OMH soap quandary

[CTAnton]

The below is Lovin' soaps recipe for OMH.
Coconut oil – 20 oz
Olive oil – 20 oz
Rice bran oil – 5 oz
Avocado oil – 5 oz
Castor oil – 4 oz
Shea butter – 5 oz
Sweet almond oil – 5 oz
Fresh goat’s milk – 9 oz
Oatmeal – 4 tablespoons
Honey – 4 tablespoons
For whatever reason I'm just not pleased with this soap...tacky to the touch after a good long cure and a heavy lotion feel to my hands. granted, i haven't used it in the shower yet. I didn't like it at the 8 week mark and things haven't changed in my opinion with an additional 2 month's curing.
Considering all the hoopla I've read about OMH soaps, how popular they are with the public , how great for the skin, yada yada yada...this one is just not floating my boat. Of all the 50 plus recipes I've played around with I've got to say this one stymies me.
This is now could with the fact a friend informed me his son suffers from eczema, primarily on his scalp. So I gave him salt bars, high lard, high tallow, high olive oil bars to try and I'd love to offer him this one to try. I don't know if my expectations are too high or is it just not a soap for me and other people might like it/ I don't know...maybe it simply falls under the heading of too high expectations. So there's my rant. if anyone cares to shed some light on this, I
d appreciate it. For al i know, a lotion feeling afterwards for people with eczema might be just the thing they're looking for. I'm not expecting to cure him..just get him away from massed produced soap.
Thanks all
Happy 4th America!

 

[lenarenee]

Not sure what to tell you, but here's my thoughts: I find that to be an odd recipe - with high cleansing. Without knowing your superfat (which I suspect is high due to the amount of goat's milk), the shea and avocado provide a good amount of unsaponifiables which could contribute to the heavy lotion feeling (as would high sf). With that much coconut you would get a lot of lather, but a high sf will ruin that.

As for the hoopla over OMH soaps - I think it's just hoopla. There isn't enough oatmeal in a bar of soap, nor does it have a long time on the skin to provide any therapeutic use. It's an oatmeal bath of several minutes that supposedly provides relief and frankly-I never knew anyone who benefited from it.

The same for honey - small amount in soap, doesn't have prolonged contact with skin, and a huge majority of commercial honey is cut with corn syrup.
Milk....again....needs to prolonged contact such as a bath in order to have any benefit.

When people tell me that my soap has helped their skin condition - whether its the lard or OMH, I honestly think it has to do with what is NOT in the soap that's helpful. Soap isn't therapeutic. Removing exposure to skin irritants - sls as an example - is often what gives people relief.

 

[mx5inpenn]

I would suggest trying a recipe you normally like and subbing the milk. Add a teaspoon of honey and a tablespoon of finely ground oatmeal ppo. I don't prevent gel and have to cut in under 24 hours or its too hard to cut nicely.

The milk and honey add a nice boost to the lather, but I doubt there are any other benefits. I don't love it, but others certainly do!

 

[IrishLass]

I just read the original recipe on Lovin's site and I see that she is using the 'split method' of milk soaping, which is my preferred method of milk soaping, but I find it odd that she takes a weird turn by adding just as much milk to it as she adds lye and water. Hmmmmm....When typed into SoapCalc, this pretty much bumps things to a 24.8% lye concentration, which is way more than a full-water amount. Yikes!

If I were making her recipe, I would do it this way:

-Type the recipe into SoapCalc @ my preferred lye concentration

-Dissolve the given lye amount with the same amount of water in weight (according to Lovin's recipe, 9oz NaOH to 9oz water)

-Then, whatever water amount remains from my required total water amount (according to whatever lye concentration I typed into SoapCalc) gets added to my oils in the form of goat milk.

This of course won't make it a "100%" milk soap, but if I wanted to that, the process is very simple: Instead of adding more liquid milk, all I need to do is just add enough powdered goat milk to the bit of fresh goat milk (above) to bring the required milk concentration up to the proper level.

For example- since 9 oz of water was used to dissolve the lye, all I would need to do to make it a 100% goat milk soap is make a goat milk slurry by dissolving enough goat milk powder into the fresh goat milk that would make the equivalent of a 9oz glass of goat milk according to the label on the powder..... and then stickblend that into my oils.

Her amount of honey and oats is the same that I like to use in mine (1 tablespoon ppo, each).

If you don't like how the recipe turned out using her choices of fats/oils, just make your own favorite recipe and turn it into an OMH soap by adding milk oats and honey to it. That's what I do. I don't use any special recipe, I just make one of my regular recipes and add the milk, honey and oats to it.


IrishLass

 

[Zany_in_CO]

...a friend informed me his son suffers from eczema, primarily on his scalp. So I gave him salt bars, high lard, high tallow, high olive oil bars to try and I'd love to offer him this one to try.

I would definitely give him a bar to try. It might be just the ticket for your friend's son. Different strokes for different folks, ya know? One soaper I know makes "Caleb's Castile" for her 3-year-old grandson with eczema. It's 100% olive oil with Oats, Goat Milk & Honey. She also tosses a couple handfuls of oats in the bathwater to relieve the itchies. It's a good thing.

One more thing to mention to your friend. If he uses laundry detergent that is fragranced and also something like Downey in the rinse water, then the son's scented clothes and scented bedding can be irritating his skin. I went through this with my daughter when she was little. Thanks to a smart pediatrician, I switched to unscented mild detergent (for babies), and washed all her clothes and bed linens, voila! no more rash -- zero, zip, nada, none.

HTH :bunny:
​

 

[CTAnton]

Well as pointed out by IL my first mistake was not running this recipe through a soap calculator. I've only read that warning like a gazillion times. DUH.
The other reminder from Zany is that what I might dislike others will love.
My first beer soap ended up being a rebatch with a somewhat exfoliating quality to it. Not as pretty as my batches afterwards but it seems to be a hit. Go figure.
I also appreciate the advice to simply add the required ingredients to a recipe I already love. And I am a fan of Genny's shampoo bar so I'll give that a whirl. Many thanks to all that responded....