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I made my first oatmeal and honey soap yesterday, 22g PPO oatmeal, 1 tsp PPO oils. The recipe was: 80% Tallow 15% Coconut 5% Castor This thing overheated like a...but I probably shouldn't use that language here. :twisted: I almost always use honey at that rate and don't have a...

A very linguistic friend of mine just pointed out that the longest single-word palindrome (word that's spelled the same forward and backward) in any language is the Finnish word: SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS According to Guinness, anyway. This word means "one who works with lye," according to him...

I made some soap last night using the below formula, with a standard CPOP (preheat to 170°, turn off, put soap inside, and leave in for 2 full hours because we needed the oven). On mix, the overall color was brownish from the honey, without any note of blue or purple. I kept going because...

Well, not a disaster, per se, but hopefully somebody can learn from this. Two weeks ago, I made laundry soap--60% palm, 40% coconut, 0.5% super fat, 25% water. As expected, it came together fast and I unmolded the next day, then cut the bars into seven or eight pieces each with the intent...

Does anybody else get railroaded into making soap they hate? My mother's new favorite is a lard soap (which I also like) with a carnation scent. A reek I can't stand, in other words, as it's sickeningly floral to my nose. Not to mention the fact that it accelerates so severely that I have...

My lard got here today (thank you, Soaper's Choice...but did you HAVE to put seven pounds of lye in a thin-necked bottle?!?) I have a new friend. White even just post-trace, trace was slow but not ridiculously slow--I would have had time to do multiple-color swirls if I wanted. The scent is...

and chromium oxide green--has anybody done this? I'm looking to make an Ocean Breeze type soap, with a saturated blue (ultramarine blue and a dash of black iron oxide for depth), white (titanium dioxide) and teal. I have on-hand plenty of ultramarine blue and chromium oxide green, but no...

OK, I'm frustrated. I was trying to create a lapis lazuli like color for Christmas gifts (a Marseilles soap) using blue ultramarine. It's a pretty soap, with 24K gold swirls, but not what I was looking for. As it sets up, it's definitely a light sky blue. What colorants does one use to get...

This has to be in the running for World's Ugliest Soap. Stearic spots, the Blue #1 did warp to the correct purple hue, but didn't disperse well before I was hitting thick trace. Partial gel reached to the edge so it's inconsistently white and opacity varies. The edge broke when I unmolded it...

While moving the soap storage unit after the Great Mouse Invasion, I discovered an (open, untouched, un-mouseified) box of little soap samples I'd made and forgotten about. Those soaps were four years old, and from the second or third run of batches I made when I started. Most of you will...

showed up on my front doorstep, as I found when I got home. The Post-It note reads, "Make your mother some Castille." :-P

Not bad if I do say so myself, but I'm hoping I got the color consistent through the bar well enough. I still haven't figured out how to get good vertical bars of color so they show well on the cut bar. I also have to learn not to fill the mold that full and not to slop over the side...but...

I've been playing with sugar as an additive. Although the bars aren't fully ready for use yet and won't be for some time, I don't think I'll ever skip it in the future. So far, I'm noticing that the soap seems to harden a bit faster. It's also easier to unmold, and doesn't leave the bits...

A friend of mine's requested I try to dupe a lotion she likes in soap--Lavender, Rose, Violet, and Musk. The first three don't worry me much, I have some of the FOs for those, except violet, and I can find that. I have half a memory of problems with musk at certain pH levels...so I may not...

I'm now on my sixth batch and about to start my seventh (six CP, one CPOP which it turns out I don't care for; the color changed and I don't care for the texture). Four came out perfectly and performed as expected. Two didn't, but look like they'll perform fine once they cure. Still, I'm...

Daringly, I damped my finger and ran it over the remains of the soap in the soap pot (which is already pretty darned hard). I wanted to see what full zap feels like. Zap...none. I got a faint and not unpleasant flavor of soap (nor did I go blind like Ralphie). That's it. I put the mold to...

Everything got here except the Neoprene gloves, so I substituted a good thick latex for that. The Lye Monster is overrated anyway--I used filtered very cold water from the refrigerator with a touch of crushed ice and had no out-gassing at all. I have no burns and still have both eyes. The...

Looking at some of the numbers, with water as 38% of the total oil weight (through SoapCalc while playing with it), how much eventually evaporates off? Should I reasonably expect my soap to lose all of the water after a good cure (and drop, after all is said and done, to 72% of the total...

Now that I, at 41, am being allowed by my mommy and spouse to handle lye (!), I'm tentatively planning my first CP soaping experience. I'm looking at 75% OO, 25% CO, 5% superfat, perhaps a dash of fragrance (I like Rain Forest myself), and a touch of chromium green. Single color, nothing...

I make MP and enjoy it very much for the artistry I can create...which family and friends love. I think it might be time to graduate to CP. The lye worries me, so I'll probably look like Ralphie's brother from A Christmas Story (the snowsuit incident) when I first use it. I fully plan on a...