Oils and soaps

I picked up some oils today. Seems like a good time to address the most important part of the project.
Good oils make good soap.
I designed my recipe using Soapcalc. A wonderful site with good information.

My recipe uses Castor, Palm, Palm kernel, and Coconut oils.
The palm oil makes cleansing with some hardening and conditioning.
The palm kernel makes the soap hard, cleansing and bubbly
The coconut makes the soap harder, is very cleansing and very bubbly
The castor oil wouldn't harden into soap on its own, but makes the soap very creamy bubbly and conditioning.

I spent a bit of time walking around and looking at handmade soaps and I noticed they mostly came in 2 varieties. Glycerin, or olive oil based, and I didn't like either. I checked soapcalc and saw castor oil was a decent approximation of olive for emoilliency. Castor oil when processed doesn't have a residual smell in the same way that olive oil does.
While, palm oils have become politically charged, I managed to find a source that is US produced.
My coconut oils come from a fair trade company in the Phillipines.
The castor oil is also US sourced as harvesting can be dangerous to people.

Scenting soap is only tricky in that you can go overboard pretty easily with pure oils. An example would be in my 12 pound batch of peppermint soap I use 1 single  ounce of peppermint oil. Many of my batches are 2 ounces for other oils but the peppermint is a different beast. Same with some of the flowers like Ylang Ylang. 1/2-3/4 ounce per 12 pounds is ENOUGH!
The soapcalc page asks how many oz per lb in your batch for its calculation....

Not all essential oils are safe for use. To be sure a scent isn't going to cause problems I usually refer too my copy of "The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils" by Julia Lawless. I would love to use Daphne oil for example in soaps but that stuff is toxic. Do a little research if your going to scent your soaps in this manner.
Patchouli, rose, lavender, peppermint, sandalwood, jasmine, all those scents you normally find in perfumes and colognes. These are a good place to start since most of them started out as essential oils before it became possible to synthesize the fragrance.