After a couple months' worth of insomniac nights, the new 'Advanced Soap Calculator' at the Summer Bee Meadow website is now available.
The new SBM calculator is intended for more experienced or more adventurous soap makers and can handle solid, liquid or cream soaps. Our original calculator will stay, too.
As with our original soap calculator, our new calculator adjusts for the common impurity level in the available supplies of NaOH beads and KOH flakes. This is not a big issue for NaOH, but definitely is for KOH as potassium hydroxide naturally contains 7-8% of its weight in water content tied up in its flakes' crystal structure plus 1-2% other impurities. Note that while the KOH bags will say 98% or 99% purity, the small print will say 'exclusive of water content'. The net result is that the SBM calculators show a higher weight of KOH flakes to be used. This does NOT mean that the SBM calculator is 'lye-heavy'! On the contrary, all other calculators that don't take KOH's water content into account are 'lye-light' and result in liquid soaps that are mistakenly superfatted, often causing cloudiness and/or separation. (Contrary to some, 'cooking longer' will not cure cloudiness due to too little alkali)
For liquid soaps, the new calculator offers KOH-only or mixed KOH & NaOH alkali in percentage proportions per one's choice. One can experiment with substitution of some of the KOH with NaOH to thicken liquid soaps and the calculator will do all the horrible math to make it work right chemically. Additionally, a water-only process is available as per "Failor" fluid computations or our water-plus-alcohol method is available using any skin-contact approved ethyl alcohol supply (Everclear or ethyl rubbing alcohol are each ok. [DO NOT USE METHYL OR WOOD ALCOHOL. IT IS A DEADLY TOXIC]. Enter the alcohol concentration and the calculator does the rest to make a standardized 30% (for safety) alcohol-concentration initial broth. Follow the procedure noted, and either method results in a 50% 'neat soap' liquid soap base that can be neutralized with the calculated amount of borax (20% solution or solid), then diluted per the output final dilution chart. That's it, the "whole shebang" (a PERL pun...) of liquid soap making; no uncertainties or confusions re neutralizing, diluting, etc.
For cream soaps, the general outline is the same, with water-only or water-plus-alcohol methods. The methodology of making cream soaps is more complicated and a water-plus-alcohol method is included for experimentation. Recipe resizers are included for all three types of soaps.
It's been ten years since I did our original SBM calculator and I sincerely hope not to do this again for another ten years. (But wait...what about solid transparent soaps...).
This is all a part of a whole-site and whole-business remake of SBM going on since April after a long health-induced hiatus and I have other projects in mind for the near future. We have a whole line of solid soap molds and cutters that have been 'in limbo' for over a year and a really neat homemade "soap oven" design that we've used for years (soap fully cures in the mold in 4 hours at a controlled 160 degrees, then dries for two weeks and it's done for wrapping).
It's all about ideas for now.
New SBM Advanced Soap Calculator
Steve, I have saved all the info on the SOAP OVEN and am going to print it off for my hubby. Hopefully he will be able to come up with something. =) He has made me some molds to use for my soap. He is so good for doing things like that for me.
He loves woodworking and electronics of all kinds. He has made me one of the Christmas trees that have the lights on it. It uses a 9-volt battery.
Thank you for the information!
TX-Debbie
Oh my!! I've been looking all over the place for a soap oven!! Do you have any idea when you'll be ready to list more details about it? My husband will be so relieved! I've been driving him crazy to make me soaping tools........when he's almost finished one, I have another idea ready and waiting for him. : D
Debbie
Thank you so very much for sharing this information. That's so generous of you!!! My brother-in-law has agreed to make the oven for me....I'm sending him the information, now. I'm so excited!!! Thank you again and again!! I'll send you pictures as soon as he's finished with it! WOO HOO!
Debbie in WV
If I can come up with a more elegant solution for the high-temp thermostat/temperature limiter and can come up with a fairly easily assembled connectable-panels design that can ship in a flat box, I just may sell the things some time. I have decent ideas of how to do it, but have other priorities right now.
I have it on good authority that the soap oven is great for letting yeast breads rise when set at lower temperature, too. I used to get really into making Italian/French type breads in search of the perfect crust but that was many years ago and these days I'm not sure I have the patience anymore for that. I was a recently divorced single dad of two little kids then and kneading and pounding bread dough was an excellent cartharsis for me at the time.
OK, here's the dirty details. I expect to hear back soon that your husband has built one for you!
The total materials cost of our completed soap oven is about $100. The cost in time can be a wee bit more, but when it's done it is REAL useful. Besides, it looks impressively eerie in use with a glowing light out the top window and an odd hum from its fan running while the soap inside goes through gell changes.
Our low-temp soap oven is an approximately 3 ft x 2 ft x 18" high hardboard box with a removeable lid with a plexiglass window in it (to watch gel stage 'cause it's cool). The soap mold is placed on a low wood platform/rack that allows heated air to circulate under it.
Heat was originally provided by a heating pad under the mold, but this required frequent monitoring to prevent overheating. Later, this was changed to using four small 15-watt ceiling fan bulbs in ceramic sockets mounted through holes at each corner. The bulbs are all wired through a sliding dimmer switch added to an extension cord to control the temperature and plugged into a timer. Later again, I added a thermostat and set it to limit the highest temperature the oven would reach to about 130 degrees F. To accommodate the 130 degree temperature range, I used an electric water heater thermostatic control (the upper one) and attached a small computer cooling fan to its face to make it react to temperature changes faster.
An electronic cooking thermometer sits on top of the oven with its probe extending down through a small hole in the lid so it's positioned above the soap in the mold. This way the interior temperature of the oven can be monitored and the thermometer's beeping high temp alarm lets me know if it has exceeded my chosen limit.
As to construction, the hardboard sides and bottom of the box are joined by glue and small screws through corner moulding strips at each junction. The lid sits atop wood strips set just below the top of the side panels and has drawer handles on it for opening convenience. The wiring for the bulb sockets and thermostat is done with single-conductor THHN wire, good to 194 degrees maximum. [DON'T use extension "zip cord" type wiring as it won't take the heat safely] Wiring is channeled along the inside bottom edges of the oven box and taped/covered with reflective silvery duct tape [not the grey, 'gooey' kind]. The whole inside of the oven is then covered with thin duct insulation-wrap sheeting - the kind with a reflective aluminum outside surface. The same silvery tape holds the insulatioln in place.
Everything can be found at Home Depot except the computer cooling fan which can be had at Staples for about $15 and is powered by a spare transformer we had from some discarded device of some sort. Otherwise, these, too can be found at Home Depot in the telephone equipment aisle.
In use, we set our timer for 4 hours and keep the bulbs pretty much dimmed down. It heats up slowly and then stays within our set 130 degree limit. We make our soaps in 4 or 8 log batches, so much of the heating comes from the saponifying soap itself and the oven is pretty well insulated. We make soap in the evening; let it do its thing overnight, then take out the finished, partly cooled soap the next morning. By that following evening, we remove the soap blocks from the molds and cut them into 2.25 x 3 inch logs before they begin to dry and shrink a bit. The next day, we cut the logs into 1 inch thick bars. We can get 60 bars a day by using one 4-log mold or 120 bars by using two 4-log molds stacked on each other in the oven.
The new soap bars are fully saponified when they come out of the oven the next day and only need to be dried and hardened. When we cut them, the new soap bars are about 25% water content. Our online SBM soap calculators display a calculated ""neat soap" content percentage of the new soap batch. The water content is 100 minus that "neat soap" percentage.
We put the new bars on a rack to dry in our soapmaking room with a dehumidifier
set at 30% humidity and the door closed until they get down to their
finished water content. I'd suggest noting the initial weight of your new bars and then weighing them when you feel they've dried and hardened enough to wrap. We found that our bars weigh about 4.4 to 4.3 ounces at cutting and weigh 4.0 to 3.8 ounces when finished, depending on how we have our cutter's bar thickness adjusted. The bottom line is that we wait until about half the initial water content has dried out, which takes about 2 weeks. Then they're ready for wrapping.
The soap is fully saponified when it comes out of the oven and the bars only need to be dried and hardened. Being impatient people, the cut-trimmings go promptly into our shower for "testing" right away.
Yes, I am obviously an insufferable "geek", but it can be a handy trait sometimes. For instance, I rode a homemade electric bicycle 22 miles to and from work each day for most of a year to save gas until I became the first person in our county to have a serious crash on one. Maybe sometimes not such a handy trait after all...
Good luck with your new soap oven! Start a new topic and post some pictures here when you get it done. I'll do the same soon.
Steve M.
Summer Bee Meadow
Site Administrator