recipe help please

[Tjika]

I'm a newbie to soap making. I ran across a blog a couple of weeks ago, of someone making all sorts of homemade products, which got me interested in soaping and lotion making. I love learning new crafts.

I made my first tiny batch of cp soap 10 days ago and tried it for the first time today. Yes, I know it really should cure longer, but I couldn't wait :wink:.

There were some things I really liked and some I didn't. I simply started with a recipe I found online and for which I had the ingredients. I would like to make another tiny batch to reduce the things I didn't like and would appreciate some help.

This was my recipe
EVOO – 3.8 oz
Coconut oil – 3.8 oz
Cocoa butter – 1.5 oz
Rice Bran oil – 3 oz
Lye – 1.7 oz
Water – 4 oz

0.18 oz vanilla FO

sf at 5%


I did not like the olive oil smell, it has really faded in the past 10 days, but I can still smell it. So I would like to replace the olive oil with another oil. I can easily get corn, peanut, rapeseed, sunflower and castor oil. Or would getting a lighter olive oil (non EV) work? (The vanilla FO completely disappeared after saponification and hasn't come back.)

The other thing was the cleansing feeling. The soap made my skin squeaky clean. Which I really dislike. It wasn't drying though. I plugged in the recipe in soapcalc and the cleansing value is 21. I believe the coconut is to blame. If I lower the coconut oil, which would you recommend I increase?

Thanks for any help.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Hello! Welcome indeed.

Olive and rice bran oil are pretty much the same - so if you want to leave out the OO, you can just replace it all with the RBO. That said, I use the golden normal olive oil, not the green stuff, so it might be that. But certainly, there isn't much point mixing RBO and OO other than having more oils when you tell people about it.

I'm no good in Yankee measurements, but the scent amount is normally about 3% in CP. Not sure how yours holds up to that.

In the soap calc, drop the coconut down until it is around 15-20% and it should be okay. If you have hard water it can give that extra clean feeling to the skin that soon passes.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Yeah, that FO value is a bit low--less than 2%.

 

[seven]

at that amount (coconut), it's gonna be cleansing, esp. with a sf of 5%. here's a suggestion:

olive 60%
coconut 20%
cocoa butter 15%
castor 5%

i wouldn't bother with having both rice bran and olive, since they have very similar fatty acids anyway. you don't need evoo for soaping, a lower grade is enough. i'm using pomace and is pretty happy. if you would still like to use rice bran, then perhaps olive 40%, rice bran 20%.

you can also stick with your same recipe and just up the sf to something like 8%. you might be surprised at how different it would feel on your skin.

 

[judymoody]

Your soap might feel different in a few weeks after it's had time to cure a bit more.

That said, you might try dropping the CO down to 20% of your recipe and making up the balance with your other soaping oils. Or you could raise your superfat to 7-8%

The OO smell may be from the type you used. Try the cheaper golden kind or replace with RBO as TEG suggests.

Why not try this:

20% CO
50% RBO
10% cocoa butter
5% castor oil
25% palm (or lard if you're not opposed to animal fats. It's easy to find locally.)

 

[Susie]

Welcome to soaping!

I know that you said the smell is from the olive oil, but is there a possibility it may be the combination of olive and the cocoa butter? I have very little scent to my olive oil(I use the yellow cheap stuff), but when I combine it with my cocoa butter, it really smells strong! I have tried 3 different kinds of cocoa butter thus far, and can't find one that does not do that. I use the olive oil in many soaps without the cocoa butter, and have no problem with the scent. Just a thought.

Oh, and the obvious...your soap WILL get milder when it has a more appropriate amount of cure time.

 

[Tjika]

Thanks everybody :smile:

I went out and got a lighter olive oil today. When I opened the bottle there was barely any smell so hopefully this will be better.

I've been playing with soapcalc, keeping your advice in mind, and am going to up my olive oil and lower coconut oil.

I also learned a bit more about the different fatty acids, I didn't know rice bran oil and olive oil would give almost the same results. Thanks for the information :smile: