Rapeseed Wax

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Here’s some pics of my rapeseed wax test soaps at a very young 4 weeks. The only hard oils used were coconut oil with the exception of recipe 1 that used a small amount of shea butter. Using small cubes of this soap in the shower, all three soaps remained hard and held up well to just being dumped on the shower shelf without a drainage rack. We are a sporty family of three who shower at least twice a day so the small cubes lasted all week which is equivalent to our usual full bar of commercial soap. Soap no 1 was the softest and formed a mush around a harder inner core. The other soaps remained firm and the soap with the brine had the best lather. The lather is creamy but as you can see there is room for improvement. I am wondering if reducing the wax will increase the lather so I will try 3% wax with a brine solution and a bit of sugar. I don’t think its necessary to go above 5% with these mainly soft oil recipes but I will report back soon on how my 8% wax recipe fares. I have very dry hands but using this soap at the sink I have not needed hand cream and my family liked them. I didn’t get any graininess that MarnieSoapien reported but all batches got light soda ash. I think these are nice economical soaps that are gentle on the skin. I don’t know how difficult it will be to make larger batches and maintain the heat at above 120f. Recipes used are in next post…


 
Fiona thank you for this it is very interesting indeed. I have not yet got my head around the percentages of the oils you have used so can't comment on what I think about the performance at those levels but its interesting to note that you say the batch with the brine had a better lather yet usually I understand that salt tends to reduce lather somewhat and sugar will help increase it a little. I was hoping that the Rapeseed wax would give a better lather and perhaps have a stearic type performance which is doesn't look as though it does. I am hoping soon to do an experiment to try it out.
 
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(Continued from above post)
Recipe One 5% wax + Shea Butter: (bottom soap, yellow)

Olive oil 8.8oz (55%), Coconut oil 2.4 oz (15%), Avacado Oil 2.4oz (15 %), Shea Butter 0.8oz (5%), Castor Oil 0.8 oz (5%), Rapeseed wax 0.8 oz (5%)

Recipe Two 5% Rapeseed Wax + Sodium Lactate (middle Soap Greenish):

Olive Oil 9.6oz (60%), Coconut Oil 3.2 oz (20%), Avacado oil 1.6 oz (10%), Castor Oil 0.8 oz (5%), Rapeseed Wax 0.8oz (5%), Sodium Lactate 1tspn

Recipe Three 5% Rapeseed Wax + brine (top soap, peach)

Olive Oil 9.6 oz (60%), Coconut Oil 3.2 oz (20%), Avacado Oil 1.6 oz (10%), Castor Oil 0.8 oz (5%), Rapeseed Wax 0.8 oz (5%), Brine Solution

all have 2:1 water to lye ratio with 3% superfat
 
gloopygloop said:
Fiona thank you for this it is very interesting indeed. I have not yet got my head around the percentages of the oils you have used so can't comment on what I think about the performance at those levels but its interesting to note that you say the batch with the brine had a better lather yet usually I understand that salt tends to reduce lather somewhat and sugar will help increase it a little. I was hoping that the Rapeseed wax would give a better lather and perhaps have a stearic type performance which is doesn't look as though it does. I am hoping soon to do an experiment to try it out.
Click to expand...

Yes, sorry was getting tied up in knots trying to set out recipes in a table then it deleted somehow so hopefully next post is clearer!!
 
Well thank you and even more interesting especially with your 20% CO. So do you think that the rapeseed wax actually reduces lather in a similar way that bees wax does. I was going to have a go with a really big dollop (% to yet be determined) of the rapeseed wax to see what happened.
 
gloopygloop said:
Well thank you and even more interesting especially with your 20% CO. So do you think that the rapeseed wax actually reduces lather in a similar way that bees wax does. I was going to have a go with a really big dollop (% to yet be determined) of the rapeseed wax to see what happened.
Click to expand...

It would be good to compare a 3% to your high one! I was thinking that it maybe does behave more like beeswax. I wonder how Rune got on...he was going to use quite a high amount too. The lather at 5% does feel nice and is not draggy or squeaky but its not as dense as some pictures Ive seen on here using 'traditional' ingredients.
 
Update… I have noticed that at a 7 week cure, when I cut my small test bars in half, the centre still feels a bit tacky. Maybe the rapeseed wax makes dense molecules (is this the right sciency word?) which require a good long cure? Or… maybe it’s because I live in Scotland where there is always a lot of moisture in the air!! With this in mind, yesterday I made a full sized batch (32oz for my one and only mould lol) with a 1.5 :1 water to lye ratio. Surprisingly the soap batter still took an age to come to trace but was nice and solid in just a few hours after sitting covered on top of a heated seed mat. I have also now made a batch with just 3% wax but its not even a week old yet so I will wait a while before reporting on that one. Oh yes, before I forget, the 3% wax recipe has no soda ash and the big water discount one has none so far either. All the other ones developed a light coat of soda ash (5% wax at 33% lye) as soon as I took them out the moulds and the two batches with 8% wax had the most ash so…more wax = more ash.
 
Last edited:
I am out of the U.K. for a month right now but just before leaving I decided to make a tester batch with the rapeseed wax @ 27% . Well when it came to mixing the lye I found that I had hardly any and so had to adjust the recipe to fit the lye as nowhere in the vicinity had any lye at all! I think it isn’t being sold in the shops at the moment due to new laws because of acid attacks etc. Anyhow I did manage to scale it and it was a tiny batch, it was stove top HP with a 27 lye concentration. It took forever to trace, I actually thought that it may never trace but in the end it did with a good bit of stick blending. Once it was in the moulds ( silicone cavity) it hardened fast and was able to pop out in a few hours. Have left it to cure and will be able to see how it is in August, but on washing up the pans etc. I was not impressed with the lather at all, not like my normal HP which lathers amazingly right after making when washing up the implements and residue left in the pot. I shall report back when it’s time to test!
 
Am hoping there will be huge transformation after cure time and that it will be the go to ingredient! We shall see.
 
Fiona Robertson said:
Did you get lots of bubbles?
Click to expand...
As I said not on washing up the pots etc. But will have to wait until August to test it, hopefully the cure time improve matters but am not overly hopeful really, not sure sure it’s going to be the magic ingredient I was hoping for but I might be wrong so we have to wait!
 
Here's a picture of the soap I made using 10% RS wax and 20% shea butter. If you're interested in the full recipe, I can post it. RS Wax lather.jpg
 

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