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I have lard in my shaving soap and the guys like it. Based on what others have posted, you may not need to use stearic acid itself if you play with your butters to insure a stearic value of at least 20 on soapcalc. I've never soaped with stearic up at 7% but if it's anything like lower...

The best mold size calculation come from TheDish soap forum. It's a metric calculation but so far has proven as most accurate for me as I can change my water and know by how much I should adjust the recipe. Metric calculator found here...

That's a lovely curing rack! I'd love to see pictures of it with your soap in it.

From my personal experience, 170F in the oven shouldn't be burning off your fragrances completely. I've done sweet orange 5x EO in the oven and it came through just fine, same with all my FO's (95% are from NDA in my case). You also might not need to leave the oven on for so long. A lot of...

Wow, thanks for the update on your thickening process! Very detailed. With the titanium dioxide, does the finished body wash have a 'pearly' look?

In terms of uses for a zero superfat bar, a number of people will make a special batch with no superfat to be used in a laundry soap recipe. There's a bunch of laundry soap recipes floating around on the boad, so I'm sure you could find one that would work for you.

Nice looking soap and I'm looking forward to seeing the hearts out of the mold. As to a pot or container for mixing your soap, an 8 cup pyrex type measuring cup does fine for batches easily up to 32 oz (2lbs) (at least, works fine for me). don't use pyrex for mixing the lye because of the...

Looking forward to pictures! It's great that your father seems to be coming around

Superfatting at trace really doesn't guarantee that the oil that you add will be the 'free' oil in your finished soap. Lye is still extremely active at that time so it will eat up whatever oils it runs into without regards to the time the oil was added or the kind of oil. In my opinion it's a...

I've never tried it in soap. However, my general understanding is that when using in CP soap, you're probably best not to spent money on the really expensive oils as it takes a large quantity to make a significant difference in your recipe and then there's no guarantee how the lye will eat up...

So here are the updated pics. First and uncut, then cut. Last time I did maple, the cut pieces turned all dark within hours of cutting, but this batch is holding onto the inner light color for longer (you can see a difference between the pieces as I cut 2 to test how long they'd take to change...

Yeah, the whisk is the way to go. I'm really not sure why I threw the stick blender in before testing, I guess I was distracted. I should have time to run 2 or 3 batches today, with a body lotion or two thrown in there also and tons of new fragrances to try, so I think my whisk will be...

Well, I can say that I've lived through my first near soap on a stick experience. My regular recipe (65% olive oil), low temps.... but new UNTESTED FO. Not quite sure what got into me to decide to just throw the FO directly into the oils before adding lye (normally only do that with proven...

I'd love to find a ginger EO (or even an FO) that smells like fresh grated ginger. Unfortunately, the one I bought smells a lot closer to dirt than ginger, and reviews on a few others give me the same scent. I even picked up a white tea and ginger FO that had the 'dirt' smell like the ginger EO...

Hmm, I'll have to try the shaking... I could swear I shook the container some between the two batches last night. I also keep my container in a plastic (like heavier than ziplock.. it came shipped that way) bag as that way I worry less about possible lye crystals that might cling to the bottle...

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it's summer. I've had higher than normal humidity (nothing unusual for part of the time in the summer) and I'm finding it harder to measure out my lye in these conditions. Higher humidity = more static electricity (since the water in the air makes the...

For the PVC pipes, I use the Glad Press and Seal wrap. Anyone remember all those weird commercials with throwing containers around when the stuff first came out?? Yes, the press and seal leaves a bit of a pattern on the bottom of the pvc pipe, but it prevents most messes (I am obviously not...

I can't help you with the SAP value of Rosin, but I would love to hear your thoughts on use in soap. My grandmother used to use it when she made soap 60 years ago, but I've not found much on the subject the couple times I went out searching online. When we talk about soap, she keeps asking me if...

I think you might be referring to cream soap (though I could be wrong). I unfortunately can't help you on the topic much, though I do know there's a fantastic cream soap forum and a few of the members on here make cream soap so someone else might be able to help you out.

I have a very hard time measuring fragrance. Part of the issue is my scale, part of it is the sheer nature of small volumes of liquid for pouring. I have a starfrit scale that reads 1g - 0.5oz increaments (fairly inexpensive, but good quality for the price... hasn't steered me wrong yet). It...