Conditioning Help (please and thank you)

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That's why I mentioned you lol coz I know you wouldn't see it otherwise.. Glad I made you laugh ;)

What about the aged like a fine wine? :p im starting to think i might of been talking about you. Edit. Not sure what i was thinking there with a comment like that. Sarcasm is the only thing i can think of? I can see the bags getting bigger with each profile pic ;)
 
I'm probably going to regret this... Not a good analogy. Whiskey only gets better with age if left inside a barrel (all alcohols actually). It is the contact with the charred barrel and the transfer of those external molecules absorbed over time. Once you remove whiskey from the barrel and put it in something (usually glass) that has no chemical influence to the liquid, it could sit for 1000 years and there would be no taste difference.

I fully understand curing and the effects it has. I just don't find the effects to be that beneficial in my case for this particular recipe. The soap that started this entire thread is my daily shower soap, get in, get clean, get the hell out, and get going soap.

Please forgive me, I do not mean to be snippy.
That is exactly what I meant. I’m a scotch drinker. Leave it in the barrel for 12 years but if it is crappy scotch it will never be as good as one that started out good.

I know what you mean about soap too. That is how DH felt until he consciously tried different recipes of mine. He uses a washer so bubbles don’t mean much but lather does. He has eczema too. If he gets out of the shower and his skin feels prickly - it’s not a good soap. If he gets out of the shower and he doesn’t feel friction and he doesn’t have to rush for the eczema cream - that’s a better soap! If he doesn’t use eczema cream or moisturiser for a week - that’s a great soap.
 
I'm looking for the "perfect" balance of cleaning vs. not over-stripping I guess. Why can't I have it all? hehehe

You can have it all. Soap cleans, no matter what the numbers add up to. That's the nature of soap, no matter what the lye calculator says about the cleansing number. I think the problem for new soap makers is that we don't realize that this word means something different to a soap-maker than what we learned growing up. Castile soap made with only olive oil and lye will get you just as clean as soap made with only Coconut oil and lye. Take a look at the numbers in the lye calculator and you will see there is no cleansing number in the Castile soap made with only OO, while the CO soap has a whopping 67.

There are other factors that affect the effect of the CO in soap on each individual's skin. Some folks are able to tolerate high CO soaps only when the SF is high and/or in the presence of salt. I don't mean to muddy the waters, but those are some things to look into in the future if you are interested in lots of bubbles, but don't want your skin to dry out.
 
@dixiedragon , would this recipe take a while to cure with only 10% hard oil?
I make this recipe with 5% castor and use rice bran oil rather than soybean and it only takes 6 weeks for a good cure. But I prefer to wait 9-12 weeks before I use my soap and it gets even better over time.

Don't use it as a shampoo bar but it is great for skin.
 
@KimT2au I too have made it as written with the exception of the soy and it's a lovely facial soap or even a mild body soap. I cured it about 8 week I believe. I still make it once in awhile as it's a nice soap. Like PJ, I don't use it as shampoo (my husband does but he doesn't have much hair left). ;)
 
... Another one that works well is sodium citrate. It's used at only a small % ...

How/when is the chelator added? Any reactions that I need to be prepared for? Is the usage rate pretty standard for all chelators? Just so you know, I'll probably use the sodium citrate because there are other uses for it in the kitchen. The possibilities for a "sour salt" are fascinating!

I use sodium citrate (or citric acid that I convert to sodium citrate) as my preferred chelator.
(EDTA does not readily biodegrade and is considered an environmental pollutant - there's more, but suffice to say, it is not on my list of included ingredients).

Citric acid can be dissolved in the water used for lye at about 1% of oil weight. I adjust the superfat down by 1/2 a percent (for every 1% of citric acid) to account for the extra superfat left when citric acid reacts with some of the hydroxide, if I'm calculating the amounts manually.

The SoapmakersFriend lye calculator has the calculations for Citric Acid built into it :)
https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/

OO? Olive Oil? It's just not an option for me.

This is just a curiosity question (it is in no way an attempt to change your mind), but can I ask why you can't use Olive Oil?
I know of two people who have trouble with it (one doesn't like the smell of the final soap - olive oil soaps have a distinctive scent that isn't present in other, high-oleic, soaps, and the other doesn't like the feel of it). I'm always curious to know why a person would move away from a particular oil in soap (even if it's just to help me formulate soaps that would better suit a person with those preferences or needs :)).

Hi Ralph- just regular white granulated sugar. Basically, I use 5% sugar by weight as per each pound of oils in my batches, which roughly = 2 tablespoons by volume. When I make my honey/beeswax soap, instead of the white sugar, I use 5% honey by weight as per each pound of oils in my batch, which equals out to 1 tablespoon by volume as per pound of my oils (it weighs more than granulated sugar).

For what it's worth, I do my honey soaps differently than many people......I add the honey directly to my cooled-off lye solution before adding it to my oils. Adding the honey to my lye solution first eliminates all the weird drama that can happen to soap when adding honey to it. Fellow member Salted Fig has a great post somewhere on the forum explaining from a chemical standpoint why adding honey to the lye instead of to the batter produces drama-free results. I'll try and see if I can find it and post a link here. Anyway, I had been adding my honey like that for years with awesome drama-free results before Salted Fig came along and explained the why of it.

I looked over your original recipe in SoapCalc and wow- that would be some drying soap....and that's coming from someone whose skin (and whose family's skin) is fine with higher amounts of coconut and PKO than several folks here, even though the climate is crazy dry where I live. Go figure!

For what it's worth, this is how I tweaked your original formula so that it would be quite compatible with me and my family. The fatty acid profile is very much the same as my tallow/lard soap which is a fave of my hubby and son and is super bubbly and non-drying to us, only the tweak is 1 percentage point more conditioning than mine. I normally add .5% tetrasodium EDTA to it as per the total weight of my soap, as well as 2 tablespoons granulated sugar as per each pound of the oils in my batch, and also 2% sodium lactate as per pound of oils:


View attachment 36305

Everyone's skin is different in what it likes/hates, but the above fatty acid profile is what we happen to like.


IrishLass :)


Edited to add: I superfat mine @ 8%

Thanks IrishLass :)... I haven't been on the forum a great deal (busy busy!), so I missed your post :)

I think this might be the honey post you were referring to :)

From: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/cant-beat-the-heat-of-honey.71962/#post-725098
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Irishlass wrote a post back a few years, on her technique for taking the heat out of honey.

The concept is to make your lye solution and dilute your honey separately, then combine the two once the lye solution has cooled.
Effectively, the idea is to pre-react the honey so the extra heat is not added during saponification.

The details:
There are three main exothermic (heat producing) reactions that occur when you make a honey soap.

1/ The first exothermic reaction occurs when you add your hydroxide to your water/liquid to make your lye solution (let the lye solution cool before step 2).
2/ The second exothermic reaction occurs when you add your diluted honey to your cooled lye solution (let the honey-lye solution cool before step 3).
3/ The third (and final) exothermic reaction occurs during saponification.

Currently you are grouping the second and third exothermic reactions together, and the combined heat is speeding up the reaction, so the soap is getting hotter, faster. Note: Grouping the first and second exothermic reaction can lead to a lye volcano, so please don't do that.

By separating the three exothermic reactions from one another, you are reducing this compounding effect ... and stand a greater chance of making the ungelled honey soap you are aiming for.

Finally, if you use an ice bath and a fan directed over the top of the soap, or place the soap mold on a cooling rack and direct a fan so the air flows over and under the soap, you will get a greater cooling effect than you do in the still air of the freezer (the air around the soap can warm up and act a little like a blanket).

If you would like to read @IrishLass's experiences with this technique, the original post from 2010 can be found here (complete with a volcano story :))
***********************************

*edited to add citric acid calculations, link to SoapMakersFriend and expand honey post.
 
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Castile soap made with only olive oil and lye will get you just as clean as soap made with only Coconut oil and lye.

I'm sorry but I don't agree with that. Yes all soap cleans and a soap with a zero cleansing will still clean but not as well as one with a higher number.

I've been testing a bar of zany's no slime castile and it simply isn't good for hand washing, its way too mild.

After washing, my hands still feel oily, same if I use my facial soap. I have to use a bar with more oomph, usually a salt bar or at least a normal bath bar.
 
I agree with Obsidian. Some most certainly clean better than others. High CO can strip too much from the skin but cleans well. I don’t like high olive oil soap though.
 
I'm sorry but I don't agree with that. Yes all soap cleans and a soap with a zero cleansing will still clean but not as well as one with a higher number.

I've been testing a bar of zany's no slime castile and it simply isn't good for hand washing, its way too mild.

After washing, my hands still feel oily, same if I use my facial soap. I have to use a bar with more oomph, usually a salt bar or at least a normal bath bar.

Was the oiliness from ur skin or bar?
 
So we must be the only 3 to get the Shaun Cassidy reference. Everyone else is going "who"?
My 9 year old son's hair often reminds us of *David* Cassidy ...and yesterday he looked like Farrah Fawcett. And he's definitely not trying....
 
My 9 year old son's hair often reminds us of *David* Cassidy ...and yesterday he looked like Farrah Fawcett. And he's definitely not trying....
My brother is going through a weird Shaun Cassidy phase, and he's 45 years old! Split down the middle, it naturally feathers. I must confess, we tease him a little about it.
 
I find that very interesting that two people here have said their hands don't feel clean after using OO soap, and that one even said their hands feel oily. That is not my experience at all. I currently use Castile at sinkside in the kitchen as my only hand washing soap and have for a few months now. When I use oil in cooking and get it on my hands, the Castile gets the oily feel off my hands just fine without any trouble at all.

I suppose it's simply a matter of differences in our skin, but perhaps the SF used in the bar may have some effect as well. I don't know for sure. I use a very low SF with almost all of my soaps. I have not made Zany's Castile, so am not sure what it is like at all in comparison to my plain Castile. The Castile I am currently using is a dual lye Castile.

Now the true test of clean is not one I can perform at home as I don't have the proper equipment, but I can report that in the lab when I was in nursing school, we tested hand washing techniques. What was born out in those tests was that what mattered more was how much friction was applied during the hand washing process & how long that friction was applied, not the type of soap used. Cultures in petrie dishes to test for bacterial growth both before and after hand washing were used. When a low-friction type of method was used, more bacteria grew than if providing more friction via scrubbing the hands together in the presence of soapy lather. All through my nursing career, the infection control nurse would periodically do a similar demonstration with the nursing staff utilizing a UV light to show the bacteria that remained on the hands after hand-washing. It was always about how much or how little friction was apply during the process and how long the process took. Any particular soap did not really make as much a difference as a lack of proper technique would make.

I am not saying that anyone here doesn't know how to properly wash their hands, because of course, I believe that soap makers should really know about this almost as well as the medical profession. But I am questioning if 'feel' is a sufficient criteria for saying a particular soap doesn't clean as well as another.

Sure, my brother the blacksmith isn't going to get the stains off his hands with a simple 30-second vigorous scrubbing with Castile soap, but that doesn't happen with a high CO soap either. So I make him a special blacksmith soap (another topic already covered in other threads) that provides the extra oomph that plain soap doesn't have for staining.

Just some thoughts about 'clean'. If someone doesn't like OO in soap, that's fine and I don't have a problem with that. But I am not convinced that it doesn't clean well. Perhaps if I was still in academia or still working in hospital, I'd go to the lab and test out that theory. I can't seem to find any research on the topic of soap based on content other than anti-bacterial additives.
 

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