98.6% agreeable
iwannasoap, I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of
soap calculators. They exist as a convenient way to calculate lye amounts per oil amount to make a soap of a specified superfat, nothing more. It is not "deceptive" for the initial weight of the batter to vary with changes in water content, it's just the calculation done to produce the correct specified soap. If you change the inputs, the "output" will vary, and as far as I can tell (I'm a professional chemist) all the commonly referenced calculators are quite accurate.
Water evaporates, fatty acid salts and fats/oils do not, so the finished weight of the soap will be the same for any given weight of oil and lye. If you add more water, you get more weight and volume during processing, but the final cured soap weight will be only the weight of the oils used, the glycerine produced by saponification, and the sodium or potassium added as lye plus the water at equilibrium with the environment. All soap recipes contain much more water than ends up in the cured soap, and they all lose weight -- if you add more water when making it, more evaporates during cure. Final water content will be pretty much the same for any reasonable range of initial water amount used to make the soap.
Reducing the oil and lye weight to get some exact initial batch weight (or volume) will result in less soap when it's cured.
More water doesn't produce more soap, it produces the same amount of soap with more water in it, and that water will evaporate during cure.
"Gel" is the condition where a colloidal suspension of soap fatty acids forms in water, much like gelatin forms a colloidal suspension in water to make "Jello". If there is not enough water present for the soap crystals to become suspended in colloidal form, you won't get "gel phase" no matter what the temperature is. The more water present, the lower the temperature at which gel phase occurs, which is why high water recipes gel more easily. Therefore, if you want to avoid partial gel, low water helps.
As far as longevity in use, that depends on state of cure, fatty acid profile, and how dry the soap gets between uses. "New" soap has a lot of excess water and will be softer than fully cured soap, and therefore will be easier to rub into lather. Lots of easily lathered fatty acids (lauric and myristic) will "dissolve" faster too, so lots of coconut oil or palm kernel oil will make soap that is shorter lived in use. And finally, a soap dish that holds water will soften home made soap much faster than commercial triple milled soap, and softer soap doesn't last as long as harder soap.
I really appreciate your input and your time first off! While I am not a chemist and I cannot repeat what you said as eloquently I am aware of these things but what I can offer is from a programmers perspective and how the soapers calc only allows for differences by reducing or adding to the total quanity. Therefore a soaper does not learn the other aspects of calculating like knowing how to increase oils while still maintaining the water ratio you wanted. I have seen it in people's responses and they are using spell checker too much. Follow me here please because I would like you to explain a sort of contradictive statement that you made afterwards.
Starting from the beginning;
I know what a soap calc is because I can create the same thing. But my argument is that a soap calc is like a spell checker. The more you use it the more you forget to spell (which is my problem right now with spelling lately!)
1. By increasing or decreasing your water it will decrease or increase you total amount. That is IT! That is all that you will learn because that is all that you see. So, like a spell checker, you forget things like "I thought I wanted 50 oz of soap? Why is it 46 oz. now?"
2. To retain that same original quantity, just like you might want to retain the same quantity at your work in a flask, you have to change the oil amount. Which of course changes your lye to get back up to 50 oz.
3. As a consequence of calcs not doing that, people think that increasing your oil will affect your water:lye ratio that you wanted to use to get a certain consistency out of their soap. Wrong! Not true. Adjusting your oils if you played with the water:lye ratio only counter balances and puts you back up to the original weight that you wanted.
Let me clarify - When you select multiple tabs and then calculate different percentages, it only adjusts your total weight when in actuality it should loop the entire process all over again to give you what you entered in the first place. Which is calculate lye, water, and oils. But it doesn't. So, the end result is that a user does not realize that their water:lye ratio does not change. They think it does but it does not. They will have the same consistency but more soap if they just go back and add more oil to compensate for the loss in the total amount!
4. I perfectly understood final water content and I agree with you but water, as you know, never turns into soap so if a soaper understood exactly how to add more oil and keep the same water:lye ratio back into the recipe to adjust for its shortcomings then that same bar you speak of will have more soap not water and will last longer. As for the coconut and palm you speak of, thanks, I will definitely experiment with that!
5. More water doesn't produce more soap is also what I have been saying but I keep getting shot down.
6. Reducing the lye amount goes hand in hand with .5. I don't do that either. I want the most soap for my bar.
7. Now for the confusing part that sounds contradicting. I really would like a further explanation.
You said "The more water present, the lower the temperature at which gel phase occurs, which is why high water recipes gel more easily. Therefore, if you want to avoid partial gel, low water helps."
The last sentence makes sense and that is what I do. I have even been shot down already for saying the same thing and that I am ignorant.
But how it is contradictory with the first statement is that the first statement gels easier at higher water(I would say it is not easier because it is likely to fail precisely due to the second statement and it will not get as hot so as a result it will cool faster. That is why you get partial gel ) but the second statement says basically lower water has more of a success rate at gelling. I agree totally with that because lower water allows for more lye and oil in the same space .
My whole point is that using the soap calc people are forgetting the basics and are making assumptions that simply are not correct so as a result they are NOT adding more oil to compensate because they think it will mess with their Lye:water ratio which has a lot to do with the consistency that they want.
Additionally, there is no guarantee by the way that what they are superfatting with is actually what is left over. Oils saponify at different rates so when a SF of 5% of Shea is added to Olive oil soap. Forget it. You just wasted your money!
