Do you like your dual lye soap?

[cmzaha]

My skin likes 10 the best but will tolerate 15%. I have tried up to 17% and it is just to drying for me. I recently tried a soap I received where CO is the second ingredient and I absolutely cannot use it. I am guessing it is a soap with 20% or more. I do notice a lather difference between the 10% and 15% which is why I use the dual lye, keeping in mind I am using either 45% tallow or 45% Palm. Sometimes I use less palm is if I decide to add in shea or coco butter. Both my vegan and non-vegan soap are low in liquid oil

 

[redhead1226]

Hi Red.

It economically brings hardness and insolubility to vegan palm free soap becuz its mostly stearic acid.

Another benefit is a little goes a long way. 25% SW as the only hard “oil” sets quickly into rock hard soap so a higher % of conditioning oils can be used.

Regarding palm...I visited a gibbon sanctuary this last year. The staff informed us that the primates are critically endangered due to deforestation...mostly for palm plantations. They said the best way to prevent extinction of wild gibbons is by avoiding palm oil products. I started checking ingredients and noticed palm in just about everything from skin products to processed food. I couldnt find a commercial palm free vegan soap so I embarked on the soaping journey.

I believe it was Earlene that turned me on to soy wax. Thanks Earlene!

BTW, today I reduced the water to 1.1:1 on a batch and it looks like it might have resolved the softness DL issue w/o increasing the SW. Still to early to unmold to know for sure.

View attachment 31074

Thank you for explaining this to me. I clearly understand the issue of palm oil in products and the issues surrounding deforestation. I do not use Palm oil or PKO in any of my products. And I have struggled to come up with a soap I like for my vegan son and friends but have decided to stay away from using Palm for the obvious reasons. I'm a lard girl! Now the only thing I will say on that front is if they ever decide that pigs are endangered and we shouldn't use pork products - all I can say is POOR PIGGIES! lol If you do not mind reporting back on your water reduction I would appreciate it. This could be an interesting alternative for soap for my son. Thanks.

 

[Dean]

If you do not mind reporting back on your water reduction I would appreciate it. This could be an interesting alternative for soap for my son. Thanks.

I unmolded and cut my 1.1 water DL soap this AM. It was absolutely perfect! Not too soft and not too hard. The water reduction did the trick.

I'm wondering if the KOH might have been a little high on the last batch. I do test batches at 8-9 oz. 5% KOH is <2 grams. That's like a thimble size. It seems that with my scale its hard to get an accurate read at that low.

BTW for some time now I've been blending with just a wire whisk for a minute or two . I don't know if its the SW or water reduction or both that causes my soap to trace so fast. I abandoned the immersion blender cuz the soap goes instantly to thick trace with it.

On another note...do you guys remember that post about a woman that sold week old soap because her "proprietary" secret allowed a short cure? I'm wondering if she was doing something similar...no or very low lauric/myristic for mildness, water discount to reduce evaporation time, DL and/or sugar for lather. BTW, I do full cures myself.

 

[penelopejane]

Thank you, penelopejane. I was thinking it was you who had also come up with the same results.

Out of curiosity, have you tried the dual lye method with any other soaping oils?

I actually did try it with a multiple-oil recipe in January of this year, but I didn't make the same recipe as an NaOH soap. I used the same recipe I had used for the Mermaid Tails soap in July of 2017. So they are 6 months apart. I am not sure comparing soaps cured 6 months to soap cured 12 months is a fair comparison when I want to know if the KOH made a difference.

And another soap I made last year for the Peacock challenge was also a dual lye. Although I didn't make a control soap with the same recipe, it is a recipe of a soap I've made several times before with only NaOH, so I can easily enough compare. I just have to find a soap as close in age as possible and do a test.

Well, looking back in my soap making notebooks, I only have that soap without the KOH a year older. So I don't know if that's a fair comparison either.

I guess I wasn't considering how I was going to do a fair comparison when I made those soaps.

Hi Earlene,
As always when one of these KOH threads comes up I rush back to my soaps and do another comparison. I use both soaps in the shower at the same time. One on one side of my body and one on the other. This avoids relying on my memory for comparison.

It is quite puzzling why my tests of dual lye and single soaps don't correlate with other people on the forum except for your most recent results.

I sort of dismissed your idea of doing a fair comparison with soaps of the same age.
But now I think I have discovered that the older a soap gets the less the KOH effects the bubbliness of the soap.

I cure my soaps for a minimum of 3 months. So this might have been effecting my results. I have soaps that are a year old so I have a lot to compare.

I am finding that "young" multi oil soaps less than 3 months old do produce a few more bubbles than older multi oil soaps. Can you see if you get this result or do you not have enough young KOH soaps to compare?

 

[Dean]

I just did a hand lather test of 2 soaps that are essentially the same recipie. Soap 1 was 3 weeks old and single lye. Soap 2 was 1 wk old and DL. 2 produced less lather than 1 and was snotty like OO soap. I do not use OO for that reason. Snot belongs in Kleenex not soap. Although it may b too early to conclude since neither soap has fully cured, Im inclined to think that DL is a bit of an urban soaping myth. I personally wont use DL again. Alternatively, I’ll try 10% CO and see if I can get a few bubbles wo face-fry. If that fails, Ill just make peace with the creamy lather of a soap free of stripping/drying lauric/myristic.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Im inclined to think that DL is a bit of an urban soaping myth...."

Nope, it's not a myth, urban or otherwise, but not every good idea works for everyone all of the time. There's no need to disrespect a valid technique just because it doesn't happen to work with your style of soap making.

It's a learning experience. You learned something. Move on to something that works better for you.

 

[earlene]

Hi Earlene,


I sort of dismissed your idea of doing a fair comparison with soaps of the same age.
But now I think I have discovered that the older a soap gets the less the KOH effects the bubbliness of the soap.

I cure my soaps for a minimum of 3 months. So this might have been effecting my results. I have soaps that are a year old so I have a lot to compare.

I am finding that "young" multi oil soaps less than 3 months old do produce a few more bubbles than older multi oil soaps. Can you see if you get this result or do you not have enough young KOH soaps to compare?

I'll take a look through my soaps and see if I have any that are young. I kind of think I don't, but I'll check. It seems plausible to me because during the longer cure, the evolution of the crystalline structure in the soap is making some changes that we do already know about, so why not this one, too?

 

[itchyandscratchy]

Its been an extraordinarily busy and chaotic year for us and I'm desperately behind in soaping.

I've finally tested/retested (4 weeks, then 6 weeks) my first batches of dual lye soap made with high lard and a 95/5 lye split. So far, I am not a fan of the dual lye. The soap stays softer longer - a week 6 cured bar is as soft as a regular 3 week cured bar. And dare I say....it lathers almost too much? At 4 weeks I had so much lather it was leaving a stack of it behind in the sink and taking way too long to rinse off. Now at six weeks, I like the lather better - the bubbles are bigger instead of simply over abundant, rinses better and I can live with it. Also - the big bubbles are stretchy and makes for a lot of fun if you're 9 years old!

But the bars are still so much softer, so I thought I'd experiment with a 97/3% split and see what happens.

What have you all noticed with your dual lye soaps?

I make the dual lye soap
Recipe from Loving soap shaving soap. Its a big hit. All the menfolk love it. Thick, dense stable lather

 

[penelopejane]

I just did a hand lather test of 2 soaps that are essentially the same recipie. Soap 1 was 3 weeks old and single lye. Soap 2 was 1 wk old and DL. 2 produced less lather than 1 and was snotty like OO soap. I do not use OO for that reason. Snot belongs in Kleenex not soap. Although it may b too early to conclude since neither soap has fully cured, Im inclined to think that DL is a bit of an urban soaping myth. I personally wont use DL again. Alternatively, I’ll try 10% CO and see if I can get a few bubbles wo face-fry. If that fails, Ill just make peace with the creamy lather of a soap free of stripping/drying lauric/myristic.

I think you need to cure your soap for 6 weeks before you do experiments on them.

 

[penelopejane]

Thank you for explaining this to me. I clearly understand the issue of palm oil in products and the issues surrounding deforestation. I do not use Palm oil or PKO in any of my products. And I have struggled to come up with a soap I like for my vegan son and friends but have decided to stay away from using Palm for the obvious reasons. I'm a lard girl! Now the only thing I will say on that front is if they ever decide that pigs are endangered and we shouldn't use pork products - all I can say is POOR PIGGIES! lol If you do not mind reporting back on your water reduction I would appreciate it. This could be an interesting alternative for soap for my son. Thanks.

Have you tried pure Castile cured for a year for your son? What about the “shampoo bar” on this forum - not for hair but for a body soap for your son? Both are really hard after a few months cure without soy wax.

 

[penelopejane]

I unmolded and cut my 1.1 water DL soap this AM. It was absolutely perfect! Not too soft and not too hard. The water reduction did the trick.

I'm wondering if the KOH might have been a little high on the last batch. I do test batches at 8-9 oz. 5% KOH is <2 grams. That's like a thimble size. It seems that with my scale its hard to get an accurate read at that low.

BTW for some time now I've been blending with just a wire whisk for a minute or two . I don't know if its the SW or water reduction or both that causes my soap to trace so fast. I abandoned the immersion blender cuz the soap goes instantly to thick trace with it.

On another note...do you guys remember that post about a woman that sold week old soap because her "proprietary" secret allowed a short cure? I'm wondering if she was doing something similar...no or very low lauric/myristic for mildness, water discount to reduce evaporation time, DL and/or sugar for lather. BTW, I do full cures myself.

1:1 water lye will trace very fast. The soap produced will be the same weight as a 2 week cured soap but it won’t be cured it just has less water.

If you mix your KOH 1:1 with water (for example say 100g KOH:100g water) you have a master batch. If your recipe requires for example 100g NaOH and 5g KOH and 150g water you and can measure out 10g of master batch KOH. But you have to subtract the 5g of water in the master batch from your recipe water.
Water 150-5=145g water
KOH masterbatch (water and KOH) 10g
NaOH 100g

It’s easier to weigh 10g than 5.