Soap Makes my Skin Feel Tight and Sticky

[coffeetime]

I second the other posters who suggested dropping the olive oil percentage down. I've discovered that I can't use high olive oil soaps, eapecially on my face. Leaves my skin dried out and feels terrible. So I keep olive below 30% and that really helps.

Your skin may not like higher %-ages of a particular oil. Also, some swear by a lower superfat, like 3%. So that's something else to try.

 

[biarine]

I agree with EG and think you might want to look at adding a chelator to your recipe. Something like sodium citrate, citric acid or EDTA. Even in the soft water I have, you can feel a definite improvement.

Hi Saponista how much percentage of sodium citrate in your soap. I got a lot of it from my chemist friend

 

[dixiedragon]

Maybe the OO? Some people find OO to be drying. Maybe try subbing some or all of it for sunflower oil?

 

[MrsSpaceship]

I use EDTA as a chelater, I like it b/c there you just mix it w/distilled water rather than having to juggle the lye amounts, I am not a math person and am always afraid that I'll absent-mindedly make a mistake.

Not_ally, This sounds perfect for me, but I just checked a couple of my usual suppliers and they don't carry it, where do you get it?

 

[IrishLass]

Not_ally, This sounds perfect for me, but I just checked a couple of my usual suppliers and they don't carry it, where do you get it?

MrsSpaceship- I'm not sure where not_ally gets hers, but what it's worth, I use tetrasodium EDTA, too, and I buy it from LotionCrafters (because I also use it in lotion-making).


IrishLass

 

[Saponista]

If you click on the link that I posted them there is all the info there that you need including how to add it biarine

 

[sudsy_kiwi]

Thanks for all the advice in this thread. I've struggled with that dried-out, tight feeling on my skin with every bar of soap I've made. I initially put it down to too much CO, and dropped the % all the way down to 0...I've tried a castille...I've used high lard and high tallow bars...I've played around with all sorts of ratios. In the end I just assumed that I was sensitive to "real" soap after years of using commercial body wash.

But now I have new hope :smile: My city has quite hard water, due to very old pipes, so I'll do some research on how to add citric acid (I have it on hand, for making bath bombs).

Also, I didn't know about lowering the SF...I naively assumed more would be better (ie more moisturising) so I actually increased it lol.

 

[MrsSpaceship]

Quote:
Originally Posted by MrsSpaceship View Post
Not_ally, This sounds perfect for me, but I just checked a couple of my usual suppliers and they don't carry it, where do you get it?
MrsSpaceship- I'm not sure where not_ally gets hers, but what it's worth, I use tetrasodium EDTA, too, and I buy it from LotionCrafters (because I also use it in lotion-making).


IrishLass

Thank you!

 

[Saponista]

I am also keen on a lower superfat, my skin feels greasy otherwise. Does that make me odd compared the everyone else?

 

[DeeAnna]

Nope, you aren't! I suppose we're in the minority, but by no means an oddity.

I use 2% to 3% superfat in my soaps. And to make my true confession worse, I also compensate for the actual purity of my lye so my SF is a "realer" superfat.

Most soap recipe calcs assume NaOH is 100% pure, and that assumption builds in a hidden lye discount of at least 5% for most of the NaOH products I've looked at. So if you use Soapcalc, for example, and set your superfat to zero, your soap most likely has a +5% superfat, more or less.

I really, really don't have a problem using a lower superfat -- it is not drying, unpleasant, nor irritating to the skin, winter or summer. Carolyn (cmzaha) was my inspiration to lower the superfat in my soaps.

 

[ngian]

I have also started making soap with 3% lye discount, and from my early experience is that I like it more than 5% that I used to do...

From now on I will use 1-3% depending on how old the lye is or if I use additives that contains reducing sugars.

(DeeAnna I have send 2 private messages since last week)

Nikos

 

[Saponista]

I'm glad it's not just me DeeAnna and ngian!