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Why not make up your lye solution outside while the kids are napping? It only takes a few minutes until the fumes are gone and the lye is mixed. Keep it in a water pitcher with a top and mark it lye. Keep the solution in the garage or any place safe from the kids. Make your soap at night after everyone has gone to bed. You need undisturbed time to make soap. Wear goggles, gloves and take your soap pot and other utensils out to the garage after finishing. The next day you only have soap to clean up and no big deal. The major worry is getting stray beads of lye when weighing. Doing this outdoors in your garage takes care of that problem. It shouldn't take you more than an hour to make a nice batch of soap and your family will love the way it makes their skin feel. HTH. Steve

I would back off on the fo % from nearly 11% to a starting point of 6%. More is not necessarily better when it comes to fragrance concentration. One ounce per pound should be plenty for that wax blend.

Yup, I erred in my response about RBO. I meant to say that people sub RBO in recipes if they don't have OO but not as a sub for castille. You can probably find a recipe out there that will use some combination of RBO to make a bar similar to a castille but not in the truest definition that we recognize. It seems that one of the books I read recently, suggested that OO and RBO were basically interchangeable. Top (of course) is on the money about the linoleic content of RBO making it a difficult oil to soap in large percentages. Sorry. Steve

Some people sub RBO for OO because of the lower cost. The oils are almost identical in qualities.

I got two giant bottles of regular Safflower that needs to get off my shelf if anybody wants it for soaping. Interestingly, High Oleic Safflower and Sunflower classifies as oleic.

How about 25% OO 25% CO 40% Lard 10% Castor It's still on the cusp of high iodine at 55 but everything else looks ok. I watch my temp when going for trace and find that when the temp jumps several degrees you are generally there. You can wait and pour at a more medium trace but if you are adding fo or any other ingredients that need mixing, your temp will jump a few more degrees and you are almost to heavy trace by the time you pour. Really good soapers are able to feel the side of the pot and know when its right but I ain't there yet. HTH. Steve

Not that I'm aware of but you never know about a recipe until you test it. I like to use castor as a balance when the recipe looks light on conditioning and heavy on cleansing. I started out with a heavy coconut and began working backwards to bring down the Lauric and compensated with the castor to bring up the bubbles and brought down the tallow to ease off the palmitic. Some soapers keep those numbers pretty low but overall I think those are ok. IMHO. Do a one bar test and see what it looks like. I use a 2:1 water/lye ratio and super fat at 5. Steve

Top made a suggestion for basic guidelines concerning fatty acid make-up in an earlier post. He suggested: Lauric oils up to 30% Oleic oils from 20-40% and Palmitic oils to make up the rest. How about: Coconut 18% Olive 21% Tallow 44% Castor at 15% This gives you: 45 for hardness 17 for cleansing 52 for conditioning 30 for bubbly 41 for creamy 53 for iodine 153 for INS Lauric is 10 Myristic is 6 Palmitic is 17 Stearic is 11 Ricinoleic is 14 Oleic is 33 Linoleic is 5 Linolenic is 1

What do you mean by this particular wax blend? Are you referring to batch number or a new blend you have created? I don't think an fo would be responsible for the structural integrity of the wax to break down. I could see pouring at a really hot temp and then suddenly placing into a freezer as a possible answer to your question. Are we talking mostly soy or mostly paraffin? Steve

How about 20% Olive 25% Coconut 40% Lard 5% Sweet Almond 10% Castor Run through soapcalc and see what you think

Scientific Soap Making: I'm having a real hard time hanging in with this one! Wow, I need a tutor. Top, would you consider tutoring me on this one?

Yes. I think the book is quite good. Thanks for turning me on to it.

Pour into room temp jars (clean of course) at a pouring temp of 185. You shouldn't have any wet spots. You may notice tiny dots as the candle cures and you will definitely see a break down of adhesion after the candle is lit and burns. Otherwise, the adhesion is excellent as long as you pour into room temp jars and just leave out on the counter. HTH. Steve

Soap & Other Obsessions by Zonella Gould, Sally Trew and Diane White Essentially Soap by Dr. McDaniel Soap and Other Obsessions is quite good; even with all the proofing errors and recipe errors. Ms. Gould was kind enough to sign my copy and wish me good luck. She also included a sheet of corrections and apologies. How about that for personalizaion? The recipes are spot on but may be a little palm heavy for some soapers tastes. I learned some good sound general information that was easy for me to understand. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in making anything from mineral makeup to shampoo. Dr. Bob (as he is fondly called) gave us INS. He admits that he found this concept from someone else but elaborates as to how it is derived. Dr. Bob's recipes are extremely unbalanced and some of his SAP values don't match up to Soapcalcs but his book is worth the reading. Dr. Bob believes that soaping at high temps and agitation are the secret ingredients to assuring good results. Obviously, he is outdated on some issues but he does help me to fit more pieces of the evolution of the home soaping industry. Neither book delves to deeply into the chemistry of soapmaking but are extremely helpful in understanding oil/butter properties and especially properties of essential oils. These are not coffee table books for making pretty soaps but take a step toward the meat of soaping. IMHO Steve

I use a 2:1 water to lye ratio, which is a lye concentration of 33.33 %. Otherwise (as has been said) I is chicken. I picked that up from the Miller site and it has stuck with me for some reason.

Check the shelf lives for the oils. Most are ok even up to several years and some only for months. The storage affects the quality as well. Stored in a cool area or a refrigerator should insure the oils are ok for soaping. If they don't smell rancid or look discolored; they ought to be ok. IMHO. Steve

Putting the new crisco at 100% in Soapcalc gives you the following: Hardness-25 Cleansing-zero Conditioning-74 Bubbly-zero Creamy-25 Iodine-111 INS-82 Lauric-zero Myristic-zero Palmitic-20 Stearic-zero Oleic-28 Linoleic-40 Linolenic-6 I have a recipe that uses a little Crisco in it and its wonderful. The high iodine, low INS and high linoleic tells the quality to expect. IMHO Steve

Meredith is on the money. I have the 9 bar mold and 99% percent of the time my soap comes right out. I usually pour in my soap and then insert the dividers but this time I left the dividers in and measured out my soap for each individual bar. The recipe was soft and I didn't wait long enough. Man did it stick but each bar was perfect. It wasn't worth the hassle; so back to the way I always pour up my soap.

Make sure you're using wax that is designed for layering. Not all waxes will give you the clean layers that you see in the stores.

Wrong board.

If you haven't purchased any candle supplies yet; may I suggest that you slow down and consider buying a kit. You never want to make a candle in anything but a recommended container meant solely for that purpose. The end burn of a candle gets really hot and will easily burn its way through plastic and create a really bad fire. I use a coffee carafe for a pour pot (you probably have an old one in a cabinet somewhere) and you can melt quite a bit of wax either with the double boiler method (remember that water and oil don't mix) or you can use a direct heat method like a $20.00 Presto pot from Wally World. Buy a digital oven thermometer with the silver probe and cord and monitor the temp of your wax. Buy a postal scale to weigh your wax and fragrance oils. All these things can be purchased at wally world for nearly nothing. Don't buy a ton of stuff and have it sit there and stare at you. HTH Oh and welcome to the board. Steve

My best advice to anyone interested in the expensive hobby/business of candle making is to start small and slow. Buy a votive kit and find out whether you like paraffin or soy wax and learn about fragrance oils and wicking. Soon enough, you will advance to jelly jars and or pillars and then on to almost any form you find personally pleasing. Go to candle companies and look at their product lines to get an idea of what's out there. Keep your money in your pocket and don't let the addiction get the best of your common sense. Personal taste is a big part of how your experience will evolve. HTH. Steve

You have to give Yankee credit for basically beginning the candle craze. There are a lot of really fine candles (votivo) that will soot like crazy but people only care about the great fragrances. The French make incredible candles and soaps but they still have the same fundamental problems with consistancy.

I once bought 6 ounce juice glasses from the Dollar Tree. They were made of thick glass and were perfect for my line of "Juicers" candles. The glass was flawed and broke from just a small amount of heat. I still have those glasses in my lab to this day (maybe I need to drink juice from them). Glass can be stressed by heat and eventually you have a potential fire hazard. The best policy is to tell your friends no. Trust me, you'll always spend more money trying to please everyone and won't get much in return. HTH.

I would advise buying a slab of each and do a little testing. Try 85% 6006 with 15% soy at 180 degrees into room temp jars and don't cover. Wicking is a little tricky (cd or cdn) but the results are very pleasing. HTH. Steve