Key Ingredients for Your Handmade Soap
How much of each oil do you need to make the perfect bar of soap? Do I have to use coconut oil to make my soap lather? These questions can be answered by making hundreds of batches of soap and refining the recipe until you come up with the perfect bar of soap, or you can use the knowledge of a soap making expert to get your recipe started and make your adjustments from there. Which one of these two approaches would be more attractive to you?
First in order to good a recipe to start with you should google "handmade soap recipe". Have a good look at about a dozen sites with recipes and choose one that the author has actually tried an one that they like. Next google SAP chart and check out all of the SAP values of all of the soap making oils. Determine which ones are similar enough in value (with-in a point or two) of the oils in your own recipe and mark them down. If these oils sound interesting or you researched them and they have the properties you would like your finished soap to have, then go ahead and experiment with them in your recipe.
Take 30% of the original oil for which you are substituting and replace it with the exact amount of the new oil with the similar SAP value. You can do this over and over again worth different proportions and different oils so long as the SAP values are similar. IF you soap is too soft for instance you may want to replace some of the coconut oil with palm kernle oil and see if this affects the hardness of your bar. If you need more lather see if you can find a place to add some castor oil. With a SAP value of 128 this is an easy oil to substitute.
There is some great information for handmade soap makers at tlcsoaps.com. Remember the most important thing is to have fun. I have seen some bars that have over fourteen different oil. These soaps have extremely small amounts of some oils but the handmade soap maker loves to be able to add all of these oils on to their soap label and the buying public just eats this stuff up. Be sure and know a little bit about each oil and a sale will be made.
