Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Vegan Base for Soap

I assume you have some idea of how to make soap and am only giving information. You are responsible for your own safety!

This is my base recipe. All measurements are weights not volume.
I can use so little essential oils because I do batches inside of a reynold's oven bag.
I normally make a ~20lb (9kilo) batch, using the cold process, oven process method. This is where you make the soap in the traditional cold process manner, and instead of batching it into the cake you cook it in the oven at 215f (101c) for about 2 hours. The 2 hours of cooking takes the place of 3-5 weeks of curing. Once the soap is cooked stir the glycerin back in and batch.

Do be careful hot soap is sticky and has a decent heat capacity, its not as dangerous as making caramel but it still has inherent dangers of heat, steam,

This recipe is scaled down to be about ~2lb or a bit under a kilo and should work well in a slow cooker.

6 oz castor oil
2.1 oz coconut (76 deg)
9.9 oz palm
3 oz palm kernel
                             21oz of oil  = .1-.2oz of essential oil for scent
8 oz water
2.85 oz lye

and again in metric for the rest of the world

170 gm castor oil
59.5 gm coconut (76 deg)
280 gm palm
85 gm palm kernel
                            595 gm of oils 3-6 gms of essential oil for scent
227 gm water
82 gm lye

I make large batches, so for my Tea tree soap I add 1% neat oil by oil weight, I found that's a bit much for really strong scents like peppermint (use menthol free) I go as low as .5%.

To turn this into a shaving blend I add bentonite clay to the oils phase, it separates out so the oils needs serious agitation right before adding the lye. about 2% by weight makes a good ratio.
Bentonite clay reduces razor drag.


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