last clay question...

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wearytraveler

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I'm just about set to make a couple of batches this weekend and I plan to try clay out for the first time. I have been using Tussuh silk for a short time now and I'm wondering if I should leave it as part of the recipe along with the clay (Bentonite) or omit it all together.

Thanks.
 
Do you like the effect the little silk in your soap gives? I guess there's a difference between "silky" and "slip"... you can have both maybe.

Just make sure you use a hand-sized mold with lots of corners so that it doesn't continually slip out of your hand in the shower. I hate bending down to pick it up off the floor. Must be those prison movies... Hahaha

Honestly (I might get flamed for this), I never felt that silk made enough difference in my soap to justify the effort trying to dissolve it in my lye water. But it just may be my insensitivity to such things. If you're a seller, it might get label appeal - except to vegans. If you like it, go for it!

I've kinda gone full-circle in my soap making. I started with a simple recipe with no additives, then gradually got into adding and experimenting with all kinds of crazy things (think pureed mango! LOL). Then that faze gradually passed, and now I'm pretty much back to basic oils and EOs. I still do natural infusions of annetto seeds, juniper, cedar, and such... and a little clays only for color. I don't like the way bentonite feels against my skin in the shower, but as an additive in shaving soap I think it's great. But experiment and see what you like. :)
 
I think if you want to know what clay does to your soap, you should forego the silk. Isolating additives (that is, adding only one at a time) is a clearer way to find out what you like, don't like, or don't perceive. I'm kind of like Gerry - I've experimented with a lot of additives but not so much now. But then again I'm kind of a simple gal.
 
I've tried both and now use clay only.
I'm with Gerry, I just couldn't find anything that silk adds to the bars. In fact, I think it did something to the lather, it was more sticky and slimy.
I use clay in small amounts in all my recipes. Different clays have different uses. I prefer kaolin in normal body bars and bit of yellow in facial bars.
It just makes bars really smooth, silky and they have a nice slip on the skin.
I use maybe 1 teaspoon per 1 kg of oils and find that to be enough.
And CaraBou has a point, you won't know what additive does what to soap unless you test one by one.
 
I've tried silk, and the rare underbelly fluff of my maine coon cat. I dunno - maybe there was a bit more glide? Hard to say.
With clay you KNOW the soap has something different. Plus pretty colors in some of them, and I think they make EO's stick more better.
 
To really be sure, you need one with just clay and one with both - you already know what silk is like so no need to make a control. Just make sure that the recipe is the same as usual.

If you regularly use something and want to test something else, leaving out the regular ingredient means that you are going to miss something from the recipe that is usually there.

Or ideally, make a batch without silk or clay, one with one of each and one with both - that covers all options and gives a clear comparison
 
Do you like the effect the little silk in your soap gives? I guess there's a difference between "silky" and "slip"... you can have both maybe.

Just make sure you use a hand-sized mold with lots of corners so that it doesn't continually slip out of your hand in the shower. I hate bending down to pick it up off the floor. Must be those prison movies... Hahaha

Honestly (I might get flamed for this), I never felt that silk made enough difference in my soap to justify the effort trying to dissolve it in my lye water. But it just may be my insensitivity to such things. If you're a seller, it might get label appeal - except to vegans. If you like it, go for it!

I've kinda gone full-circle in my soap making. I started with a simple recipe with no additives, then gradually got into adding and experimenting with all kinds of crazy things (think pureed mango! LOL). Then that faze gradually passed, and now I'm pretty much back to basic oils and EOs. I still do natural infusions of annetto seeds, juniper, cedar, and such... and a little clays only for color. I don't like the way bentonite feels against my skin in the shower, but as an additive in shaving soap I think it's great. But experiment and see what you like. :)
You will not get flamed by me, I do not think it adds a thing other than label appeal, which is why I add it into some non-vegan soaps. Since I do sell I go for any advantage I can Label Appeal or Real :). I have a few African American customers that tell me soap with clay makes them ashy, so I do not use a lot of clay in soap
 
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You will not get flamed by me, I do not think it adds a thing other than label appeal, which is why I add it into some non-vegan soaps. Since I do sell I go for any advantage I can Label Appeal or Real :). I have a few African American customers that tell me soap with clay makes them ashy, so I do not use a lot of clay in soap

Okay, I gotta know! Does 'feeling ashy' means they develop a layer of soda ash like our soap sometimes get? Or does it leave the skin with an ash-like hue?

I'm sorry, that just struck me as funny. But truly, I do wonder what it means exactly to the person to whom this happens. Is it a look or a feeling or an actually physical change of some sort?
 
OK, so thanks to everyone for their responses and suggestions. I know it's a common sense rule of thumb to adjust/add/remove one property at a time and evaluate as you go but I've never been one to go that route. I don't sell my soaps; I make them for me and as give-aways to friends, family and co-workers. To be honest I haven't noticed much of anything that silk has added to my bars. I use it cause I have a couple of bags of Tussah silk that were passed along to me and I just don't want to let it go unused. With that said, I made a single batch this evening and I went with three new ingredients; shea butter, coconut milk and bentonite clay. I figure I'll go out of 2016 with a bang!
It all went very well and the batch is currently in the oven doing it's thing. Picture attached.
Earlene, my daughter has a very dark skinned friend that would come over and use our pool (back when I was still married and had such luxuries) and she would get an "ashy" build up on her skin from the chlorine. I'm told that we all get that same build up but because it stands out against dark skin it's associated with African-Americans or anyone with dark skin. And yes, it's kind of like the ash on soap; powdery/dusty and basically dried salts on the skin.

Thanks again and here's hoping everyone has a great and healthy new year!

IMG-20161231-WA0023.jpg
 
Okay, I gotta know! Does 'feeling ashy' means they develop a layer of soda ash like our soap sometimes get? Or does it leave the skin with an ash-like hue?

That second one. As day-glow as I am, I get ashy spots too. I've always associated it with dry skin and how the dead cells flake off, it's more obvious with darker skin.
 

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