chuck_35550

So what qualities does the rbo possess that keeps it in your recipe? There must be something that the rbo adds or improves in the overall quality of your soap. I can get oo but not rbo around this neck of the woods. Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it. Steve

As a follow up to the previous post and building on that other recipe; I came up with this one: 26% CO, 20% PO, 41% OO, and 13% Cocoa Butter. The number look pretty good but I wonder if this would be a good recipe for making cupcake/cake frosting? I used 35% lye concentration and lowered the sf to 4% due to the fat content in the goat milk. The Sat: Unsat is 47:53. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Steve

Help me out here, please. A well known company lists their soap ingredients: coconut, palm, olive and rice bran oil. If the coconut and palm (vegetable equivalent to tallow) are the hard oils and the olive and rice bran (substitute for olive) are the soft oils; would you use the rice bran oil to cut down on the cost of olive and therefore use a larger percentage? This seems to be a high linoleic and or oleic recipe with the cleansing and bubbling all from the coconut. What would be the percentages of these oils that would enable a soap to be firm enough to make frosting and set without being greasy or brittle? This is a goat milk soap. TIA Steve

Cold process Irena. I'm still looking for silicone imbed molds and other ingredients but hopefully it will all come together. I doubt in time for the holiday season. Steve

I would recommend that you use a mainstream supplier where you will be able to get product reviews from other members of the board and search for posts about those products. I've seen this supplier but don't know anything about the quality of their products. That looks like 415 soy but who knows? HTH Steve

Oh wowzers, I need to pour some pumpkin souffle, pineapple supreme, creme brulee', and make some soap. Maybe I'll try my first cupcake soaps. Steve

Wise move to start with paraffin and or votives. I grabbed a kit from Cajun Candles and was encouraged by that success to move on to containers. I think J-223 or J-50 (don't know what they call them now) are really good waxes for starters. Soy is so different from paraffin and the curve is steep IMHO but try a slab of 4630 and look for fos that throw well in that wax. HTH Steve

Ok, I've got a 9 inch log mold coming from silvermoon, ordered the cutter with both blades from Soap Resource and have the Spring set coming from celestial. My dw is on her way home with silicone cupcake and cake pans and all that's left to do is order some silicone raspberry and strawberry mini molds and some sprinkles/glitter. Now, how do I make this stuff? Steve

Got a prompt reply from Sandra and was told the site is still under construction but to giver her my order and they would go through paypal. So keep your fingers crossed. Steve

Wow, makes me think of the emerald city of oz! What colorants did you use? Beautimus soap. Steve

Can somebody help me understand why Silvermoon doesn't accept payment from my part of the country? They asked me to contact them for alternative payment method. I use a Mastercard Business credit card and or Paypal? Do they want a personal check? Thanks for the rant. Steve

Dosen't the spritzing kind of make it look sort of glazed? I have read some suggestions that soaping temps are to blame for ash (too cool or too warm) but it seems that the products on some of the videos don't have a gel appearance. It seems they are using goat milk in a hard oil heavy recipe and are using additives as they work with the soap to get the desired results. Do most customers buy these soaps for decoration and or gifts and not for actual use? Steve

You should watch Karen from York, England. Eden's Secret is the name of her shop and she wears the camera around her neck while making all kinds of soaps. The ladies talk to each other on different blogs and it is interesting to hear what each one is doing. The cupcake and cake soaps have not made it in my neck of the woods (end of the world Alabama) but I can see a market for these items. It's going to take some investment for all the imbed molds and silicone liners and so forth. Would Celestial be the best way to go with colorants for these things? Seems like Kymber was piping roses on one post and I would be interested in learning that as well. I wish we had a workshop for learning these techniques. Thank goodnes for this and other boards. Steve

Ok, after much fence sitting and praying and researching I have decided to order a Silvermoon log mold. I emailed them some questions and got an immediate answer. So.....off to order my mold and have decided to buy the cutter deal from Soap Resource; as you get both straight and crinkled cutters in the deal. Thanks for the help and everyone's patience with me but I know you feel my pain when trying to decide about some of this stuff. My dw is off at a meeting this week in Gulf Shores and I gave her a long list of silicone molds and things to start my new journey with cupcakes and cakes. Every customer wants to order the things for Christmas and I haven't even made one yet, lol. Cheers, Steve

The mark of a good soapmaker is one who controls the process. You do that in a myriad of ways by choosing the combinations of oils, discounting, superfatting, oil temps, additives and the list goes on. I choose some soaps to gel and others to not gel. When you start trying to swirl or make artistic statements with your soap then you have to know how the recipe and fo or eo behaves and with what methods can you defy some of the behaviors that prevent you from being artistic. Stepping outside of the box requires a new level of learning new characteristics of soap and how it can be manipulated by your knowledge. Heat exchange from chemical interaction can be manipulated to accomplish all sorts of tricks; I just haven't figured them out yet. That's why I need to live with Babs or Irena and learn their secrets ( I could name a whole lot more folks on the board that would be so cool to soap with too). Steve

I soap gm the old fashioned way. Keep the gm below 100 degrees to avoid scorching and turning orange and smelling like hair dye. I use very cold gm and pour into a stainless steel bowl set in a bowl of ice cubes. My temp probe lets me monitor as I pour in the lye and often it is necessary to stop and let the mixture cool down to about 90 degrees. The result is a light yellow thick liquid that goes into my oils that are about the same temp. When the probe shows a temp change of 2 degrees or more I stop blending and pour into my mold and leave it in my cool basement. I used to add a tbsp of Borax to soften the lye mixture but found that to be the cause of ash and now get very little ash. The bars take about 4 to 6 weeks to harden up and the results are very nice in the soap texture and qualities (according to customers). My sister uses milk soaps only on her face and likes other soaps for body cleansing but I often use the soap on my hair and whole body. Most everybody else adds their milks to the batter at light trace, it's just how I do it. Steve

Soapcalc has a 5% superfat default and 38% water default that automatically figures into your recipe but you will need to determine how much fragrance oil per pound you want to use (.5 to 1 ounce per pound depending on the type of fo). HTH Steve

I have been soaping for several years with a 9 bar Kelsei slab mold. It was affordable and easy to use and has been a good choice due to the fact that you can place it in the oven for cpop or leave it out to avoid gel on milk soaps. You don't have to line it but you do have to grease it up or the soap will stick on milk recipes. Many of our best soapers use easily available ingredients like lard, coconut oil (Wally world) olive oil (look for the large bottles like 108 oz) and Crisco. Soapcalc is my best friend. It is easy peasy once you get the hang of it. Enter soapcalc and click on ounces figure on about 11 oz of oils per pound of soap (the lye and liquid will make up the rest) and then click on the oils and use percentages and it will give you the ounces at the right of the page. Once you select your oils hit calculate and it will read out your amounts. Click on print/review and it will show you the recipe and soap qualities. Change your percentages to affect the soap qualities and there you are, easy peasy. Don't worry about superfat and all that other stuff until you get the hang of making soap with a basic recipe. HTH Steve

Wet spots are places where the wax has come away from the container and looks like a wet spot on the glass. Frosting is when soy wax crystalizes or blooms and is a natural occurence with vegetable wax. Search button (push) type in the words and look at the posts for more information. HTH Steve

I use 100% goat milk for the liquid but truthfully, my bars go through a slight gel but it is very difficult to detect. I don't refrigerate but do soap at very cool temps. My mold gets slightly warm but never hot. I would think this recipe is kind of costly with the way co and butters have gone up in price but would like to give it a go. What kind of salt bar would this make? TIA Steve

The ones from Candle Coccoon do.

I know what you are talking about jonsie and yes the arrows point up on my wicks. If I am using a single wick to make several wicks I keep the pattern the same. Don't know that it makes one bit of difference but I figured if it didn't the wicks wouldn't all look the same. There was an old thread on this and Top of Murray Hill had a good comment about it. HTH Steve

They use water to remove the slabs of wax and sometimes water gets trapped in the wax. No big whoop, the water will sink to the bottom and when you get to the bottom of your pot just throw out the water. Sounds like maybe we're getting to the end of the year and all the available wax is shipping out. Seems like this is usually the time for this to happen. HTH Steve

You might run a search and find a Masterbuilt Turkey Fryer on ebay. Mine is wonderful. It melts 30 lbs of wax in less than 30 minutes and has a spout for pouring. There may be some folks who would recommend a water jacket melter but they are usually expensive. Hey thanks, I just bought a new turkey fryer at Amazon. Look up Cajun Injector Electic Turkey Fryer. There is one available for $109.00. I bought the $117.00 cause it is free shipping for me, so about same difference. There was only one left, so you better hurry and order. You will not regret it. HTH Steve