How do I best preserve delicate/expensive ingredients in soap?

[rosyrobyn]

Is there a method to best preserve delicate and/or expensive ingredients in soap?

I'd like to try making gamat soap that is made from sea cucumber oil (expensive, no idea how it soaps). I realize that the lye monster does not discriminate between oils during saponification so how do I maximize the amount of sea cucumber oil remaining in the soap? Does hp work better than cp?

 

[DawninWA]

Hot process the soap and use the sea cucumber oil as your superfat. Add that after the soap is "cooked", the lye will already be used up and won't eat it.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Over time, even though the lye has reacted, the chemical make up will change - ie at least some of the sea cucumber oil could end up saponified. But that takes a fair amount of time, so hp and add it after the cook will essentially work, but it's worth noting that in a couple of years the bars will likely be very different

 

[rosyrobyn]

Over time, even though the lye has reacted, the chemical make up will change - ie at least some of the sea cucumber oil could end up saponified. But that takes a fair amount of time, so hp and add it after the cook will essentially work, but it's worth noting that in a couple of years the bars will likely be very different

So if I add a greater percentage of sea cucumber oil there is a greater chance of it being left unsaponified? I do hope to use the bars of soap within a couple of years. I've thought of using melt and pour but to me it defeats the purpose of making handmade soap since I lose control of what goes in the pot. I'll have to do some more thinking...

 

[Zany_in_CO]

That's a new one for me! So I googled gamat soap and found this:

http://hasnulyakin.blogspot.com/2011/08/healing-power-of-gamat-sea-cucumber.html

It sounds like a lovely soap with many benefits for the skin. You have an interesting challenge there. I hope you'll keep us posted on your progress.

 

[rosyrobyn]

I just got back from a trip to Malaysia and of course I was looking around for handmade soaps from the area. That's how I found out about gamat soap.

I didn't go directly to Langkawi this trip but hopefully next time. I picked up the soap at a night market and was pretty excited to try it out ($10 for an itty-bitty bar). But when I got it home and unwrapped it, I was disappointed to find a translucent bar that I can only assume is MP - no ingredients were listed.

Apparently there are only a few reputable companies that produce gamat soap and clearly state on their websites that it takes 6 weeks for the soap to cure - so CP or HP. They also only sell in a few places outside of Langkawi so it can be difficult to find. Since I'm probably not going back to Malaysia for a while I thought I would try to make my own version of gamat soap. I'm also going to try a lotion since soap is a wash-off product and I'd really like to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of sea cucumber as an ingredient.

Once my order of sea cumber oil comes in I'll be ready to experiment and of course I'll share my results here. So far I've found the SAP value to be somewhere between 150 and 190. What should I plug in as the SAP value? Somewhere in the middle, 170?

 

[IrishLass]

Instead of using it in CP or HP soap where you have to guesstimate which might or might not be the best SAP number to use (and consequently your superfat %), why not try using it in an emulsified facial oil cleanser such as the very popular DHC Deep Cleansing Oil? If it were me, that's what I would do. Such cleansers are really, really easy to make yourself at home in less than 5 minutes, and they cleanse the face of dirt and/or makeup ever so wonderfully and gently. We have at least 3 different threads on the forum on how to make them:

Zany's thread: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/deep-cleansing-oil.69671/
Navigator9's thread: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/olive-cleansing-oil-face-wash.63933/
My own thread: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/thr...h-emulsified-oil-cleansers.69959/#post-698850


IrishLass

 

[rosyrobyn]

Oooh thank you. That does sound lovely. I've done facial masks that have snail slime in them so this isn't a stretch at all. I like trying all kinds of different ingredients. I'm kind of weird that way...