For those of you who make soap or hope to make soap someday, you should read my blog post today. I splashed lye in my left eye yesterday. It sounds like my vision will recover, but it would have been better to avoid this incident altogether.
Deborah
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I've never made soap with coconut milk, but if there are white specks in milk soap, it's fat. If lye doesn't dissolve, it's orange and crunchy. I think coconut milk is mostly fat though, so I'm not sure how well lye will dissolve in it. If you try it and it turns your skin red, you can rebatch it with more oil.
Melissa Johnson said:
Deborah, do you think the white spots in my coconut milk soap are undissolved lye? There are some - it isnt filled with them. When I made this, I just mixed the lye with the frozen coconut milk, brought it to bout 90 degrees. The recipe said keep it between 80 and 90 degrees. For some reason - I brought it up to 100 degrees and when I looked it was sweating on the top and fairly hard. I brought the temp down and it soften a little. I couldnt even pour it - I had to spoon it into the oil. I did mix ok and was light color - no burn indication - but after cutting I see these white spots.??
Deborah, do you think the white spots in my coconut milk soap are undissolved lye? There are some - it isnt filled with them. When I made this, I just mixed the lye with the frozen coconut milk, brought it to bout 90 degrees. The recipe said keep it between 80 and 90 degrees. For some reason - I brought it up to 100 degrees and when I looked it was sweating on the top and fairly hard. I brought the temp down and it soften a little. I couldnt even pour it - I had to spoon it into the oil. I did mix ok and was light color - no burn indication - but after cutting I see these white spots.??
You can do it however you want. You can make up your own recipes. It really depends upon the size of your molds. All of my recipes have to be either 44 or 88 ounces to fit into my molds, which make 12 or 24 bars. There are websites that tell you what each of the oils does, so you make up your recipes based upon what you want. Coconut is responsible for lather, cleans really well, but it kind of tough on the skin, which is why you want some gentler oils in your recipes. Olive and shea are skin conditioners, but don't really lather, and they make softer bars than those with more coconut and palm. Whatever oils you choose, just punch the numbers in a lye calculator, and it will tell you how much lye you need. Every oil has a different sap value, so you can NOT just swap out one for another.
You don't need to add oil at trace. It's a gimmick. It doesn't matter when you add the oil. Add up all the oil you will use, punch the numbers into a lye calculator, then decide how much excess fat you want -- most people recommend at least 5% -- and use that amount of lye. All homemade soap should be superfatted -- that just means there is excess oil that did not saponify.
Melissa Johnson said:
hum, I dont really get the % part - I did use a lye calculator - etc. but I read dont figure in the oil you are adding at trace - ?? will see how it works. I will investigate
Good move to NOT add the oil! Sounds like it would have been a mistake. Superfatting just means there is excess fat that did not saponify -- ALL homemade soap should be superfatted. Some people make a big deal out of this. Maybe it's marketing; maybe it's ignorance of what superfatting means. In any case, you should be using a lye calculator to determine the amount of lye to use, and I generally go for 5% excess fat. Adding the oil at the end doesn't stop it from saponifying if there is excess lye. I've rebatched soap when an oil was forgotten, and it saponifies because there was excess lye, even though it's 24 hours later, and I've melted down the soap. If you already have a soap with excess fat (which you should) and add more oil, then you've merely increased your excess fat from 3% to 8% or whatever. WHEN you add the oil doesn't matter, although I've seen plenty of soapmakers claim that it does. I use the calculator on the Majestic Mountain Sage website, but I think Kari posted one on here not so long ago, and it had some cool additional features. Maybe she'll chime in and repost it.
Melissa Johnson said:
how about superfatting? I was going to add apricot kernal oil at trace, but after adding 1 oz - it all of a sudden looked really thick - I was afraid to add the other oz. It looked like I needed to get it into a mold - pronto. maybe I waited too long after trace? or too long to recognize I had reached trace?
anyway, I read 1 to 2 oz. of Apricot kernal oil to 1 lb. of fat - mine was 2 lbs., but oh well, surely it will have some affect.
it looked really pretty anyway - i need to get a miter box so I can make straighter cuts.thatt
hum, I dont really get the % part - I did use a lye calculator - etc. but I read dont figure in the oil you are adding at trace - ?? will see how it works. I will investigate
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Good move to NOT add the oil! Sounds like it would have been a mistake. Superfatting just means there is excess fat that did not saponify -- ALL homemade soap should be superfatted. Some people make a big deal out of this. Maybe it's marketing; maybe it's ignorance of what superfatting means. In any case, you should be using a lye calculator to determine the amount of lye to use, and I generally go for 5% excess fat. Adding the oil at the end doesn't stop it from saponifying if there is excess lye. I've rebatched soap when an oil was forgotten, and it saponifies because there was excess lye, even though it's 24 hours later, and I've melted down the soap. If you already have a soap with excess fat (which you should) and add more oil, then you've merely increased your excess fat from 3% to 8% or whatever. WHEN you add the oil doesn't matter, although I've seen plenty of soapmakers claim that it does. I use the calculator on the Majestic Mountain Sage website, but I think Kari posted one on here not so long ago, and it had some cool additional features. Maybe she'll chime in and repost it.
Melissa Johnson said:
how about superfatting? I was going to add apricot kernal oil at trace, but after adding 1 oz - it all of a sudden looked really thick - I was afraid to add the other oz. It looked like I needed to get it into a mold - pronto. maybe I waited too long after trace? or too long to recognize I had reached trace?
anyway, I read 1 to 2 oz. of Apricot kernal oil to 1 lb. of fat - mine was 2 lbs., but oh well, surely it will have some affect.
it looked really pretty anyway - i need to get a miter box so I can make straighter cuts.
Replies
hum, thanks! I read someone else used water to dissolve the lye and added the coconut milk in at trace. I think I am done with coconut milk. ^^
Melissa Johnson said:
You can do it however you want. You can make up your own recipes. It really depends upon the size of your molds. All of my recipes have to be either 44 or 88 ounces to fit into my molds, which make 12 or 24 bars. There are websites that tell you what each of the oils does, so you make up your recipes based upon what you want. Coconut is responsible for lather, cleans really well, but it kind of tough on the skin, which is why you want some gentler oils in your recipes. Olive and shea are skin conditioners, but don't really lather, and they make softer bars than those with more coconut and palm. Whatever oils you choose, just punch the numbers in a lye calculator, and it will tell you how much lye you need. Every oil has a different sap value, so you can NOT just swap out one for another.
And I just remembered that I have color photos with explanations of soapmaking on the Facebook book page, http://www.facebook.com/homegrownandhandmade
k, I wanted to add the apricot kernal oil - do I sub that for one of the basics? (coconut, palm, olive, shea) or do I use it in addition to?
thanks - I tell my daughter she is the Master Tea Maker - you must be the Master Soaper ^^
Melissa Johnson said:
that's the calculator I used
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
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