, though, and some can be irritants.
 
I have lined certain molds with Saran with no problems, at least with the actual plastic wrap. Potential problems would be the bunching in the corners giving you a ton of wrinkles but more importantly, getting the sides to stay up and not get caught in the batter as you pour and getting mixed in. Because it's so light, make sure to tape or clamp the saran to the sides of the mold so you don't end up trying to fish it out and having a leak, etc... Use plenty of tape or clamps. A corner of loose-ish Saran sinking under your batter is a royal mess. Yes, indeed.
 
The recipe Susie gave you is a good basic soap recipe that will be a nice soap to start will. Like she said it is well behaved, does not trace too quickly nor too slowly. Once you have the basic recipe down you can add color and or fragrances without too many problems. ( even problem fragrances can be dealt with effectively as long as you know beforehand that they misbehave - so ask if you don't know).

I will second the recommendation on that recipe. It will also allow you to see the steps that happen when making soap. ( ie emulsion, trace, heat up-gel etc)
 
Thank you for your very helpful and well worded replies. Haha perhaps it's because this is what I perceive is a female dominated forum but all the others I'm more accustomed to are very heavy male dominated and I'm used to being grunted at, told my questions were stupid or just abused. So it's a nice change of pace!

Oh and apologies - at this stage I intend to stick strictly with CP soaps.

I will go with Susie's suggested recipe - thank you for sharing it. Will also go with a 1/2 mould full only. Points noted on the Saran, I intended to use a silicon spatula to work/smooth it into all corners.


If I may be so bold I've two other quick questions that occurred to me:

1) RE: spoons, pots etc that come in contact with the lye solution etc - I can imagine BEST POLICY is to try and get dedicated soap making ones - but in the short term or failing this does a very thorough washing up/cleaning make them usable for 'normal' household use?

I'm talking strictly stainless steel implements - from a chemistry perspective I'd assume so but will try and pick up a few cheapies for SOAP ONLY use.

2) RE: adding salt to your lye water (haha don't you hate newbies who read stuff they shouldn't yet worry about!). I read this assists in giving a firmer soap. Any truth to this and are their negative's from it that make it a bad idea? I've checked a few commercial soaps onhand and they all have NaCl as an ingredient.

Thank you again, Nick
 
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I wouldn't check commercial stuff too often for what we do, as they use a different process and often different ingredients, just in general, I mean.

But as for salt, you can use about 2% of your oil weight - there is also a soleseife where a more salty solution is used. More salt CAN cause a reduction in lather - a normal soap won't lather in salt water, unless it has a lot of coconut oil in the recipe. But 2% can help with a hard bar with out reducing lather too much.

As for spoons and so on, the lye isn't too much of a concern - as you said, a good wash is enough to have a stainless spoon or pot (or good plastic ones, for that matter) back to being ready for use with food. After all, lye is also used in cooking, it is only too much that becomes an issue.

Scents, however, can be a different thing indeed. Stainless is good in that the scent doesn't really stick to it, but plastic can still taste of EO/FO for a while. That is where I tend to be careful, more so with lye. I sometimes take the small stainless saucepan from the kitchen when I need it, but only for lye.
 
Stainless is fine to re-use, but all plastics and silicone molds will pick up scents as Craig said.

I would not add salt. That bar is going to be good and hard on it's own. it is a well behaved recipe, I promise. And you don't know what your soap will be like without it, to then try it with it later. You need a baseline to compare other soaps to, because I promise that hand made soap is a whole different creature than any commercially made soaps. Also, take a lesson from my bad experience, don't give away any of your first batch. You will need all of those over time to test against other recipes. Save your recipes in a binder(or computer file) take notes on them about what happened and what you thought about it. This saves LOTS of time and effort down the road when those batches start blending together in your mind.

Thanks Dorymae! I did not know, and I hate for newbies to learn the hard way.
 
Oh my goodness yes, NOTES. Thank you Susie for mentioning it. It is so important. You will kick yourself later if you don't. It is odd because you will be sure you won't forget, especially your first soap. After a few recipes or even as days past the details get lost. Did you add salt? You thought about it but did you? What fragrance was that? Was that batter to thick to swirl? To thin to layer? Oh and the color, didn't I want blue? Did that morph or did I change my mind because it might morph? Trust me you won't remember, and trying to will confuse you more! Note everything, I have notes that tell me that I used a new stick blender! Or that the weather is extreme ( notes of thunderstorms) anything that I think could possibly affect a trait of my soap.

If my house burned to the ground and I lost everything, I would miss my pictures and my notes the most. Besides my family they would be the things I would try to grab. (I do back up my recipes, but my notes are old school written in a notebook).
 
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Re: spoons, etc - it's not actually the lye that's a problem, it's the fragrance oils. The only thing that I absolutely never never never use for food after using for soap is silicone molds, b/c I don't want to bake something in a container that has retained enough fragrance oil for me to be able to smell.

When measuring fragrance oils, you need to use either glass or stainless steel. some fragrances will melt plastic measuring spoons.

We have some hard-core shaving buffs on this site who are passionate in pursuit of the perfect shaving soap.

Is there a reason you want to use tallow and palm in the same batch? I'd use one or the other. Other than that, your recipe looks fine to me. A lot of folks will caution you to only use 3 oils and no scent for your first batch, but if you plan properly and choose the right scent, there's no reason you can't use all 6 oils and fragrance in your first batch. Make sure your scent doesn't cause seizing or acceleration. have all of your ingredients measured out and ready to go, so when you mix your lye water and your oils, you can quickly add your other ingredints without fumbling open jars or containers or hunting for a measuring spoon.
 
Wow - more great responses, thank you ever so much.

Ok - will not use salt this time around - is logical to get a baseline and given there's a significantly high palm/tallow content I'd expect a pretty hard soap anyway - so fair point.

Points taken with the stainless steel utensils etc - good point RE: the silicon molds but I don't anticipate using those due to having the wooden one but point taken.

I am a VERY detail oriented person so am quietly confident that attention to details, correct measuring etc won't be an issue - will ensure that I keep reasonably accurate notes to assist future efforts etc. Excellent points so thank you!

@dixiedragon, RE: Palm & Tallow - no specific reason, I understand palm is often used as a substitute for tallow hence I can see why both might not really make much difference. Will leave it to a 'game time decision' but I don't think it will add or detract much either way so LOGICALLY I can see your suggestion is best as it's simpler. :)

Ok - my final challenge given that I was going to do a half mold full only - was to find the actual amount of oil to use in any given recipe as the Lye Calculator I was using (soapcalc.net) would rely on the user to tell it the amount of oils they wanted in any given recipe and then it would tell you the full and final recipe....BUT the actual volume of end soap mix made wasn't given and I couldn't see exactly how to calculate this.

Thankfully it appears some other bright spark had.....hence I found this online spreadsheet which I've saved and can utilise to adjust where to set the ends for my mold and thus the actual volume of soap held and then make sure the proper amounts are entered into the actual recipe.

All seems pretty logical to me - so hopefully it should be fine - I've made sure there's an extra 2.5cm at the top of my mold ABOVE my ideal and aimed for depth of 6cm so that should be ample margin for some error/variation.
 
Susie, and Dorymae, a long delayed thank you here. I have never told you how much I appreciate your good advice, but I do. Your experience and willingness to advise has probably saved me (and many others) from many mistakes.

Nikko, I am in your position, only been making cp for a couple of months, but feverishly during that time, am a bit OCD. Like you (I think) I am concentrating more on making something that feels good - lots of of knockout tests - but am not as good at taking notes as you are, I kind of scribble them down in various notebooks or bits of paper, later cannot match them up, and then hate myself. So good for you for being careful.

Also with you on on mixing lard and tallow, I started (first 20 batches or so) with just lard and have started adding tallow since then (last 20 batches) , just want to see how it changes things. I figured out pretty early that I loved the way animal fats worked, and like to see how changes work there, I love the tinkering process. I may be an idiot, but there is some thought behind all of it, and I am having a ball.

Edited to say: I have had the same experience w/plastic containers and FO, heck, FOs generally. My best friend has been *****ing about the fact that his leftovers - always make extra food b/c it is just me - have been tasting like FO lately. Frankly, I can live with that, but I am more worried about that being the case for my dogs, their sense of smell is so much more sensitive, and they are so much littler. If I end up segregating everything - which will be a huge pain, I live in an apt with a pretty small galley kitchen - it will be b/c of them.

And, last edit, I promise, I love brine bars, they are so hard and moisturizing. A bit less lather, but that is OK with me. Admittedly, have not read all the preceding posts so don't know what the context is, but just wanted to note that. I basically just use my regular regular recipe and "brine" them.
 
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Since you got plenty of advice already, I will just make few points.

- your mold is almost at 3000ml capacity I would suggest you go with smaller batches for the first few attempts. 1000gr of oils makes a LOT of soap. I always make 4 x 1000gr loaves at the time and they usually last around 2-3 months and that's for 5 of us (and we shower a lot). Since you're just starting out, if you are about to make quite a big batches and want to try all the possible swirls and additives, you will soon become overwhelmed with soap. If something goes wrong, you can always save the soap by hot processing it, but if it's unsalvageable, if it is a smaller batch, you'll have less waste.

- if you want to test new fragrances, FOs, EOs, I would suggest using in in few smaller soaps first. Sometime it not going to be what it is in the bottle. Again, less waste and less disappointing soaps piling up (I learnt this the hard way). I make my usual 1000gr oil batch and then divide soap batter in cups, in each one goes little bit of FO I want to test. You'll usually notice acceleration, faster gelling, colour changes it makes on final soap, changes to FO when it hits high pH, etc. When you buy your FOs or EOs, they will come with some sort of description or warnings, but sometimes what you experience it's different from what they say. It's easier to get 100gr of disappointing soap than to be stuck with more than 1000gr that you cant't stand smelling, let alone having shower with.

- as for your recipe, it looks pretty good, you can maybe just bump CO to 20% and replace canola with rice bran. I use rice bran at around 10-15% and it gives finished soap lovely shine.

- and good luck :) make sure you post photos of your soap!:thumbup:
 
Don't get hung up on adding additives (salt) to solve a problem you most likely do not have. While people do add salt for hardening, it's not necessary with a well balanced recipe. Try just the basic soap based on Susie's suggestions, and see what you think first. When you're learning to drive, learn the basics. Speed comes later. :)
 
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As a shaving buff, perhaps you may want to look into adding bentonite clay into your soaps at some point. It adds nice slip to your soaps. Let us know how everything come out! Welcome!
 
As a shaving buff, perhaps you may want to look into adding bentonite clay into your soaps at some point. It adds nice slip to your soaps. Let us know how everything come out! Welcome!

I'm actually already stocked for this lifetime (and perhaps several others!) with artisan made shaving soaps. So prolly won't be looking to make any in the short term.

FWIW I know a lot of home soap makers will tend to put bentonite clay in their shaving soaps but it's very rare for the better artisan shaving soap makers to do so.

That said I did add some french green clay to my first batch - and ordered some bentonite clay for future use. :)

-----------
FWIW ended up doing my 1st batch a few days ago - ended up going with:
Tallow (beef) 50%
CO 15%
OO 20%
Castor 5%
RBO 10%

Total Oils 642g, SF@5%, added 1tbs of French Green Clay powder, ~20g of EO (Rosemary & Lavender @ 4:1)

Used around 1/2 my mold but must have calculated the volume a lil off as the bars were a tad shorter than desired (~4.5cm rather than 6cm). Emulsified ingredients at around 45C. Trace took under 5mins.

Have wooden lid and put that on mold plus towels etc. Cut it 24hrs later, already quite firm. Is now drying on old plastic coated rack in top of a cupboard. Passed zap test at time of cutting.

Looks very standard - which isn't a bad thing given the misfortunes of others on their debut run. Figure a 4-6week wait to try but will definitely try another batch varying the ingredients before then.

Much thanks again to all who helped.

IMG_0020.JPG
 
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Nikko congrats on a beautiful soap. I have question what temps did you soap and how fast came the trace. I never used that much tallow, without lard and I wonder how it works. I know tallow gives a bit faster trace than lard. How fast:)?
 
Nikko congrats on a beautiful soap. I have question what temps did you soap and how fast came the trace. I never used that much tallow, without lard and I wonder how it works. I know tallow gives a bit faster trace than lard. How fast:)?

Dahila, haha if you're calling that rather industrial looking thing beautiful I think you've being very kind. Reminds me of a particular Seinfeld episode where Elaine is gushing as a handsome Doctor calls her 'stunning' or similar - but then she sees him refer to a rather ugly baby by the same term and so she feels a tad undone. :p

But thanks for your kind words, whilst I'm blown away by the beauty and skill level of many users here in making their soaps look like works of art - I'm 99.9% function over form e.g it can be butt ugly but if it functions really well as a soap I'm sold.

Both the oil mixture and lye solution were at ~45degrees C when mixed together.

I'd read conflicting info about the best temps to mix but the general consensus was around 40-45 - particularly for a high % of solid oils.

Trace was achieved in just under 5mins of relatively gentle mixing with a stick blender. It might have been as early as 3mins but I wanted to be sure of hitting trace so went a lil past with no ill effects.

There was a noticeable 'tallowy' scent when it was first cut but ~3 days on it's no longer noticeable to me. Which is positive as I was fearing I'd perhaps gone a tad heavy on it. They're already VERY firm but am committed to giving them the full 6 weeks to cure.

New batch planned for this evening - minor tweaks to the original recipe (mainly to use up the 1.5kg of Palm Oil I bought as I'd like to avoid using it in the future - tallow/lard all-around superior IMHO) - so 23%PO-23%Tallow-20%CO-15%OO-14%RBO-5%Castor....7%SF. Approx 3% Colloidal Oatmeal, 1% Green Clay and 2tbs of sugar (dissolved in water to add bubbles - tallow heavy soaps tend to cream their lather rather than bubble)

This tweak essentially marginally improved all the soapcalc numbers - so I'm optimistic about it.
 

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