Coconut oil for soap making has been around practically since the invention of soap. Coconut oil is the most logical and efficient oil or fat to use in manufacturing soap because it creates the best soaps –both liquid and bar soaps with a rich lather that cleans your skin while protecting it. Most commercial soaps today have coconut oil as their primary ingredient or one of their main ingredients.
The lather produced by coconut oil is the result of its solubility, which comes from the lauric acid content. Solubility is what gives the soap its fast and voluminous lather –which is doubly important for liquid soaps because when they’re diluted with water, their foaming action is reduced. The minerals in hard water also reduce the lather, which is why coconut oil soaps are the best performers in unsoftened water.
Because this oil produces such a great lather, a soap made with 100% coconut oil will actually create suds in salt water! That’s why it has a reputation as a popular soap among seamen and is often referred to as a “seaman’s soap.”
From a soap-making standpoint, coconut oil in soap adds hardness to your bar. This aspect of coconut oil is extremely valuable especially when you are creating soap with other oils that if used alone, would produce a softer soap bar.
The amount of coconut oil you use to make soap can vary, depending on what type of bar you are trying to produce. For instance, if you wanted to make a mild soap say, for use on your face, then a good guideline would be to have no more than 20% of the oils you use be from coconut. That’s because too much coconut oil in your soap can be overly drying to the skin because of the drying effect of the lauric acid. But smaller amounts of coconut oil, especially when mixed with other oils like olive, jojoba or palm kernel, will actually add moisturizing properties to your soap. Apparently, through trial and error, soap makers appear to be unanimous on this.
On the other hand, if you want to make a soap that has an incredible lather, cleans extremely well, and is very hard, then you would use coconut oil during the soap making process more liberally. Like many things in life, coming up with the correct proportions is a balancing act!
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