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Tried a liquid soap for the first time this week, for two reasons -- I want some potassium based soap for inseciticide to keep the squash bugs at bay, and it's nice to have some liquid soap in the kitchen. My niece made some a couple years ago, probably one of those "make liquid soap from bar...

Between going beginner berserker and some life issues with an aging parent, I've not made soap for quite a while. Oddly it takes much longer to actually use soap than it does to make large quantities.... Anyway, I think I've rounded up all the necessary stuff and since it will rain this...

Last fall I make some shave soap with 20% castor oil to try it out. I wasn't sure it was a great idea, but several other members reported good results using that much. I made three very similar soaps, one with stearic acid, tallow, and castor, one with stearic acid, coconut oil, and castor...

My niece got excited when I gave her some soap yesterday, and has asked me to make some "natural" soap for her to use on her two children, ages 4 and 2. I'm thinking something like 30% HO safflower oil, 60% lard, and 10% CO with 5% superfat, very low scent with lavender or my 'special mix' of...

I've gotten a wild hair to play with color in soaps since my red palm oil worked out nicely -- 5% gives me a solid dark yellow, so I can use less and get a variety of yellows. I'd like to stick with natural colorants at the moment, so decided I could get some indigo powder and get a range of...

I scented one of my first shave soaps with small amounts of amyris FO and lemon FO, and the lemon seemed to vanish after a few weeks. But for the last couple days, using the same twist-up tube shave stick, I'm suddenly getting a nice low level of lemon scent while I'm shaving. Can't really...

Went nuts and made three different recipes with four fragrances each tonight. Worked pretty well, 200 gr of oils each, mixed the fragrances in portions in paper cups and poured into my 12 cavity mold. High lard with cocoa and shea butter, high tallow with coconut and HO safflower, and pure HO...

I'm looking for some non-floral "masculine" soap scents for bath soap and shaving soap, so I decided to try the Brambleberry sampler for men. Descriptions sounded good, and I'm totally unfamiliar with "modern" aftershaves, etc. The sample box arrived today, nicely packaged, so I got out my...

Made my first batch of CP soap this evening. Lard, CO, HO Safflower, edta. Poured it into my fancy 12 mini-bar mould and mixed in the FO's in the Brambleberry "masculine" sample. Went pretty well, got a nice light trace and poured it then, oil and lye were about 128 degrees when I mixed...

Made some soap last night, and got a surprise. Hot process, 80% lard, 15% CO, 5% olive oil (because I dropped a new plastic bottle and it leaks...). 0.5 gr tetrasodium EDTA, 3% SF. 12 drops of Bulk Apothocary Egyptian Dragon FO Went well, got to try out my new stick blender, but got some...

Now that I've made shaving soap, I'm getting interested in bath soap. What do you all think of the following recipe: 70% lard 20% CO 5% Shea butter 5% Cocoa butter SF 4 or 5% Plan to hot process and scent with sandalwood or something I have around, don't care much for scent...

With the assistance of this lovely forum I've manage to make four batches of shaving soap without incident (all rather small but the last). Simple recipe: 50% SA 20% Coconut oil 20% lard last 10% either cocoa butter or cocoa butter and shea butter. 60/40 KOH/NaOH All hot...

With the help of this lovely forum I've manage to make a few batches of shaving soap that work really well. I did cheat a bit -- I'm a chemist by trade. I get the feeling I'll be up to my ears in soap soon, I have a tendency to sort of go overboard with new hobbies.... Peter