Math! The subject everybody loves to hate. But math is what makes our world possible. We soap makers are no exception to that. In the last post I gave you a recipe for a batch of soap. They were only percents. The reason I like to give percents is because you can make your soap recipe as large or small as you need by only doing simple math. So let me explain this simple math.

Let's say you want to use 32 oz of oils. That's 2 pounds. And you have to use coconut and olive oil. The recipe would look something like this.


%30 Coconut oil
%70 Olive Oil

Lets see how much coconut oil we need. Remember we are using ounces. What you have to do is multiply .30 by 32. which looks something like this:

.30 X 32= 9.6

So that means we need 9.6 OZ of coconut oil for our batch of soap.

Now we need to calculate our Olive oil. We're going to do the exact same process that we did with the coconut oil.

.70 X 32=22.4

This means that we need 22.4 OZ of Olive oil for this batch of soap.

If you add 9.6+22.4 it will be 32. That's the total of your oils which equals the %100.

You might be asking why I am giving a basic math class here. Well I have noticed that even though this is really basic math many people get confused by recipes in percents. What I just taught you applies to everything. lotions, creams, shower gel, soaps, and all the other good stuff we soap making folk like. If you have any questions please comment and I will answer as soon as possible. Also subscribe to the blog so you get updated every time there's a new post. It's a little basic right now but I want to keep updating regularly and with your comments we can make it grow and informative.

On future posts I'll tell you how to calculate Lye for manually. You may think why should I learn this when I have a lye calculator that gives me all the numbers! Well you might not always have a computer to make your recipes so I think knowing the process by pen and paper helps you be more knowledgeable about soap making. That's it for now, till next time!