About to make my first soap!

[My Mountain Soaps]

I do quilting, gardening, canning, and make natural body care products (hopefully now adding soap to that list)

I think you and i will get along just fine, i do all of those except quilting! I wonder if your soap still hasnt set, if you can try blending it again. I have never had mine turn out that loose. Yes, a stick blender is your best friend, what it does is blend on the micro level, allowing the right amount of air into the mixture as well. You can pick a good stick blender up at walmart or target for around 20$. Good luck!

 

[AlabamaBelle]

I think you and i will get along just fine, i do all of those except quilting! I wonder if your soap still hasnt set, if you can try blending it again. I have never had mine turn out that loose. Yes, a stick blender is your best friend, what it does is blend on the micro level, allowing the right amount of air into the mixture as well. You can pick a good stick blender up at walmart or target for around 20$. Good luck!

I really look forward to us talking more!

To blend it again, would I re-heat it or just do it cold? The mixture is room temp now.

A lady I know found a stick blender at Winn-Dixie a few weeks ago, hopefully they still have it on sale- I'll pick one up on lunch break.

 

[My Mountain Soaps]

your guess would be as good as mine. I dont think heating it would hurt? you are at the experimental stage now, who knows what you'll get. But i KNOW for sure that there are people on this website who know what they are talking about. so listen to them, not me. If it were me, with the information that we have, i would experiment and see what happens.

 

[cmzaha]

She said in a later post that it turned out good. I don't have any castor oil yet so I substituted the 25g castor oil for equal weight coconut oil. I doubled the recipe and converted it to ounces and got this:

17.637 oz lard
15.873 oz olive oil
1.763 oz coconut oil
4.642 oz lye
11.640 oz water

And of course I just measured as close as I could, having only a dial-type scale. I'm sure I probably mis-measured something. One of my books by Susan Miller Cavitch says that the soap not setting up could be too much water or not enough lye.[/QUOTE]

You could have actually gone up to 13 oz water and your lye is correct. What she failed to tell you is the high percentage of olive oil will slow trace considerable. In the future I would up the coconut oil considerably. I find 18-20% coconut oil makes a nice soap and it will trace faster.

 

[cmzaha]

I really look forward to us talking more!

To blend it again, would I re-heat it or just do it cold? The mixture is room temp now.

A lady I know found a stick blender at Winn-Dixie a few weeks ago, hopefully they still have it on sale- I'll pick one up on lunch break.

Word of advice get a stainless steel shaft and blade. I had a plastic one when I first started and did not realize a piece had broken off the mix head. I ended up tossing 5 lbs of shea soap because I could not take a chance of a sharp piece of plastic in a slice of soap. Never had a plastic on since. What that batch of soap cost me to make I could have purchased the better SB

 

[AlabamaBelle]

....What that batch of soap cost me to make I could have purchased the better SB

Thanks for the warning!

 

[Pepsi Girl]

So what's the latest on your soap?

 

[soap_rat]

Hi, AlabamaBelle! I feel like Brad Paisley, writing a letter to me, back when I started soaping!

We had Norma Coney, we had Cavitch, we had a spring scale, we had spoons. We had...interesting times.

FIRST thing, please get a digital scale! They are around $20 or more, I've had 2 or 3 over the years and brand etc. is not super important. That spring scale gives you a different measurement every time you plop the same container on it, doesn't it? (ours did, so we used "2 out of 3" or "4 out of 6" as our accurate measurement). Because of how inaccurate our spring scale was, I am not sure if your first soap will truly be saved. It probably will be, and I hope so! But you could easily be making lye-heavy batches because your scale is inaccurate and your batches are very small.

Next: it's fine to soap while the oil temps are higher, higher temps get you to trace faster. Try 115 or 110. (And temps do not have to be very close at all). Your small batches will cool down quickly while you're stirring, so you could even hit your metal pot, carefully, with a little heat from the stove occasionally. (a laser thermometer from Harbor Freight could go on your xmas list for monitoring temps easily--but only after a digital scale and a stick blender!)

Stick blender yes yes yes! Oh, the times we stirred soap for more than an hour! The one time we gave up after 3 hours! Then we got some great advice, changed our recipe to add quick-trace stuff like butters and pomace olive oil, got a stick blender, soaped hotter, and whoosh! Rushing to line the mold!

Cavitch's recipes involve a LOT of different oils, some advice I got was to stick to just a few oils in a soap, those 10-oil recipes in Cavitch don't create a soap with all the goodness of all those oils. I do olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, a butter at 2-5% for fast trace and hard bar, maybe castor oil at 2-5% for great bubbles, and if you really want something else, sure, maybe trade out the butter for it or plop it it with the rest.

Please let us know how the first batch is doing, and if anything weird ever happens while you're soaping, save every part of it and post here, we can usually tell you how to rebatch something so the ingredients aren't wasted.

 

[Pepsi Girl]

LOVE, LOVE , LOVE my Laser Thermometer!!!

 

[kikajess]

Congratulations on your first soap batch! It takes a lot of courage to go for it, especially after so much anticipation and preparation. I know what you're feeling because I'm a newbie, too. Four days ago I finally made my first batch of CP soap. It was frightening and exciting.

After reading tons of stuff online and checking out every soap-making book my library had, I bought Susan Cavitch's The Soap Maker's Companion. How cool you have that one, too! I also went with silicon soap molds, a stick blender, and a digital scale - all choices I'm very happy with.

How is your first batch coming along?

My first batch didn't turn out very well. There are some things I think only experience can teach us. For instance, I learned too much tea tree oil smells terrible to me and so does unrefined virgin palm kernel oil.

That failed first batch motivated me to change up my recipe and try again! But my second batch also had problems. It was too brittle and airy. But it smelled perfectly like pure clean soap and it was a beautiful bright cream color.

So now I've put a third batch in the mold this afternoon. It behaved the best when I was mixing it so I've got really high hopes it will be my best attempt yet! Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm keeping mine crossed for you! Let us know how it's going, k?

 

[kikajess]

LOVE, LOVE , LOVE my Laser Thermometer!!!

I looked into a laser thermometer, but so many choices out there overwhelmed me, and I couldn't decide. Which one do you have and where did you get it, if you don't mind telling us?

I bought two cheap digital thermometers from Target and I think they take too long to register the temperature. Are laser thermometers quicker than the digital stick kind?

 

[evilnurse]

Laser thermometers are almost instant. Couldn't do this without my laser one


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[susies1955]

Well, here is my very first post. I'm also in the process of trying to get supplies together. My husband has been laid off for two months so I'm at a stand still.
I've put a few of the items on my Christmas list.
I hope to learn from all of you.
Susie in northern NY

 

[evilnurse]

Hi and welcome Susie


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[susies1955]

Hi there evilnurse. I've been to Kansas before. Road through Route 66 in 2010.
Susie

 

[AlabamaBelle]

Hey everybody, sorry for the delay in updates. Well, my first batch never got past the "pudding" consistency so I finally threw it out this morning. Just going to count it as the first casualty of the learning process!

Meanwhile: on Wednesday, I bought a stick blender with a removable stainless steel shaft & blade from Winn-Dixie. Today, my KD-8000 digital scale came in the mail!! I really think I'm gonna like it And I'll look into a laser themometer, right now I have 2 candy themometers and I realized the aggravation of waiting for them to read.

I don't have alot of those exotic oils Cavitch uses in her recipes, and don't want to 'waste' my jojoba oil or sweet almond oil on a trial batch before I get the hang of it. I'm planning to take the advice of several people here and just use the basic olive, coconut and palm oils; I also have shea and cocoa butters I may throw in there.

I found a recipe in "The Soapmaker's Companion" that makes one 5 oz. bar, a 'trial bar'. I'm thinking about doing it next so I don't waste so much stuff. Here it is:

16.8g lye
45.4g distilled water
42.2g olive oil
36.2g coconut oil
42.2g palm oil

Criticisms or suggestions for that are welcome! Thanks again everyone for taking time to help and support me :mrgreen:

 

[AlabamaBelle]

...So now I've put a third batch in the mold this afternoon. It behaved the best when I was mixing it so I've got really high hopes it will be my best attempt yet! Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm keeping mine crossed for you! Let us know how it's going, k?

Thanks, and good luck! Can't wait to hear how yours turns out and hopefully see pics if you're able!

 

[kikajess]

Hi, Susie! From one newbie to another, welcome!

 

[evilnurse]

That's the nice part of the state


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[StarBrown]

Well, here is my very first post. I'm also in the process of trying to get supplies together. My husband has been laid off for two months so I'm at a stand still.
I've put a few of the items on my Christmas list.
I hope to learn from all of you.
Susie in northern NY

Hi Susie! If budget is a problem, check the thrift stores and Craigslist. I got my Cuisinart stick blender (the Quick Prep one with stand) from the thrift store for $2.90 and a new in box Crock Pot for $4.90. [Just make sure to plug them in and inspect fully before you go.] My postal scale was free from an office that was upgrading to a fancy meter/scale combo. Before taking the leap to invest in a mold, I also used small cartons and boxes lined with freezer paper and reinforced with duct tape. I still use my ziploc box for test batches. I also only do hot process, so that gave me a little more flexibility in the mold department.

Best to you!