Someone willing to look over my recipes?

[Cactuslily]

Hello soapers,
As I'm a very new soaper, and never made my own formula before, would so done give me I put to what I've put together? If not i totally understand:
Now I realize I should've saved my percentages. I have it in oz...
1) 12 oz canola
32 oz coconut oil
20oz shea
16 oz sunflower

2). 8 oz canola
24 oz coconut oil
16 oz avocado oil
8 oz sunflower oil

My goal is to have a creamy conditioning bar that will (hopefully) trace slowly
I'm having major problems with early seizing. Any comments or suggestions greatly appreciated. When I ran through soap calc it didn't explode and say "that's a horrible idea". It I'm not used to working with it.
Thanks all. Happy soaping! You guys give me hope and inspiration that even an old dog like me can learn new tricks.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Looking at the first one, that is a lot of CO and a lot of a butter - it could be drying for many types of skin (but you might be one of the lucky few) because of the CO and butters used in higher amounts can inhibit lather and actually give a weird feeling to the soap - I can't be more exact than that, as I don't use butters in my soaps.

Number two is also very high in the old CO.

Try putting the CO to around 20% and making up the difference with palm or lard - check out the calc numbers on those oils and you will see both creamy AND conditioning. Top choices for your goal

 

[Cactuslily]

Thank you so much. Is it true that the more liquid ingredients the slower to trace? Also, keeping the 2:1 ratio of water to lye, my recipe came out much different. All came out @30.4 water 9.72 lye. Am I doing something else wrong!

 

[shunt2011]

Hello soapers,
As I'm a very new soaper, and never made my own formula before, would so done give me I put to what I've put together? If not i totally understand:
Now I realize I should've saved my percentages. I have it in oz...
1) 12 oz canola
32 oz coconut oil
20oz shea
16 oz sunflower

2). 8 oz canola
24 oz coconut oil
16 oz avocado oil
8 oz sunflower oil

My goal is to have a creamy conditioning bar that will (hopefully) trace slowly
I'm having major problems with early seizing. Any comments or suggestions greatly appreciated. When I ran through soap calc it didn't explode and say "that's a horrible idea". It I'm not used to working with it.
Thanks all. Happy soaping! You guys give me hope and inspiration that even an old dog like me can learn new tricks.

I would go with your second recipe but drop your CO down to 20%. Your first recipe would likely trace quick as there is a lot of CO and a lot of Shea. Rerun your recipe if you do change it up though.

 

[Cactuslily]

After seeing the beautiful 100% coconut oil soap that Luckyone made, I plugged into soap calc, and I was curious. Lucky said her soap didn't trace quickly ( plus used a floral FO ) also the INS was quite high. Are these values not set in stone? I changed my formula completely. 40% shea 20% coconut oil 20% palm 7% castor oil 5% grapeseed and 8% sunflower. Wish me luck! Now I must need the nerve to actually do something. I'm a bit paralyzed for some reason. Afraid everything will seize up too fast again. Forgoing anything floral (despite website where I got them saying otherwise :-()...on second thought, maybe i will just read some more. I'll know when I'm ready, won't I? Yikes!

BTW, thanks to you all who have taken time to reply. I'm truly grateful. You all could be soaping instead of helping a newbie. For that I am truly thankful. One day, maybe I can pay it forward, and you all will be the reason I can

 

[cmzaha]

After seeing the beautiful 100% coconut oil soap that Luckyone made, I plugged into soap calc, and I was curious. Lucky said her soap didn't trace quickly ( plus used a floral FO ) also the INS was quite high. Are these values not set in stone? I changed my formula completely. 40% shea 20% coconut oil 20% palm 7% castor oil 5% grapeseed and 8% sunflower. Wish me luck! Now I must need the nerve to actually do something. I'm a bit paralyzed for some reason. Afraid everything will seize up too fast again. Forgoing anything floral (despite website where I got them saying otherwise :-()...on second thought, maybe i will just read some more. I'll know when I'm ready, won't I? Yikes!

I really do not think you will be at all happy with a 40% shea butter recipe. Shea will kill the lather. If you go to this site there are some lovely recipes. I happen to love the Canolive recipes and have not had them go bad. I would also advise staying away from floral fo's until you have had more practice. Shea will also speed up the trace because of it's high stearic acid
http://www.millersoap.com/

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I agree - swap the palm and the Shea amounts and it starts to look better

 

[Cactuslily]

Wish I'd seen your posts sooner.I made a soap with 40% shea, 20% palm, 20% coconut oil, 7% castor, 8% sunflower,and 5% grapeseed. Firstly, I think I saw my first gel...never saw before. The soap didn't trace quickly at all. I had used a mica that unbeknownst to me morphs, but I didn't use it in the same mold as other colors. Besides, I didn't have enough room in my mold. I must have miscalculated. Will see to or row what it looks like.fingers crossed.

 

[hmlove1218]

May I ask why you decided to make 4 pounds of soap from a recipe you don't even know if you'll like? I would suggest sticking with 2 pound batches until you figure out you're recipe. It just seems like a lot of wasted ingredients to me if you don't like the outcome.

 

[Cactuslily]

I actually didn't realize I had. I planned on using my 2.5 lb mold. After coloring and splitting into three, my green looked atrocious. I poured it alone into separate container, and only used the two other colors which alone fit mold perfectly. The green I later learned morphs. Surprisingly, the soap behaved beautifully in terms of having plenty of time to play if I had wanted to. Will from now on make sure I'm plugging in 1 lb into calc, but I don't have a one pound mold. Any suggestions? Otherwise, I'll have to continue doing 2.5 batches. Why did a 2.5 lb batch make more than 2.5 mold would hold. Did I do something wrong again?!

 

[snappyllama]

I'm guessing that you made an recipe for 2.5 pounds for a mold that is for 2.5 pound total weight. Here's my favorite youtube teacher talking about how to size a recipe for your mold. I realize I link to her a lot, but she explains it waaay better than I ever could.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=018-zZOTLwM[/ame]

 

[Susie]

Soaping 101 is my favorite also. I am not fond of some of her recipes, but she is such an excellent teacher that she is my go-to guru also.

Just because you have a 2.5 lb mold does not mean you must make 2.5 lbs of soap. Use a 1 lb oil recipe that will give you 1.5 lb(ish) soap batter, and put it into the mold. The bars may be short, but they are good tester sizes and will not use so much of your ingredients while working out your recipes.

 

[cmzaha]

I actually didn't realize I had. I planned on using my 2.5 lb mold. After coloring and splitting into three, my green looked atrocious. I poured it alone into separate container, and only used the two other colors which alone fit mold perfectly. The green I later learned morphs. Surprisingly, the soap behaved beautifully in terms of having plenty of time to play if I had wanted to. Will from now on make sure I'm plugging in 1 lb into calc, but I don't have a one pound mold. Any suggestions? Otherwise, I'll have to continue doing 2.5 batches. Why did a 2.5 lb batch make more than 2.5 mold would hold. Did I do something wrong again?!

When you run soapcalc there is a line under the fragrance line item that gives you your total soap weight for the batch. Water, lye, oils and fragrance are added up to give you this total weight. If you have a silicone mold you can fill your mold with water and see how much it weighs, this will give you an idea how much total weight your mold will hold. It is easy to change your oil weight in soap calc.
To estimate the amount of oils to use for a mold the calculations are height x weight x length x .40 This would give you an approx oil weight to start with in soapcalc

 

[Cactuslily]

Thanks for the link. I watch her tutorials a lot, but seem not to retain everything. Will watch again and take notes. Thanks!