question

hey all

so im going through recipes and my stash of supplies, im wondering why some basic recipes say palm oil, and some say lye, wouldnt having a palm oil base with coconut oil be a more organic blend....

Thanks in advance

Soap-mum

Oils and lye are two different parts of soap making. If you're doing cold process, you'll need lye in every batch (with or without palm oil depending on the recipe) to react with the oils to make the actual soap. The fun part is making recipies with different types of oils to find out what blend is your favourite.

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yeah, that's what I was thinking!

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ladies

thank you so much for your responces, i must have been having a bad moment when i posted that question because what i was actually referring to was using tallow in soap...hpwever reviewing further recipes i concluded that i wont be using it in the next few batches that i do (on the weekend)..

the course i did was in perth at a place called Herbal delights with a gentleman named Joseph but that was about 9 months ago, so im now trying to make sense of all i learnt..

Im going to experiment a bit with oil bases because i want a beautiful moisturing soap, from the top of my head, im thinking avocado oil or olive oil (hopefully it wont be a mess), but i guess ill see.

its so nice to know i have a wealth of information here.

regards

Soap_mum

ahh... now it makes sense! Personally I stick to vegetable oils in my soaps, the thought of beef fat in there for some reason grosses me out.

The first batch of soap I ever made had both olive oil and avocado oil in it. Avocado is great but keep the levels low.

A great page I use for getting an idea of maximum usage level for most oils is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . When I'm creating a new recipe I have that open in one window, and soap calc open in another, and I flick between them!

I agree guys tallow freaks me out but they do say it makes lovely soap!!!!!! Soap Mum if altering your recipes dont forget to run them through a lye calculator as the amount you need to use is likely to change :0)

 

Can anyone help me with a recipe for buffing soap

Why ?????if you use caustic soda and soda ash together with tallow you can add much more water and it still gives a hard bar E.g
lye calculator 700gr tallow 100gr lye 230ml water
my experiment 550 gr tallow 50 caustic 50 soda ash and 1000ml water it goes into trace same time as normal recipe ??????????