Hello I'm new, my first salt bar experience and a question!

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nup

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Hello, I'm new to this forum and I must say I've been lurking for quite some time absorbing all the info you lovely people are kind enough to share. I have been making soap like crazy these past few weeks but I still consider myself a novice soap maker. I've had some successes and a (one) failure.
I'd never heard of a salt bar before joining here and I thought I might give it a try. So I made a tiny batch of about 300gr using these:
Sunflower – 35%
Coconut – 25%
Castor – 5%
Shea Butter – 35%
I run this through soapcalc and kept my SF to 5%.
It just so happened that on that particular day I was low on oils I prefer to use like avocado and palm, so I had to make do with whatever was in my kitchen cupboards. Also, since I can get extra virgin olive oil for free (my mother-in-law makes it and I steal it!) I didn't use any on this recipe because I 'd had too much of it lately and was tired of it and wanted to try something else.
The other new thing I tried was sub (all of) my water for some (food grade) citrus flower hydrosol. I live in Greece and we use this particular hydrosol for cooking, for sweet cakes, salads and other kitchen related stuff. We can find it pretty much everywhere here and it is dirt cheap like 1.5 to 2 euro per 200ml. There is not too much info on this, apart from what's on the bottle and on the bottle it only says to use no more than 10-20gr per recipe.
So I put my lye on the hydrosol and started stirring to dissolve it. It turned a pale yellowish color, not very clear, and started smelling wonderful! I mean, here I was, with a full face plastic mask on trying to shield myself from the harmful lye fumes when all of a sudden I get a whiff of flowers! I wasn't sure how the hydrosol was going to react to the lye or the saponification so I figured that maybe, just maybe, the nice, sweet, flowery scent will last. I decided to leave unscented and see how it goes.
Now, when it came to salt, I remember reading in here that people use 85% of it more often, but I was too nervous for that so I added only 50% sea salt. Then I added some shea as extra SF, about 5%.
When I added the lye-water to the oils the scent disappeared but came back later on!
It all went smoothly from then on. I stirred, it traced, I poured into individual molds (yogurt cups!), insulated and let it sit and do it's magic. Of course, me being the newbie that I am, I had to go check every 15 minutes or so! The scent was getting stronger as the soap warmed up and I was getting more and more excited that it would last. I removed from the molds about four hours later, I tried to cut a couple of bars in half, it crumbled and now I know not to do this again! When the soap cooled down, the scent was non-existent and I felt somewhat disappointed but hoped that after a few weeks cure and when wet it would smell even a tiny bit.
The next day, I made another tiny batch using the exact same recipe but instead of salt I added 40gr of powdered oats and left unscented to see how it would end up. When it warmed up it stank of fish, but now it is scentless, thank god!
Then I went on vacation for 10 days so it stayed undisturbed until I came back and the first thing I did was grab a (salt) piece and go wash my hands with it. It had only been curing for about 2 weeks: the lather was not very fluffy, in fact it was more creamy than bubbly but it was by far the most moisturizing soap I'd ever created and that was good enough for me. And no, no scent whatsoever.
I have been trying to create the perfect shampoo bar recipe for my horrible hair, so yesterday I decided to test this one as shampoo. I just have to say that I am happy as a clam because:
a) my hair has a nice flowery smell (very faint but still!)
b) no coating at all, hair is soft and feels clean just like using commercial shampoo, something I never anticipated!
Just a side note: normally, my hair is kitten soft, very very thin, grease up really fast (I need to shampoo every day - esp in the summer) it tangles like nobody's business, straight and dark. So if any of you decide to try this recipe, I cannot tell how it would be for other kinds of hair.
So, question time:
do you, more experienced people, know that if this cures properly for four or more weeks will it be bubblier? Do I have to do something to up the bubble factor myself, like adding sugar or changing one of my oils or percentages? As I was rubbing the bar on my hair I noticed that it did lather up but the bubbles died before I had the chance to apply all over. I need bubbles on my shampoo!
Oops! another question: are salt bars supposed to be scrubby? Because this one most definitely isn't! You can't even tell there's salt in it. Not that I'm bothered, mind you, but maybe 50% isn't enough to make it scrubby.
Aaaand apparently I have more questions than I initially though I had:
I noticed that the first couple of days as this was getting harder, that it seemed to be sweating. It looked dry alright but when I'd touch it, it felt like liquid coming out of the parts I squeezed. Is this normal? BTW, now it is completely dry.
I'd be happy to hear your thoughts and if anybody decides to try this recipe, please let me know how it goes!
Oh, and sorry for the extra-long post :)
 
I make my salt bars with 90% coconut oil, 5% castor, and 5% shea butter. I superfat at 15-20% to combat the high coconut. The result is a wonderful, creamy, bubbly lather and a very moisturizing soap. I use about 70% sea salt and they aren't scrubby at all, but like a polished stone. (this is normal) Congratulations on all your success! :)
 
I would add 5% castor oil for lather and the salt soap I make is very smooth. Oh and yes they do sweat from time to time, just the humidity.
 
Can't wait to try a salt bar - going out of town for a few days and can't soap :x at my in-laws.
 
Oooh! Thank you thank you thank you people for all the advise and the kind comments!
I figured I needed to up the coconut but wasn't sure how much. Guess what I'll be playing with this weekend! :wink:
Artisan, as far as olive oil goes I can't help you there, I wish I could spread the love and send you some but every time I try to send any liquid across the ocean the post office ladies say I'm not allowed to! But! I am pretty sure that you can find cheap hydrosols if you go look at mediterranean food stores. Try Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, generally countries that have a tradition in distilling plants, you'd be amazed at what you can find. What I find weird though is that food grade is so much cheaper than cosmetic grade...
 
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