No need to apologize! Everybody starts somewhere.
There are basically a few ways of determining the lye/water ratio for your recipe in a
Lye Calculator.
They often have these 3 options:
- Lye as % of water
- Lye Concentration
- Lye to Water Ratio
The first option is set as the default for most Lye Calculators, which is odd, because you'll find that most of us use one of the other two options instead.
I use Lye Concentration in particular. You can think of wanting to add your Lye and Water up to 100%. The highest concentration of lye you can use is 50%, because lye needs an equal amount of water to dissolve it fully. So the strongest solution you can make is 50% lye and 50% water.
The lowest (most dilute) lye concentration you should use is 25% (25% lye, 75% water). Any lower than that and you may have some problems with your soap.
So figuring out how to choose between 25-50% Lye Concentration (and everything in-between those numbers)? It's recipe-dependent and personal preference.
Most of us find that 33-35% is a sweet middle-spot for most recipes. Castile (100% olive oil) recipes can benefit from a bit of a higher lye-concentration, around 40%.
This is all assuming cold-process, of course. With hot process you do want more water to keep your batter fluid, so 25% Lye Concentration would work well there.
Anyway... I've drifted off on a tangent.
In regards to the temperatures: it does sound like you're soaping too cool, and if you raise the temp of your oils a bit, that should solve your problem. As I mentioned, the melting point of Palm Oil is 95F, so dropping it below that may make the Palm Oil begin to clump back up again. Does your oil mixture look cloudy or clear after you've melted the oils? It should be clear.
Another point to bring up is newbies often stickblend TOO much, leading to faster trace. You really only need to stick-blend to emulsion (aka your batter is still liquid but the lye solution is well-incorporated). After you've reached emulsion (sometimes only 30 seconds of stickblending will do it), you can switch to a whisk or a spatula to allow yourself more time to add your fragrances and colours.
Hope that helps!!!