does castor oil get used in your soaps?

[Susie]

I went back through the soap binder today looking for the laundry soap recipe(the printer is out of ink), and happened to look at the bar soap section. I have 3 batches that did not include castor. I grabbed those, and the one that had sugar, but no castor.

And yes, sugar makes bubbles, but castor adds "stickiness", and strength to the bubbles, helping them stick together and stay up longer.

 

[Earthen_Step]

I've used castor oil in a few bars with great success. The only problem I ran into is when I used a very high % castor oil combined with a high % superfat. I don't know the exact numbers but I would guess around 20% castor oil and 12% sf. The bars took forever to cure and was terrible at lathering. *I was expecting a robust lather with so much castor -- maybe all the extra oils prevented that? Other than that I love 5-15% castor oil in various recipes, I think the creaminess and conditioning is a nice addition.

 

[claudep]

I use it at 5% in most soap. I had a couple of batch at first with up to 10%. Still working on my perfect formulation of soap. But castor oil is in all except speciality soap.