r/soapmaking

I’ve noticed that a lot of people enjoy melt and pours. But I’m confused as to why. What are the advantages to buying a melt and pour base rather than using lye with fats? It seems like you have much more control about what goes in your soap if you formulate the base yourself. What am I missing? To my mind it’s kind of like “baking” brownies from a box. I really do intend no disrespect I just am thinking there must be some advantage I am missing.

hello,

our supplier (Sierra candles) for fragrance oils, lye, shea butter and Kokum butter has recently closed so we are looking for a new supplier. we liked sierra because they the best pricing in many things and are local so we could walk in to smell the fragrances.

any recommendation? I work in Everett but like in shoreline so any place say 30 min would be great.. I am happy to buy butters online if someone has a recommendation for a place with good pricing.

I volunteer at an animal rescue and we are making soap and candles for a fundraiser, and if it goes well it will become a permanent part of our fundraising. Currently we are just doing melt and pour because we don't know how well it will sell but based off what people are saying on the rescue's facebook it will probably do decent.
I want to know what scents of soaps people seem to like, we currently are doing blueberry, chamomile, vanilla, sweet tobacco (it smells better than it sounds,) lavender, and a few more. I have a weird sense of smell so my taste in soap is quite different from normal, so I can't think of any other scents since I keep leaning towards lemony type scents.
I would also like some recipe advice on what oils I should use, if we do start making it using the cold-processing method a few recipes I have seen show like 50% coconut, 25%olive, and 25% canola oil, but I have also seen a few people say that the balance of those oils is wrong?
I would also like to know people's experience with different mold shapes and extra stuff in soap like loofas or oatmeal. We currently have a few different molds: oval, rectangle, square, and a bulk mold for maybe 5lbs of soap in a rectangle. I prefer using the bulk mold, but when we tried putting in vanilla-oatmeal soap it looked like the oatmeal settled at the bottom or floated to the top, leaving the center of the bar with very few bits. Could this just be an issue with using melt and pour where the oatmeal wasn't incorporated into the baste very well?
If we do expand the soap selling beyond our local farmer's market we were thinking about selling it online somehow, either through the rescue's facebook or Etsy, but I think I remember hearing something about Etsy killing off a lot of smaller businesses in favor of larger retailers, can anyone confirm is this is true or am I just making stuff up?

Hello, a friend of mine requested me to make soap for her

My current recipe is as follows

- Tallow beef 70%

- Coconut oil 25%

- Castor oil 5%

That friend of mine requested to have a lot of lather like those syntethic sls bars.

Can someone advise what should i change in my recipe?

Getting deep into the science of soap and various claims. From what I’ve read, it seems like soap is made to remove oil from skin and different oils do so to different degrees. So “conditioning” bars aren’t adding oil to your skin, they’re just removing less natural oil that’s already on your skin(?)

Because soap has one end that attaches to water and one end that attaches to oil, so any superfat will just get attached to the soap molecules once they’re activated with water(?) Superfatting just makes sure there’s no free lye in the soap(?) It does not actually deposit a “moisturizing” layer of oil on the skin(?)

“Moisture” has to do more with oleic fatty acid, not stripping as much of our natural oils(?) is that all correct?

Looking to make soaps using the Canadian maple leaf from the flag 🇨🇦. For those unaware, it's not the same as the standard maple leaf 🍁 mold I keep finding.

Does anyone have a supplier? I'd like the long tube-shaped mold, but I can work with the silicon ice cube tray style, as long as they're the shape I'm looking for.

Thanks!