Soapster work continues

[abendgules]

This weekend I discovered that you can leave your hardening soap too long before cutting it into bars. 1-2 days is ideal. 7 days is too long.

So folks getting my 'squire' soap will have charming and rustic soap chunks, rather than bars.

However, the honey soap that didn't harden very well because the trapped moisture enclosed in the molds kept it 'damp' emerged on Sat, and firmed up enough overnight that I could cut it up fairly neatly for further curing in the cupboard.

SO: from this we learn that plastic drink bottles don't make good moulds and trap moisture.

I shall have to ask my friends to eat more Pringles, or other junk food that comes in convenient waxy cardboard tubes, and keep the tubes for me. Any volunteers?

Once Robert is finished patterning armour with Cate, we're away to grocery shop, where I'm hoping to buy lard towards trying lard-based soaps. They're likely accurate for northern European medieval period - Castile soap, made w/ olive oil, was apparently an imported luxury.

Everything I've tried so far has been veg-based, and I'd like to try something animal based.

Lard is cheap, and comes from the grocery store already refined so no rendering required. I want to try it in smaller batches, to experiment with additives I have - pumice for one (can use up at least a couple of spoonsful of my lifetime's supply!), oatmeal for another.

On the successes front: I sorted making 'Galen's cold cream', mostly as described in S Pointer's book about historic beauty. I swapped almond oil for olive, and this time I warmed the oils more, to bring them closer to the temp of the wax, and then poured the oil into the wax, rather than other way round, and mixed them while quite warm, still in the double-boiler (or for me, the mixing container sitting in a pan of hot water).

Previous efforts were hit-and-miss: I got one perfect result, and one lumpy one, and one I had to throw out last year. This year, I got one lumpy-but-useable (not as heated) and two very good ones, with the extra warming of the oil. So now I know: keep oil and wax closer in temp while mixing, and pour into containers before it sets firm. AND: I have the quantities written down.

I now have over a dozen small bottles of medieval-plausible cold cream as gifties.

Today I also made up the paste for 2nd part of making Spanish leather - scented squares of leather that you put in sachets. You soak squares of leather in a paste of oils til dry, then stick them together with the second scented paste. I've folded them up, and squished them between some books. (Instructions say 'press flat til dry': if only we had some heavy books in the house...)

They smell delightful to me, but I'm biased.

Yesterday evening, I pressed and sewed loads of teeny bags in linen for scented sachets, and sewed up some lined bags for decorative purses. I like sewing them entirely by hand, but life is a bit too short, when I also fingerbraid the edges, and make the braided purse strings, and the beaded tassles. Hopefully recipients can overlook the machine-sewn internal seams.

Comments

[merlyn-gabriel.livejournal.com]

sounds delightful. re waxy card containers... what about juice cartons?

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

GENIUS! I'd completely overlooked these. Tetrapaks, hurrah! We go through loads of these, esp now that 'tinned' tomatoes come in tetrapak cartons.

Thank you!

[acorngirl.livejournal.com]

Gina and I did a series of soap-making experiments years ago using lard and beef tallow. From my notes (just ask and I can email them to you), the combining temperature for the lye and fat makes a difference in how fast the soap sets up. At 125F, the soap was rock-hard after 1 day and needed to be cut with a bandsaw (luckily Richard had one), but it cut well. In another batch combined at 100F, it took 3 days to not quite reach that same degree of rock-hardness on the outside, but was still somewhat mushy on the inside, such that it caused the bandsaw to gum up and stop. For both experiments, we were using shallow cardboard boxes lined with garbage bags for the mould, so perhaps the lack of airflow of the plastic contributed to the way it set.

Soap-making is an interesting process for sure. However, I wasn't that enamoured with what we produced. I found the soap (admittedly very basic - lye, fat and some essential oils) rather too harsh for normal hand/body use. I still have a bunch of bars in the cupboard that I don't want to throw out, but can't really see using either. They might serve as hand-laundry soap if I had need as such, which I generally don't. Still, glad I had the experience. :)

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Intriguing - 125F is 51C, so it's close to the working temp I was aiming for of 54C.

My instructions emphasise that you must have both the lye and the fats at the *same temperature*, whatever temp you aim for, and the working temp ranges from 43-70C.

So I've been mixing the lye, and letting it cool, watching it like a hawk til it reaches close to 54C, while having to cool the melted fats by sitting it in ice water to bring it down quicker.

Re. harshness - my guidance says

a) leave your soap for 2 months to cure, because the chemical reaction takes time - did you use it right away?

b) most sources online recommend 'superfatting' which is adding slightly more fat than the lye can process chemically, to prevent the soap being too harsh. I've used soapcalc online to work out quantities of lye, water and fats, and so far it's been very useful.

http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

There's also ways to rebatch soap that didn't quite work, so it's not lost, if you ever wanted to try to rework it with more fat or scent.

I have to be careful not to go nuts on this - I don't really need any more work-intensive hobbies! but this has proved a lot of fun.

[acorngirl.livejournal.com]

Yup - combining temps need to be the same, no matter what temp you choose. We used a candy thermometer to make sure.

The calc table we used is now gone, but would have been much the same as what you used. We were aiming for 5-6% superfatting with the lard and 11% with the beef tallow.

However, the page where got the recipe (ratios of fat:lye) is still there and - duh! - it's called laundry soap! Why didn't I see that when we were making it? No wonder it seemed too harsh for hand soap even with the extra fat! :)

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

All of this sounds positively delightful.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Ok, I admit it, I haven't a clue--what does one do with cold cream? Why would want a blend of wax and oil with sent?

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

'Cold cream' is the traditional name for a rose-scented moisturiser, that was the workaday moisturiser before Vaseline, Palmolive and Oil of Olay came along...and then all the big cosmetics firms.

Robert says when he was in theatre he used cold cream as a makeup remover, which may be where it survives.

We're now awash in specialist face and body creams with different scents and consistencies, but at one time, cold cream was the main option for moisturiser, makeup remover, overnight masks, whatever.

You can still get it in England at Boots. I got a pot to compare to mine. The commercial one is more strongly scented, is shinier and absorbs more easily, but otherwise seems very similar.

At their cores, moisturisers still use an emulsion of oils and waxes. They can be sourced from plants, animals or petroleum products, but you still need some combination of oil, wax, water and scent.

Better quality ones have combinations that are more pleasant, or are gentler on the skin, but all the rest is packaging and personal preference...and marketing.