Recent content by engblom

From own experience I know it is possible to salt out a soap made with KOH. I almost always have KOH Castile at home and one day I decided to try salting it out. It worked as good as NaOH Castile. I am not knowing the chemistry behind it, but all I can say is it does work.

I have noticed that the longer a chain becomes, the less it gives lather unless there is a double binding somewhere in the chain. Lauric, myristic, palmitic and stearic all lack double bindings. If something contains a lot of stearic, it will not lather well as it is a long chain. However, if...

Thank you!

There is nothing wrong with water reduction, but some oil will have a limit for when it will separate out if you go too low with water. Too little of water will break the emulsion to some degree and some of the oil will float up. This happens particularly easy with KOH and olive oil but can...

Drying is not the same as curing. Just test it according to how it has cured and not according to how it has dried.

The oil will separate out if you do not have enough of water. You should probably had a little bit more water.

Different oils will give different pH when used for soap making, that is sure. However as measuring exact pH is difficult without lab equipment, I wish someone (DeAnna or anyone else with real chemistry knowledge) to tell me if I am right with the hypothesis that higher SAP value will produce a...

Without wanting to steal the thread, I have one thing more I wonder about related to this topic: Sometimes I have tried to add salt to a nearly saturated NaOH solution. I have noticed you can not dissolve almost anything. It takes what looks like an eternity to disolve just a few grains of salt...

Here we would need somebody good at chemistry (DeeAnna)! Why is it possible to dissolve so much lye after the water is close to saturated with salt? I calculated a 20% SF salt soap recipe with 1000g of coconut oil with soapcalcs standard of 38% of the weight of the oil with water. Soapcalc...

You could lower the SF% to 3-5% and at the same putting less of Coconut oil. The higher the SF%, the less lather you get. By lowering SF% you need less of Coconut oil for the same lather. As you are lowering the Coconut oil, add more conditioning oils, as Oilive oil instead.

My favorite way of making soap for own usage is "salted out" soap. By dissolving the soap into a lot of water and then saturate the water with salt, you get the soap to separate out. Soap is not able to dissolve in saturated salt water. If it would easily dissolve I would lose a lot of soap...

Salt is preventing the soap from dissolving. Before a salt soap begins to lather properly, you need to actually wash away some of the salt AND also make the soap softer by water. I am shaving with traditional double edge razors and among those using this kind of gears it is very common to first...

When you take a soap into use it is very dry. It takes some time to get the moisture content up to the level where you get enough of product easily dissolved for a good lather. Once it has been in use for some time it naturally gets the moisture level up (from all the washing).

Weight at pouring: m(Total) = m(Lye) + m(Water) + m(Oils) Volume at pouring approximately (in dl): V = m(Oils) * 0.0155 dl/g (Assuming soapcalc standard settings of 5% SF and 38% (of the weight of the oils) water. The result will slightly variate depending on oils) This means if you have 1000g...

Those oils you used are soft. The higher SF level, the more soft the soap becomes with these oils. If the oil is liquid at room temperature, the unsaponified oil will be the same inside of the soap, making the soap softer. We have some soaps high in Avocado at home, but we never went that high...