Hi! I tried making coconut soap for the first time and ended up with mixed results. Not sure what to do with the batch now. Is it even safe to keep in the house?

I used the recipe in this video, half batch. https://youtu.be/yZbAfgwEkJs. 420g coconut oil; 117g water; 57g sodium hydroxide / NaOH. The only departure from the recipe was not heating up coconut oil as it is summer here and it was liquid already. I used Katoomba 100% virgin oil. Mixed it with lye until the texture was consistent (for 10 minutes or so).

Not perfect, but I like it.

I cut my soap, placed it on a rack to dry/cure for a month or two, and now some of them are curled. Confused why this is a thing. I’m not using a dehumidifier or anything that would cause aggressive drying.

The colors came out so weird, lol. I just unmolded them, so I’ll give them a little clean afterward. I’m still learning, so I used cheap oils just to practice my swirling. The technique I used was two layers of three different colors on top of each other. Here’s the recipe:

125g coconut oil (15%)
375g sunflower oil (75%)
255ml water to 70g lye solution

I divided my three colorants into three batches (black oxide, violet oxide, and red liquid liposoluble vegetable-based dye), each dissolved with about 5g of olive oil.

The red turned dark brown, and the violet turned blue ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Also, I think I noticed a weird chemical smell from the red. Any idea what could have caused this?

Hi! After months of improvement, I found what I consider my personal recipe: -35% sunflower oil -30% pomace olive oil (I use sunflower for mixing with olive oil due to olive oil price increasing) -5% castor oil -10% sweet almond oil -15% coconut oil -5% stearin for hardening I have essentially two questions: -Should I continue to use sunflower oil or I need to switch to high oleic one? -I've bought Shea butter, and I want to add in my recipes, but I don't know if it's wise to add another fat in my recipe or substitute another oil in favour of Shea butter, and whic percentage I should use? Thank you in advance!

Does anyone know of a really good soap beveler? I've bought one from Amazon pictured below but my soaps come out crooked! I tried straightening the blade to avail! Any recommendations are appreciated it!

Coffee Soap, batter got super thick super quick which really helped

Hi - I have a habit of falling in love with FOs from Brambleberry that they inevitably discontinue and I don't soap frequently enough or in enough volume to buy large batches of any given FO, so I tend to miss when they go out of stock indefinitely. There are a couple that I'm really hoping having dupes or alternatives out there for CP soap, though: Raspberry Ale and Grass Stain. I would really appreciate it if anyone had any suggestions. Thanks!

Hi everyone! First post here, and a brand-spanking new newbie to the world of soap making. I'm trying to recreate my favorite soap I used to buy from Lady Tallow/Mirenda Rosenberg. I'm in the process of rendering/cleaning my tallow as we speak. I've been digging through the posts here to try and find the answers I'm after, since I'm sure everyone is sick of the same "what recipe?" posts, lol.

Ideally, I want to make a beef tallow-based goat's milk, oatmeal, and honey CP soap. I'm envisioning a decently hard bar that doesn't quickly melt in the shower, cleans well, and is moisturizing with nice lather. I'm leaning towards 85% tallow, 10% coconut, 5% castor oil blends. I'm using NaOH for the lye.

SoapCalc has my recipe with the follow values:

1 lb total oil weight

38% water (172.36g)

5% superfat

26.734% lye concentration (62.89g)

2.74 : 1 water to lye ratio

Here's where I get stuck: Do you calculate goat's milk as a 1:1 water swap, or does that affect the fats amount of the soap? Is it 1:1 and the fat in the milk ends up being the super fat percentage? Should I be splitting my water amount between the milk and actual water? I'm sourcing my milk through a friend with Dwarf Nigerians and I think they produce a pretty high fat content milk. I know I need to freeze the milk first in order to avoid lye burns.

I know honey is an accelerant (or is that just the FO?) and I'll probably hold off on using that until my second batch or so, but does honey count as water or fat in a recipe? In the world of bartending, honey/sugar is considered a "fat" so I'm just curious. Or does it not count and is merely it's own standalone additive? In order to increase the bubbles factor, would I also need to add sugar, or will the sugars in the honey and the castor oil do that enough?

How do you calculate the amount of colloidal oatmeal to use?

Thank you in advance!

Landscape soap

I've done a couple loaves of tallow. 2 to 1 lye water. 1.5 oz EO. I mix until trace then add my EO. Incorporate the EO. Smells great for a week or two then once fully cured smell of EO is barely there? Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

This is a bar of cold process soap that has been out of the mold about 72 hrs to firm up before being sliced. What is the ring?

30 oz oil

28.56% water plus 1 oz witch hazel solution.

5% superfat

33% lye concentration

Oils:

Pistachio 3.3%

Castor Oil 6.7%

Coconut Oil 27%

Olive Oil 50%

Sunflower Oil 13%

Blended at 84 deg F.

https://preview.redd.it/ze384xo3l8ge1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1664a5ded3009114dbee25245d53ea41ad87227c

Soap ring.

Hello I have made tallow and goat milk before but today as I was mixing the lye into the goat milk it didn’t react as it had the other times, it only got to about 80 degrees Fahrenheit but I still went ahead and finished the process

Would this affect the saponification in the oils and would it be risky to use it

I brought the tallow and lye to within 10 degrees of each other before mixing it

I used olive, coconut, castor and jojoba oil in this recipe

Thanks

https://preview.redd.it/dfjilt2d47ge1.png?width=1360&format=png&auto=webp&s=3434f89884d850e226c84d5b82b54fec868e80ca

Hi guys, first post here!

I'm a beginner with soap making, especially shaving soap. I'd like to start making it, but I would appreciate your opinion on my recipe.

The general purpose is to combine stearic acid, tallow, and other ingredients to achieve about 55% stearic acids (for a creamy and stable foam) and about 15% palmitic acids (for razor slip).

Before starting the process, I would like to ask for your opinion and any suggestions on how I could improve the recipe.

PS: Fragrance is not included since I haven’t found a satisfying base yet.

Thanks to you all!

I make bomb goat milk soap (with coconut oil, Shea butter, cacoa butter, olive oil, and apricot kernel oil) for sensitive skin and I (and all my friends and family) love it... But this year I have enough does in milk to try making butter.

My question is, how might if affect my soap to use previously pasteurized and skimmed milk? Will it have a noticeable change?

So I’m a beginner soap maker, I have been using a soap base as I’m not really ready to work with lye. I have two questions. The first one is do I ever have to work with lye? I am extremely satisfied with using a soap base. There’s a lot of different options and then I also don’t have to wait four weeks for it to cure. Question number two I made some turmeric kojic soap and the bars were so soft, so not even usable at this point. Was it because I added too much turmeric?

I made this soap for a friend of mine fir her birthday. Tops are decorated with little wood signs LOVE.

Hello! I am in Western Wisconsin and I’m new to making soap, candles, and other body care products. I have been getting stuff from MWFC, WSP, Bulk apothecary, for ingredients and Amazon business for packaging so far. I’m just starting this year and I guess hoping for some pointers or advice and maybe some local suppliers you recommend :) thanks!

https://preview.redd.it/kd6x1acas1ge1.jpg?width=3872&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c7f3050cff7e8646730feef79c0650097017d924

Hey all, just wanted to share my first couple attempts at cold processed soap!

The first attempt on the left was 10oz of oil (olive 60%, coconut 30%, castor 10%) with a lye concentration of ~27%. Took 4 days to harden to a point where I could stamp comfortably, but when removing from the mold, the soap was sticky, kind of like cookie dough sticking to cooking paper.

The second attempt is on the right, same ratio of oils but took lye concentration up to 40%, and hardened much quicker with much more pleasing aesthetics. Was super easy to remove from mold as well. That said, at 36hours in, was already too hard to stamp! Need to work on timing here.

I am based in Okinawa, which is pretty humid, so the higher lye concentration seems to help! My wife tested out the one on left after a week of curing, and she loved it!

I’m getting my supplies to start CP this weekend. After I’ve learned how to make basic batches and experimented with the occasional substitution, I have a specific type of bar I’m looking to make.

I struggle with depression, which causes me to not shower for several days when it gets really bad. When my depression isn’t as bad, I love to go to the gym. Both of these result in some good old fashioned BO.

I’d like to know of there’s anything that I can add/substitute in CP that will make the soap have a better deodorizing effect, but still allow it to process into soap? I’m looking to share almost everything I make with friends/family, and I’d like to be able to offer this to those who also struggle with depression and other sources of BO, to help feel extra clean and nice smelling once the bar is used.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: After getting feedback and searching a bit more online, I’m going to look for a recipe with charcoal and tea tree oil.

I'm yet to make a batch, so please excuse the ignorance.

I would be interested in making some soaps that have a few black lines and different colors, to make faces. Am I right in thinking this very ambitious for a beginner? There were some pretty soaps in the tutorials but I haven't seen anything like what I've described. So I might be sounding like a kid who wants to play in the NBA before having any real basketball.

It's kind of hard to find pictures because google thinks I'm looking for people's faces, but something like the upper right corner in this picture has something similar: https://soapdelinews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/best-christmas-soaps-etsy-holidays-500x750.jpg

I've been watching videos on different soap making processes, but it's not clear to me what advantages or disadvantages they might have in this endeavor.

If I'm picky about what the final picture looks like, I assume discoloration would be one of the things to watch out for, and also forming the picture itself will be easier said than done.

Can anyone give any pointers specifically about this? How do I get to this level? Am I looking into a big time and money investment if I want to get really got at this?

Wondering if anyone has any experience using this in soap? I have a whole bag that I bought a couple years ago to treat my houseplants, and it's just sitting there now. Can this be used as a mild exfoliant in soap? Has anyone used it like this before? I read on Wiki that it's occasionally used in facial scrubs so I am curious.

I wanted to have something smaller for experimenting with adding natural colors and different oil combinations so I wasn’t making 10 bars of something that I may not like.

Hello everyone! This is my first post on this sub and I want to start off by saying that all of you can make some pretty damn good looking soaps!

I want to make a batch of soap specifically for my wife and she wants castor oil added into her batch.

I’ve done four complete batches now, and each of them has turned out pretty good. I follow the same recipe I found online.

The recipe I’m following is as follows:

450 g Olive Oil 450 g Coconut Oil 297 g Distilled Water 133 g Sodium Hydroxide

I usually add oatmeal or turmeric and essential oils but I’m loose with the weights or percentages. I’ve mainly been doing it freely and figuring out what I like.

Please let me know what you guys think! And please share with me how many grams of castor oil I should to this recipe!

Thank you!

I see a bunch of different recipes online for beef Tallow soap. ( I chose beef Tallow because I have some beef Tallow on hand 😂)

What recipes have you personally used or would suggest? I was going to try my luck at one hot process recipe and one cold process recipe. I also see a bunch of different ways to add color to the soap what do y'all personally recommend?