I know I asked something like this before, but

How do you compute pounds of oil? Do you take the grams of oil from SoapCalc and convert it to pounds?

 

I don’t understand your question. If you prefer to work in pounds and ounces, soapcalc gives you those units too.

 

Under Item #2 on SoapCalc you choose whatever measure you want to make the batch, i.e., pounds, ounces, or grams. After you calculate the results are shown in pounds, ounces, and grams. Here's an example where I plugged in 2 pounds of coconut oil. The results show how much that is equal to in ounces and grams.

HTH (Hope That Helps)

 

I always remember when I was a little girl and we used to buy a pound of butter. Years later it became 500g of butter. When I lived in the United States, butter was sold as four 'sticks' sliced longways down the pound - thus four sticks equals a pound of butter (and approx 500g). A quarter of a pound is therefore 125g ( and equivalent to one 'stick').
I don't know why I am telling you all of this - except to say that this knowledge is quite helpful now that I'm soapmaking and y'all refer to 'PPO' coz I know that's 500g.
But don't get me started on those ounces - geez, they do my head in! So many odd, quirky numbers. Is it something like 14 ounces to a pound? Or is it 17? In either case, working out quarters and halves start to get very confusing.

 

16 oz to a pound, 8 oz to a cup... 2 cups in a pound, 4 tbsp to a quarter pound..... I'll stop now.

 

Yeah but how big is your cup? And does it runneth over?

 

If I find a recipe written in grams, I enter it that way into SoapCalc and then can select Pounds or Ounces and even resize it.

 

So if someone says they add x teaspoons of TD PPO, they are just referring to the amount in the total pounds box? If so, then that's pretty easy.

 

This is accurate only with water at room temperature. For any other material, this relationship does not work. As an example, 16 fluid ounces of fat weighs roughly 0.92 pound.

 

I do realize that. I'm also a home baker and most of my (some very old) recipes are by volume, not weight.

 

AND, how heavy was the item you put in the cup - even though volumes of different items can be the same, doesn't mean that they will be the same weight. A cup of feathers is going to weigh differently than a cup of bricks.

 

Yes. If my recipe uses 32 ounces of oils and I want to use TD at 1 tsp PPO, I'd add 2 tsps. If I wanted to use TD in the whole batch.

 

That is an option you can choose on Soapcalc. Download the free user guide from their site. It is most helpful.

 

16 ounces to a pound. 4 oz. Per quarter (stick). All depends on what you grew up with.

 

I'm an eyeball baker - 'about a cup' could mean anywhere from half a cup to 1.5 cups depending on how I think the consistency of the cake batter should look.

Apologies John - off topic

 

PPO - Per Pound of Oils(butters)

 

This might be helpful if you need more details about how to use "ppo" -- https://classicbells.com/soap/ppo.asp

 

A bit off topic here, but this struck me because several years back our local grocery store was having a massive sale on some really fancy [expensive] 'European' style butter. So cheap, that I bought all that they had because you can freeze butter. Anyhoo...my daughter opens a stick of the fancy butter and notes that it fits in the butter dish and that you can put the lid on it without getting butter all over it and it got me thinking. I grew up with those long skinny sticks of butter, but somewhere along the line they changed into short, fat stick of butter. But the butter dishes didn't change...they are still made for the long skinny sticks.

 

How big is your recipe that you want?

 

I was just trying to understand what people were talking about when they would say, for example, they had a 3 pound mold. But, based on the discussion we've had on this thread, I understand now. (See? My $15 donation is worth every penny! )