The Making of a Soap Recipe

Step two in making a new soap recipe

The least expensive oil I could use would be the canola but since it makes a super soft bar I decided against it. They also had corn oil. I hadn't researched that oil at the time but apparently it is a good choice.  Corn oil may not have all the antioxidants and stuff that some oils do but it's good for reducing the cost of making soap.  So since I want an inexpensive bar for experimenting with Fragrance Oils it's a good choice for me.  It also has a lower Iodine value than soybean oil so it works better in the recipe.   They didn't even have  rice bran oil for which I was really disappointed.

After deciding on the oils I had to run it through the lye calculator and make some adjustments to the recipe.  Here are the final recipes that I'm going to try out.  For the value Hardness I want a number between 29-54.  For Cleansing I like 14 but 17 is also acceptable but they should be between 12-22. Conditioning between 44-69 but the higher the better for me. Bubbly 14-46 again the higher the better. Creamy 16-48 the higher the better for this one as well.   Iodine 41-70 this number determines how fast your soap will expire so lower is best. And INS between 136-165  I don't think this value really determines any of the properties of the final bar of soap.  It calculates the compatibility of the oils in the soap.

Experimental Recipe 1

25% Coconut oil                                                    Hardness - 42
30% Palm oil                                                          Cleansing - 17
8% Castor oil                                                         Conditioning - 54
35% Corn oil                                                          Bubbly - 24
2% Stearic Acid                                                     Creamy - 32
                                                                                 Iodine - 66
                                                                                 INS - 144
                                                                                  

                                                                             

Experimental Recipe 2

20% Coconut oil                                                     Hardness - 39
8% Castor oil                                                          Cleansing - 14
28% Corn oil                                                           Conditioning - 55
42% Lard                                                                  Bubbly - 21
2% Stearic acid                                                       Creamy - 33
                                                                                   Iodine - 66
                                                                                   INS - 141

If you don't want to add the stearic acid then I suggest just adding the 2% value to either the palm oil or the lard amounts.

So there we go the final recipes.  I'll have to try them out and let you know how well they work.  But from just looking at the numbers they should be a good bars of soap for sure.