2 unsuccessful batches of liquid Castile soap from scratch...HELP!!!

[doriettefarm]

Personally, I would only feel inconvenienced if I thought my comments were falling on deaf ears. I would like to ask the OP if the info I posted (along with galaxy & DeeAnna) and questions we asked made sense? I think all of us were trying to help you connect the dots and provide the necessary tools to sanity-check a recipe so mistakes aren't repeated.

 

[Obsidian]

If you need a quick, easy to make recipe, follow the one on the video I posted. Its pretty fool proof and makes a decent liquid soap. There is so much wrong with the recipe you used, I'm not surprised it failed. It doesn't mention at all superfat, neutralization, clarity testing or thickening.

Oh one more thing I'm surprised no one has mentioned, castile is 100% olive oil soap, what you made is just liquid soap.

making soap isn't like baking a cake, you can't just follow a recipe and have it turn out. There is a lot you need to learn first, one is how to properly use a lye calculator because you should always run a recipe through one yourself, never trust a recipe you find on the net.

We use percentages because it really is the easiest way to keep track of the amount, plus some oils should only be used at certain percentages. Castor and coconut are two that comes to mind, castor is generally used at 5% max and more then 25% coconut can make your soap really drying. A lye calc will take your percentages and turn them into ounces or grams and you can quickly resize the batch size that way too.

I do have to say, I'm surprised by some of the responses you've gotten. I can understand that people get frustrated trying to teach someone all the soapy things when all you want is a simple answer when there isn't a simple answer. Seems maybe some of my soapy friends have forgotten that you can't learn what you don't know exists and we were all newbies to the hobby at one time.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

If you read the first 5 posts then you can get an idea of where post 6 came from. Even if the link posted in post 2 was actually 'glycerine soap' the response to it was rude as the op had not stated previously that it was only 'all natural' Castile that was wanted. It was downhill from there.

It's easy to respond harshly on a forum, especially for long timers seeing the same wrong information coming in over and over, when it seems that people can find this site once everything has gone wrong, but not before hand to avoid learning all the rubbish in the first place. Even more so when the op seems combative.

With a forum, it's just text on a screen with nothing to give context about what is going on with the poster themselves, in their life. It makes it easier to go on what is given, not on a bigger unknown picture. Which leads to misunderstanding

 

[doriettefarm]

And if you want to salvage your original batches, it's probably possible to make another batch of negative SF paste to add back to the original. It would take some calculations to figure out the correct ratio to get you back to a 3% SF but it could be done . . .

 

[galaxyMLP]

Wow, I really really didn't mean to start an all out debacle. I have just seen instances where sometimes, things are taken the wrong way and threads get out of hand. I thought by saying something (that I thought) was not rude but pointed out where something could be taken the wrong way, it would help.

If other members on the forum thought my remarks were inflammatory or uncalled for, I sincerely want you to know that was not my intent.

OP: Unfortunately soap making does take a bit of background know how and I know it sucks that an internet recipe led you astray. The good thing is we know what went wrong and how to fix it. That is more than half the battle in soaping and we all make mistakes.

Sometimes with the internet being so big, its hard to pick out the stuff that is right and the stuff that is plain wrong. When it comes to the web, everything looks like it could be legitimate. Especially if you have people repeating the same thing they "heard/read that one time" over and over again. That is how misinformation spreads and it is especially rampant in the soap making community.

I hope you are not discouraged from trying liquid soap again.

 

[kumudini]

O, I understand we all start from zero, or may be someone remembered their basic science lessons from school and they start with some sort of understanding, but to actually advance from that starting place, one needs to learn or be willing to learn. Just asking to be handed some numbers without even trying to see what people are asking or saying does give the impression that they are not willing to really learn anything. We direct them to the most helpful thread and it seemed to fall on deaf ears. I agree that my response was somewhat rude but not without reason, you just can't demand for help. No one here has any obligation to help an unwilling newb. All of us do it because we love to, out of generosity or as a way of returning all the generosity shown to us.
I also know that an apology won't right everything, but it's what it is.

 

[not_ally]

If you want to salvage the original batches, I would post again and see if someone can help you work out the math. At this point you might be too frustrated with it to do that, if it were me I might be. In that case I would watch the link that Obsidian posted to get a sense of a better way to go about doing it next time.

The problem for me in following Galaxy and Doriette's generous advice is that for *me* it wouldn't be enough information for me to learn about the process and how to troubleshoot myself if things went wrong the next time. It is very reassuring for me to do research in advance in a reliable/reputable place before I start, it makes it less stressful because I have a better sense of what is supposed to happen, and why, and what I might need to do to fix it. Also, it gives you a better idea of which questions to ask, if that makes sense.

I *really* recommend that before you do anything else you go back and read the first couple of pages of the long LS thread. Within them, Irish Lass - one of the gold standard posters here - sets out a very long, detailed description of exactly how she does it, why, what to look for, etc. I think you will find it extremely helpful and make things less stressful, not more so.

 

[IrishLass]

Welcome, Carrie- I do hope you decide to stay so that we can get your liquid soap-making endeavors started out on a much better footing than the Wiki recipe. If you ask me, the others are correct- that Wiki recipe leaves much to be desired. I would just treat it as a bad memory that's best forgotten, and then start anew.......

Also- from here on out, I hope everyone can treat the rest of this thread in the same manner as the Wiki recipe. Things got off on a bad foot due to stress, misunderstandings, and frayed nerves, but lets move on to better footing.

Carrie- you said you'd like to make a Castile body wash. I may be partial, but when it comes to making liquid soap, you really and truly can't go wrong with the 'glycerin method', which is explained thoroughly in the links that several members posted in this thread.

As Obsidian stated in one of her posts from this thread, you can make a 100% Castile liquid soap with the glycerin method. It sounds like you may have mistook the glycerin method as being a method for making glycerin bar soaps, which is understandable, but that is actually far from the case. The reason why we call this particular method of liquid soap-making the 'glycerin method' is because liquid vegetable glycerin is used in place of some of the water amount.

In case you are leery of using glycerin to make your liquid soap, you need to be aware that one of the natural by-products from making soap with lye is actually glycerin. The percentage of natural glycerin present in lye-based soaps generally runs somewhere between 10% and 15% or so, depending, so using extra glycerin to make lye-based liquid soap is really non-issue and nothing to be leery of......and the extra glycerin makes liquid soap-making so much easier (and much quicker!).

I do hope you'll stay on board and read through the suggested threads. There is a wealth of information there that will save you from so much frustration and that will get you started on the right foot.


IrishLass