Can you stagger adding the different oils to the soap?

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arthi

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Hi!

I’ve made one batch of superfatted coconut oil, I’d like to make another batch with canola and coconut oils. I know superfatting is tricky with more fragile oils, so would it work to mix the canola oil into the lye water mixture first, and slowly add coconut oil after most of the canola oil has been saponified? The idea is that then only the coconut oil would be the superfat in the soap.
 
Thank you.

So what ratio of canola and coconut oils would you recommend to use with NaOH? I’m trying to use what I have on hand for the initial batches without having to buy more items unless necessary
 
I personally wouldn't make soap with just coconut and canola -- that blend is not going to give the soap the properties I want for a good bath soap. But if I did make a batch, I'd probably try 15% or 20% coconut assuming the bather's skin is average/normal.

For skin that is extra sensitive or dry, I'd use 5-10% coconut. For normal to tough skin and a squeaky clean feeling, you could try 25% or even 30%.
 
Speaking only for myself, 70% Canola and 30% coconut oil sounds pretty good. In any case, it's something I would definitely try if I only had those 2 oils to soap with. And I'd superfat it at 5%.


IrishLass :)
 
I have a 25% coconut 75% olive oil (5%SF) soap that produces a pretty nice lather and doesn't feel drying to my skin. I think you could do the same with the canola (just know it will be a bit softer and won't last as long as a regular, well balanced recipe)
Something else you could try with just those two oils is a brine soap or a salt bar. I've only made one batch of each so I'm not the best reference for this. Please do a bit more research before making these soaps. I'll share my limited experience and what I remembered from researching them.
The brine soap I made was 45% coconut, 55% soft oils and my superfat was in the 10-15% range (I'm pretty sure I based this on a recipe I found here). In theory you can make a brine soap with any recipe, but as the salt adds hardness and reduces bubbles (like lard/palm/butters do in a regular recipe) you don't need any hard oils/butters. The extra coconut oil combats the lather reducing effect of the salt and the superfat prevents the coconut from making the soap too drying on the skin. For a brine soap you dissolve salt in your water first and then add the lye. There's a maximum amount of lye and salt you can dissolve in water, so the amount of salt you can add depends on the amount of water. Lye needs at least as much water as lye in weight to dissolve (50% solution or 1:1 water:lye ratio) and salt needs 3 times as much water as salt (25% solution or 3:1 water:salt ratio). One recommendation I've read is to use a 25% lye solution (3:1 water:lye ratio or 3 times as much water as lye in weight) and use salt at half the weight of your lye, which is one sixth of the water weight. Don't forget to dissolve the salt first before adding the lye;)
For a salt bar the salt is added after trace. I've read people use salt up to 100% of oil weight. For a salt bar most people use 80-85% coconut and 15-20% soft oils (canola could be used here) with a 15-20% superfat. I used 100% coconut with 15% superfat and salt at 50% of oil weight. Please also know that salt bars need a long cure..
Both brine soap and salt bars work best in single cavity molds. If you use a log mold, be sure to cut them rather soon or else they'll become brittle and hard to cut.
I hope this helps! Now you can make 3 different soaps with the 2 oils you have on hand;)
 
I've made a mostly canola oil soap and although it took longer to harden up than some other soaps, I liked the lather. I think I used 75% canola, 20% coconut and 5% castor, SF at 3%. I think I used more salt than usual for mine but I'll have to check my notes for how much exactly.

You could up the coconut to make up the castor oil amount if you don't have it, and increase the superfat as well.

Just make sure you cure it in the most ideal way you can, to try n minimize the chances of DOS as I've read several times that canola is prone. It might not last you years, but for at least some months you'll have ok soap. Mine's going on about 9mos and I noticed few tiny spots here n there. I'm keeping an eye on those two bars I still have...
 
Thanks everyone. I made a batch with 55% canola and 45% coconut oil, and at trace added salt at 50% of the weight of the combined oils. I used one after a week, it gives a nice lather, although it is still soft and dissolves easily. I’m going to let the other bars sit for much longer. It did not moisturize as much as my first batch of 100% CO with 20% superfat, and I think I’ll stick to the CO recipe for a while.
 
This type of soap will never make a long lasting bar. Canola and coconut oils don't have much palmitic and stearic acids, and these are the fatty acids that add longevity.
 

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