Soap Making 101

[me&thegals]

Do olive and castor have nearly identical saponification values? If not, run it through a lye calculator before making any substitutions to be sure you have the proper amount of lye.

I'll have to get some soap pix posted soon

 

[glenolam]

Great point, me - I forgot about that.

I did revise that recipe with castor oil in soapcalc, but only brought the most basic one with me to copy & paste. If I remember to I'll post all the findings with castor oil added to the mix.

I don't know for the life of me if their properties are idential or not - that part I'm dumb as a box of rocks on.

 

[me&thegals]

I don't know, either That's what I like my soap books for! I remember swapping in pomace oil for olive oil and completely forgetting to doublecheck on the lye. Oops. It's incredible what a difference in superfatting tiny little changes in lye make!

 

[glenolam]

I wanna see your soap pics!!

Got to say, I have yet to have a massive explosion, but I know my time is coming. I have gotten really lax with some of my weights and I've noticed that a few batches have "messed up" because of it, though.

It's a great reminder that no matter how good you think you are at something you still need to pretend it's the first time.

 

[me&thegals]

I hope you won't take this personally, but soapmaking is not like recipe making in the sense of being able to approximate things. I have taken a look at tiny differences in oil and lye in soap-calc. A very small change can mean the difference between safe soap and lye-heavy soap that burns. Imagine if it's someone washing their face getting that lye in their eyes...

 

[glenolam]

Nothing about that was personal, so no offense taken!

You're dead on and absolutely correct. I need to remind myself of that everytime I make a batch. (FWIW, let me clarify that by messing up on weights I meant by 10ths of an oz, not 1 or 2 oz)

 

[me&thegals]

Oh, goodness--I'm sorry! Yes, that would make quite a big difference in margin of error! I was on a forum once where a guy was measuring his lye and oils with measuring cups and pretty much shooting from the hip. Obviously you're not doing that at all! I'm off a little bit, too, but it's always in the direction of a little bit more oil than needed, so I figure my soaps are a bit more superfatted than planned for, but definitely not lye heavy.

 

[glenolam]

x2 there, too. I actually upped all my SF % to 8 just to decrease the chance of the soap being lye heavy.

The very first time I helped make soap the lady (who's very nice, but a little off the deep end - still love her, though) did the measuring cup thing. She "calculated" all the oz into cups and did it that way. I said, "you have a scale, why don't you just zero it out with the measuring cup on it and figure out the oz that way?"



We're still good friends....

 

[aggieterpkatie]

I want to get into making soap this year, but I feel so intimidated by all the info out there! Then I get happy and see this Soap Making 101 thread and think it's a great place to start, but then I see it's 45 pages long! I'm intimidated again!

I just need someone to give me a list of supplies to buy and tell me what to do. All this figuring out what to make/use/buy is so intimidating!

I guess I'll start at page one. One page at a time!

 

[glenolam]

Sigh, katie....give me a minute.....