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Ingredients in Soap Making + Calculating


These are the common ingredients for soap making and I'll teach you how to calculate how much ingredients you need!

Base oils: hard/saturated & soft/unsaturated

For cold processed soap, it is advised to use from 3-7 types of oils.

You would need at least 3 basic oils - at least having one hard oil to make sure your soap stays together for a longer period of time!

Essential oils: natural aromatic compounds in plants with therapeutic effects

Natural additives:

There are also additives like rose clay, coffee grounds etc

Before I start showing you how to make cold process soap, depending on the weight of the mould being use (I used a 500g mould), we need calculations of weight and percentage of each oils, amount of lye to add in, knowing the iodine value (INS) and amount of distilled water need to be used

Here is the Saponification Value and INS

the NaOH column shows the amount of lye is needed per gram

KOH is Potassium hydroxide (used for liquid soap)

INS is the hardness of soap

for a soap INS 120 and above (preferably highest at 170), the soap can be used for facial soap.

Any soap INS higher than 170 contains "hard" oils as shown in the base oil diagram - only can be used for body and feet.

To Calculate oils

The amount of each oil = total oil weight x % of oil

Eg 55% of EV coconut oil = 350g x 0.55 = 192.5g

*EV refers to Extra Virgin

Depending on what mould you are using, use 70% of the mould weight is the total weight of the oil need to be used.

also note that you will need at least 3 basic oils and should limit to 7 oils, why? it is not to confuse. The more oils, the more complication - unable to check what went wrong.

To Calculate Lye

Individual oil is needs a specific amount of lye to saponify the oils (hardness of the soap). Referring to the INS table to calculate the amount of lye needed

The amount of oil x NaOH of oil = amount of lye needed

Eg EV Coconut oil = 192g x 0.19g = 36.48g

( we round down or up the oil weight to make it a full value for easier calculations)

To Calculate INS

Each oil has it's own iodine value (INS) or saponification value. INS value will influence the softness of hardness of the final soap. Usually INS value of around 125 - 170 is ideal for face and body soap.

INS Value = individual weight ÷ total oil weight x INS of individual oil

Eg EV Coconut oil = 192÷350 x 258 = 141.53

* INS of individual oil can be referred to Saponification value and INS table

To Calculate Water

To calculate the amount of distilled water needed is calculated by 2 ways:

Way 1: weight of lye x 2.0 to 2.5 ratio

or

Way 2: Weight of lye ÷ 0.3 - lye weight

Eg. 57.345 x 2.3 = 131.89g

I'm using a 500g soap mould. To get the total weight of the soap bar of 500g, I will need 350-400g of oil, 59g of sodium hydroxide and 124ml of water

Here is my calculation for my soap recipe

The good thing about hand made cold process soap is that the recipe that you use, can be adjustable to your fitting, you can decide whether to increase or decrease certain oils, or add in another type of oil. It is customisable to you and your preference!

Check my next post for how to make cold process soap here!

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