What would this soap be like?

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Jennifer Gray

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May 3, 2020
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I am experimenting with different recipes and oil ratios. I found a recipe that has one part lard, two parts sunflower oil and two parts coconut oil. It took a long time to get to trace and seemed thin, but it unmolded relatively fast and was really detailed and beautiful. My question is, what will this soap be like? (I have to wait to use it, of course). Will it be long lasting? Should I go back to olive oil? What are the qualities of sunflower oil vs. olive oil? Thanks
 
Hey Jennifer!
That sounds like a lot of coconut oil (40%) and a lot of sunflower as well.. if it's high oleic sunflower that's not a problem, but if it's regular sunflower oil, your soap might be prone to developing dreaded orange spots (DOS) or in other words, rancidity. You can still use your soaps, just keep an eye out for them and maybe don't give your soaps away (or at least not to people who might put the soap in a closet for a year and come back to color changed and smelly soap) The coconut oil can be drying at such a high percentage, though a high superfat could counteract this to a certain degree. Do you know the superfat of your recipe (if you don't, it's always good to run a recipe you found online through a calculator anyways, that also gives you an idea of how the soap will behave and they're very easy and straightforward to use)
Regarding your question of olive oil vs sunflower oil.. regular sunflower oil has a lot of poly unsaturated fatty acids (linoleic and linolenic acids) which are super healthy in food, but easily break down and go rancid in soap. High oleic sunflower oil doesn't have this problem (it's high in mono unsaturated fatty acids, which is mainly oleic acid and doesn't go rancid as easily). High oleic sunflower oil is actually rather similar to olive oil. I use it a lot in my soaps. It's super white, slow to trace and as a bonus it's also really cheap. In my experience it bubbles slightly less than olive oil, but for my skin (but that's really personal) it's a bit less drying than olive oil.
 
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