First Salt Soap on a Stick

[MrsMilk]

I made my first ever salt soap yesterday. Erm, yeah, well, I suppose they’ll make great homemade Christmas gifts even if they aren’t exactly pretty... As soon as I added my salt it stiffened so much I could barely spoon it into the moulds.

The recipe I used was from the Brambleberry Milk Soap book.

612g Coconut Oil
76g Sweet Almond Oil
37g Kokum Butter
37g Castor Oil

179g Distilled Water
108g Lye

28g Geranium Fragrance (My house smells delicious!)
2 tsp Titanium Dioxide mixed with 2 tbsp Sweet Almond Oil
74g Milk

680g Dendritic Salt

Sprinkling of pink himalayan salt to decorate

It was all going fine until the salt went in then it just turned into a big crusty mass...

Should I half the amount of salt?

I’ve seem videos of people making salt soap with this much salt and they can still pour it into their mould.

Maybe my beginners luck is beginning to wear off.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

I suspect the culprit is the kokum butter. Most salt recipes are coconut oil +soft oil and maybe a little castor oil.

Plus that is a lot of salt. I know some people use up to 50% but most stay around 30%-40% ppo.

 

[dibbles]

I would suspect that the geranium caused the acceleration. It is one EO that I avoid due to how fast it moves and I don't like it enough to put up with it. At 5%, the kokum butter could have contributed, but likely would not have caused the batter to seize. I have found that, for me, I like salt at 50% of the oil weight. Others use it at up to 100% with no issues. I use fine sea salt, and have never used dendritic salt, so I can't speak to that.

 

[MrsMilk]

Nooooooooo.... Not the geranium!!!!!! Please not that!

I’ll have to pop it in a bath bomb or two then.

Thank you both for answering.

I’ll look at the kokum butter and the scent and try again.

(Although I think hubby’s patience is already wearing thin with the soap which appears to be breeding like rabbits in our spare room.)

 

[dibbles]

You might be okay with geranium, but I didn't have good luck with it. Maybe try it in a one color soap or 2 color swirl with your regular recipe and see how it goes in that.

Salt bars are wonderful. Try 80% coconut, 15% avocado (or other soft oil of your choice), 5% castor and 30-100% of the oil weight in salt added at medium trace. The batter will be thick, but you should be able to get it into the mold(s) without problems. Use a superfat of 18-20%.

 

[TheGecko]

I made my first ever salt soap yesterday. Erm, yeah, well, I suppose they’ll make great homemade Christmas gifts even if they aren’t exactly pretty... As soon as I added my salt it stiffened so much I could barely spoon it into the moulds.

The recipe I used was from the Brambleberry Milk Soap book.

612g Coconut Oil
76g Sweet Almond Oil
37g Kokum Butter
37g Castor Oil

179g Distilled Water
108g Lye

28g Geranium Fragrance (My house smells delicious!)
2 tsp Titanium Dioxide mixed with 2 tbsp Sweet Almond Oil
74g Milk

680g Dendritic Salt

Sprinkling of pink himalayan salt to decorate

It was all going fine until the salt went in then it just turned into a big crusty mass...

Should I half the amount of salt?

I’ve seem videos of people making salt soap with this much salt and they can still pour it into their mould.

Maybe my beginners luck is beginning to wear off.

First issue is the FO...floral scents tend to accelerate (along with spice scents)

Second is the amount of salt...that's a LOT of salt. Even if you use your total liquid weight of 1015 g, that's almost 67%; yeah, your batter is going to be on the thick side of pudding.

My first salt soap I used 50% of my total Oils. I didn't care much for it and so I reduced it by half.

 

[MrsMilk]

Ok. So my EO will accelerate trace and it was a lot of salt. I do love the smell so want to give it another go, this time much more educated.

I’ll give it another bash with the oils suggested above and less salt, way less salt.

 

[cmzaha]

I will respectively disagree with TheGecko, in my opinion, that is not a lot of salt and not necessarily the culprit. I normally make my salt bar with 100-110% salt and I can make at least one swirl. I will say it is the fragrance first the butter second or a combination of. I would also like to throw in my opinion of butter in salt bars, they reduce your lather. Granted in a low salt, which your recipe, the butter would most likely not affect lather like it would in my high salt bars.

Actually running the recipe through soap calc I would put the culprit mainly as the Fragrance and the lye concentration of 33.2% I would have used more liquid taking the concentration down to 30%. Nixing the 5% Kokum butter and adding that to the SAO. Remember B&B is a supplier and wants you to buy her supplies. The 5% Kokum Butter is not going to lend anything to a salt bar of 80% CO.

MY suggestion would be
80% CO
10-15% SAO
5-10% Castor
30% Lye Concentration
In fact, one of the combinations above is my recipe. Be careful of floral, sea salt type, and water type fo's since they tend to accelerate. I love Sea Salt fo's in my salt bars so I work quickly knowing they accelerate. With the 30% lye concentration I can still get in one swirl at least, with my high salt.

 

[MrsMilk]

I need to get a grip with the soap calculators. I had a fiddle yesterday but was so confused by it all.

 

[Obsidian]

I use a even simpler recipe, 80% coconut, 20% olive with 20% sf and 35% salt.

Your preferred salt amount might based on your water. I started with 100% then went down to 50%, they just don't lather here so I tried 35 and its perfect.