Teach Soap

Hi,

I'm trying to understand the terms on the soap calculator. Can anyone describe them? What do the numbers represent? Is hardness the same as long lasting, for example?

Hardness 29 - 54
Cleansing 12 - 22
Conditioning 44 - 69
Bubbly 14 - 46
Creamy 16-48

Question 2 - Is it possible to 'stack the deck' to produce high numbers for all of them (and what kind of bar would that make) or is there a trade off somewhere? More hardness = less conditioning?

Thank you
DC

If you look at the top of the soapcalc under the second column from the left, the last one is "Soap Bar Qualities". That will explain what all that good stuff means.

Anita

What you are seeing is the suggest range. For example, I plugged in a recipe that was 100% lard (just as a sample). It has a hardness of 42, which falls in that range of 29-54. It only has a cleansing of 1. I've made 100% lard soap, and IMO it cleanses just fine. I use the Soap Calc numbers as a very general guideline, not as an absolute. A 100% olive oil soap it only gives a score of 17 for hardness, but in my experience, a 100% olive oil soap is actually very hard, but it does take longer to get there. Regarding hardness, I tend to view the Soap Calc's numbers as how hard it is right away, and also how fast it will trace.

Typically, there are tradeoffs. Most oils that make bubbles are not very conditioning oils, for example. Coconut will add hardness and bubbles, but is not very conditioning.

I would be very curious to see if anybody has a recipe that scores "high" in all categories. I don't know of any oils that score "high" in all categories on Soap Calc.

Here's some interesting info on single oil soaps:

http://www.zensoaps.com/singleoil.htm

This group apparently had a big swap and everybody made a soap with only 1 oil. Most soapers spend a lot of time tinkering with combos of oils, yet amazingly many of these single-oil soaps were very nice, according to the reviewer.

Also, some of these qualities are in opposition to each other. For example, Conditioning is sort of the opposite of Bubbles and Cleansing. Conditioning tends to come from the glycerin (naturally produced in the soap) and the unsaponified oils when you use a superfat...and both of these inhibit lather and cleansing.

I think I had come across another study for single oil soaps once before... they are interesting to read. Maybe this is why we do not do a single oil soap with the exception of olive. The one that I questioned the most was the castor.... documented as very little lather. I always thought that castor oil added more lather to our soaps? Maybe I will do a small batch of this one myself to see what results I get. Has anyone on the forum tried this yet?

sorry about this last part.... I was in the wrong thread!

_________________
Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!