This is from my notebook on soapmaking. I forgot to write down who suggested it, otherwise I would give them credit.  But I guess this type of information can also be found here too.

In soapmaking, once you get comfortable with the properties of each oil, you can always start to come up with your own recipe. It’s personal preferences as well.

This is the sunflower oil I use for soapmaking.  I like that it’s high in vitamin E - as that helps protect against going rancid.  But I’ve made soap without this oil and there are no signs of rancidity either.  But extra vitamin E is extra good anyway.

Properties of Oil:

Palm, Tallow, and Lard gives a hard, stable, and long lasting bar of soap.

Coconut, castor, and palm kernal oil lends lathering (lots of good bubbles).

Olive oil, canola, sunflower, and soybean are moisturizing and conditioning.

Cocoa butter, shea butter, almond oil, hemp oil, jojoba oil, avocado oil, sweet almond kernal oil: These are considered to be the luxury super moisturizing oils. It’s best to use 1 oz per 1 lb batch at trace. This is called “superfatted” soap. The extra oils will not saponify, but will add extra moisturizing ability and more.

A good soap recipe usually consist of these percentages of oils:

25 % Palm oil, 25 % coconut oil, 25 % olive oil, 15 % canola oil, and 10% sunflower.

Commercial soap maker user 80-90% tallow or palm oil and 10-20 % coconut oil.  I think that makes it more drying as well.  Adding more soft oils give the soap a more creamy finish.  Btu soap looses it’s firmness as larger percentages of soft oils are used.

Basic recipe for luxury soap should include:

25 % Palm, 25 % Coconut, 25 % Olive, 10 % canola, 10 % sunflower, and 5 % Castor.

My latest Ginger & Citrus started out nice but ended up looking like a wreck.  But I am going to let it sit for another 2 weeks and see what happens.  If the signs point to disaster, then it will go back to the crockpot and turn into liquid soap.  It had too much Castor oil at 25%.  Either that, or the grapefruit fragrance oil did not take so well with the batch.  So much for my adventures in soapmaking!