Question about oil properties in liquid soap

[houseofwool]

I made a batch of Irish Lass's recipe that contains 25% coconut (using glycerin as water replacement) and found it to be extremely drying to my hands.

I want to experiment some more with dropping the CO down to something closer to 15-18% and likely upping the olive oil to help offset that. I also grabbed some HO sunflower oil today just to play with...

My usual soaping oils (for solid bars) are:

Coconut
Palm
Shea
Olive
Castor

I also have the HO Sunflower and cocoa butter available.

I'm assuming that the high levels of myristic and lauric acids have a similar effect as a potassium salt that they do when a sodium salt. Is that a reasonable correlation, or is it completely offbase?

 

[lsg]

You might substitute palm kernel oil for the coconut. They are similar in properties, but palm kernel oil is not supposed to be as drying. You might also try substituting lard or tallow for part of the coconut and palm.

 

[Susie]

Lard, palm, and tallow will yield cloudy soap that will eventually clear, but all the particles settle to the bottom.