Long lasting soap bar

Which are te best oils/greases to make a long lasting soap bar?
What additives should be used for this?

I think the best additive for a good hard, long lasting bar of soap is time. The longer it's left to cure, the harder it'll be.


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Your AO's like lard and tallow make the hardest and longer lasting bars. Used with CO and even palm with one or two liquid oils and SF of 5-7. It will last longer than most all VO soaps.

I think that "hard" and "long lasting" is not the same, at least in one case - coconut oil. One of my soaps (40% CO, 55% OO, 5% Castor, 10% superfat) after a 2 month cure has a very short life. My suposition is that the high percentage of CO is "guilty" for this. CO makes hard but not long lasting soaps. (could be only my perception).

I was curious if the addition of bees wax would increase the longevity of bar soap? Any thoughts on this?

Beeswax In Soap

I like beeswax in soap. It changes the feel a bit.

I encourage you to try adding beeswax to soap.

Based on my experience, I observe that the beeswax will not form a homogeneous mixture throughout the soap.

Instead, it separates into little small pockets of wax throughout the soap.

This occurs while you mix the soap and before it traces. Thus you get hard spots throughout the soap, but only those spots are harder.

The overall effect of the wax is positive though.

sososo said:

One of my soaps (40% CO, 55% OO, 5% Castor, 10% superfat) after a 2 month cure has a very short life. My suposition is that the high percentage of CO is "guilty" for this. CO makes hard but not long lasting soaps. (could be only my perception).

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It's tough to make a well-balanced bar of soap without using a generous portion of palm, tallow or lard. There are other options to get saturated oils that function like these oils, but the options are generally more expensive and often inferior. There's a good reason why these oils are popular soap oils.

Put the coconut oil at 28-30 percent and add a like amount of palm, lard or tallow (28-30 percent) with the balance being olive, or another equivalent oil, and you will get better results.

In addition, it seems to me that castor oil in soap doesn't help the bar to last. It can get you a little different bubble. But it seems to always get you a bar that is a little quicker to fade away. I usually would rather leave it off.

I doubt that the 10 percent superfat really changes the way the bar lasts, but do you like the feel of a bar with that much superfat? Superfat at 5 to 6 percent suits me a lot better.

Designing soap recipes is an exercise in balance and trade-offs.

What suits one person may not suit another.

CrafterAl said:

Put the coconut oil at 28-30 percent and add a like amount of palm, lard or tallow (28-30 percent) with the balance being olive, or another equivalent oil, and you will get better results.

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So, you say that palm, lard or tallow make a longer lasting soap than coconut oil? This is my perception too, but I can't explain why.

sososo said:

So, you say that palm, lard or tallow make a longer lasting soap than coconut oil? This is my perception too, but I can't explain why.

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Solubility of palm/lard/tallow (high in palmitic acid) is lower than coconut (high in lauric acid). Olive oil (oleic acid) is even less soluble. However, when it comes to long lasting, you are balancing solubility vs. mechanical removal of material (reduced by increased hardness). Coconut gives you a hard bar, but high solubility while olive oil gives you a softer bar (except after a long cure), but has low solubility. Lots of threads around here on this topic if you do a quick search.

Thank you. Now I understand how it comes. So I have to avoid the oils which are high in lauric acid or to use them in a low percentage.

sososo said:

So, you say that palm, lard or tallow make a longer lasting soap than coconut oil? This is my perception too, but I can't explain why.

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Not really....

I have no opinion about whether palm oil soap lasts longer than coconut oil soap. As far as I can remember, I've never made straight palm or straight coconut soap. I never saw any need to. I have used soap that had no coconut oil. I have used mostly coconut oil soap as well. Neither was all that impressive.

It takes a balance of oils to produce what I consider ideal soap.

My idea of ideal is just my idea. But I'm making soap to sell, so I'm pretty set on what I want.

The fatty acid make-up of the different oils will give you clues as to which ones are much alike and which ones are quite different.

You can see the differences at http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp.

By the way, some say shoot for recipes with an INS value of about 160. Mine tend to be a little lower most of the time.

Several soap books also go into what to expect from different soap oils.

A soap made about like I suggested will last for a long time.

In my experience, I say a coconut-heavy soap bar will leave a person squeaky clean. The squeak results from complete removal of the oil from the skin. That's maybe not so good.

But if you want top lather, it's hard to get it without coconut or palm kernel oil.

A bar soap can be pleasant to use and still last for weeks of normal use.

I've sold a lot of soap and folks won't be happy and buy more if the stuff just melts away. It has to stand up to use to keep people happy buying it in quantity, or so it seems to me.

Look at the label on a bar of Ivory (coconut// + palm//) or Palmolive (palm + olive ) to see that the giant soap companies also use multiple oils. Look at Octagon soap ingredients and try that out also.

By the way, I've used handcrafted soap that seemed inferior in most ways to Ivory! Not good!

Note that some say that coconut oil makes soap that is hard, but quick to fade away with all the bubbles. I'm not too sure about that. I do know that a formula with coconut, palm and olive can lather like crazy, clean well, moisturize and last a long time.

It's the balance of the oils that is the key. And it does not require complicated formulas to make great soap. You can make great soap with just 3 oils for certain. I think it's tough to make soap I would really like with fewer than 3 though.

In your opinion which of these two recipes will make a longer lasting soap (CP):

1.
Coconut oil - 15%
Palm oil - 35%
Olive oil - 50%

2.
Coconut oil - 35%
Palm oil - 15%
Olive oil - 50%

Same superfat, same cure time, same water:lye ratio, same gel/no gel, no additives.

I made the soap queen "lots of lather" recipe with a ZERO superfat (because it was my very first try and I had no idea what superfat was) well I just used the bar and its rock hard.. Seems like it'll last forever. And it wasn't drying like I thought it would be either.


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Number 1 will last longer due to more palmitic and stearic acid, less lauric and myristic acid. What Paintguru said.

CrafterAl, I've never used beeswax, but this makes me want to! I'm interested to see what the addition to my soap would make it feel and perform like. And personally, I feel like olive and palm make fabulous hard bars of soap. Just my op.

DeeAnna said:

Number 1 will last longer due to more palmitic and stearic acid, less lauric and myristic acid. What Paintguru said.

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I agree.

For the record, I hate beeswax in soap. It is a pain in the butt to work with. You have to soap really hot to keep the wax melted and that makes the soaping process less controlled. It is very difficult to clean the containers that have been in contact with the wax. I don't think it really adds anything. If you want harder soap that unmolds more cleanly, I recommend sodium lactate at 1% of oil weight.

What's even more "fun" than just using beeswax is also using honey and ground oatmeal too, all at the same time.

You can melt the beeswax in honey and superfat oils and add the mixture to the soap. Clean-up is not a problem. There's very little beeswax left in the beaker since the wax is floating around in the oil and honey mix.

In addition, the honey and wax sort of bind together in little pieces and you get these little small bits of wax and honey throughout the soap.

It's actually pretty cool and not a mess at all, once you have done it a few times.

There are quite a few bee fans out there...

DeeAnna said:

Number 1 will last longer due to more palmitic and stearic acid, less lauric and myristic acid. What Paintguru said.

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Thank you, Deeana.

I have one like #1 except I have 5% castor also and it's a very nice bar that seems like it will def. last a long time. My all coconut oil with higher superfat to battle the high cleansing seems to be going a lot faster. It feels nice though and I would make it again even if it doesn't last as long.. but that's just an extra thought you didn't ask for. haha!

I love bees and their honey.. but beeswax in soap didn't work for me. Went all crazo on me.