# help...questions



## toomb (Oct 26, 2007)

hi 

wonder if you can help me? i'm making soap for my fourth time. when i add lye to water in the beginning of the process, my lye mixture gets hard as a rock. it eventually dissolves when i add goat milk. is this normal? my mother insists that we are doing something wrong. also i let my soap sit 24 hours and then cut it...it crumbles. how do i avoid this? thanks chris


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Are you stirring while you add your lye to your water. How much water to how much lye. Is your lye 100% sodium hydroxide?

Crumbly soap is usually a flawed recipe. Also all oil soaps that are left uncut can shatter on the edges, simply unmold and cut earlier, few of mine it in the molds much past 12 hours. Vicki


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## toomb (Oct 26, 2007)

i stir as i add the lye....1/3 cup water to 1 cup and 2 tlbs lye. it is 100% sodium hydroxide. this is the luxury soap recipe out of Goats Produce Too book. i like the soap it makes...nice and light in color...ok lather. i'll try cutting it sooner....thanks for the reply. can you suggest a good, basic, beginner soap recipe? chris


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

Well, first off, you really need to *weigh* your lye and water, not measure by the cup. How soon do you add the milk and how much? I can see 1/3 cup water with a full cup+ of lye going solid.....just not enough liquid.

Look in the recipe post stickied at the top and look for the Wal-Mart recipe. It's a good beginner's recipe.


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## Guest (Jul 17, 2009)

chris that recipe is seriously flawed in the fact that it used measurements in cups and not using a calculator.. I have a gal that came here the other day and was using the same book to make soap and her soap was coming out lye heavy.. NOT SAFE...
there are a couple of free soap calculators on the internet. MMS has one and one is called soapcalc.. you can google them.. Please use a soap calculator and make another batch and you will soon see the difference.. 
that also is alot of lye for such a small amount of water.. up the water amount a little and stick blend it.. You can still have a nice soap that is safe to use
Barb


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

If you love that recipe post it here and we can turn it into a real recipe for you  Vicki


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## mamatomany (Aug 7, 2008)

Vicki, that recipe is:
2c shortening
1c olive oil
1 c peanut oil
3tbsp scented oil
1 c goat milk
1/3 c cool distilled water
1/2 c plus 2 TBsp. lye


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## toomb (Oct 26, 2007)

that is the recipe i used. i mistyped about the amount of lye i used. i substitute in some coconut oil, and i was ultimately pleased with the results.....but i'm new to soap making, and probably don't know what good soap is........i'll look into the calculators and a scale...chris


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## toomb (Oct 26, 2007)

i should add that with this recipe you add lye to water. allow that to cool, then add the milk to that mixture....


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## Madfarmer (Nov 18, 2008)

With all the interest in soap, it's amazing these dufus "recipes" keep circulating. The walmart recipe is pretty much bomb-proof, or else I couldn't make it. And it makes beautiful soap! And by figuring the percentages & using a lye calculator, you can scale it down if you don't want to make that much at once.

Tom


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## tmfinley (Feb 21, 2008)

I have cut my soap up to a week later. It wasn't the easiest cut but no crumbles. I bet once you get your recipe fixed the crumbling will be corrected. 

Tiffany


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

2c shortening
1c olive oil
1 c peanut oil
3tbsp scented oil
1 c goat milk
1/3 c cool distilled water
1/2 c plus 2 TBsp. lye
...................................................

OK go to thesage.com it's what I use. Click on the lye calculator. Now you are going to put the above oils into the calculator. Scroll down, read the Shortening Usage info. We will guess that you are using Crisco so we will use soybean oil *YUCK* for this receipe. So by soybean oil put 16 for 16 ounces. Now put 8 next to Olive oil. Now put 8 next to peanut oil *double YUCK* now scroll to the bottom and press the calculate button. Now print out your recipe. This tells you that you want to use around 3.99 to 4.12 ounces of lye and from 8 to 12 ounces of liquid. The safest thing for you to start with would be to dissolve your 4.12 to 3.88 ounces of lye into 5 ounces of water....add this to your oils, stick blend for a few minutes and then add your 7 ounces of goatmilk, take to trace, add your scent and pour......as you do more batches you can decrease this amount of goatmilk down more. The more liquid you put into your soap the longer it has to cure to harden it up and evaporate the liquid out.

Now you can go to the soap calculator site....someone give Chris the addy to it, and put in your recipe and check it for hardness, moisturising etc....then put in the Wallmart recipe.

This recipe is all oils, and it's poor quality soaping oils to begin with. Unless you are simply against using lard, tallow or other butters that are more expensive than these...using 60% lard or tallow, 10% coconut oil and the rest in a good oil like salfflower, olive, sunflower etc....just simply makes a good soap and you can buy all of the above at walmart. Vicki


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

I ran it through soapcalc.com and this is how it rated (the numbers in parenthesis are what you typically aim for):

Hardness 15 (29-54)
Cleansing 0 (12-22)
Conditioning 82 (44-69)
Bubbly 0 (14-46)
Creamy 15 (16-48)

It really doesn't look like a good recipe.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Blech. Smushy soap that doesn't even get you clean??


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## toomb (Oct 26, 2007)

wow....thanks for the help folks. i'll try the walmart recipe, and start using the calculators. i appreciate all the input. chris


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## Sondra (Oct 25, 2007)

If you don't have one get a cheap postal scale and weigh everything.


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