The oils
| Oil | As the source prints it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) | Tallow, lard, or bleached palm-oil · 120 lb | 75.0 % |
| Coconut Oil | Cocoa-nut oil · 40 lb | 25.0 % |
How it is made
| Process | Cold process |
| Alkali | ley at 36° B. · 80 lb · 36° Bé |
| Superfat | Not stated |
| Water | as the source states it |
| Iodine value | 37 |
| INS | 174 |
What the numbers say
Hardness 59 above 29–54
Cleansing 20 12–22
Conditioning 34 below 44–69
Bubbly lather 20 14–46
Creamy lather 39 16–48
Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.
The source
A 75/25 hard-fat-to-coconut bar made in a 100-gallon pan, mixed at about 120 °F and no hotter than 122 °F "otherwise there will be a separation of the ley from the fatty materials". The closest thing in these four books to a recipe a maker could follow today.
Alexander Watt, The Art of Soap-Making: A Practical Handbook of the Manufacture of Hard and Soft Soaps, Toilet Soaps, Etc., Crosby Lockwood and Co., London, 1884, p.82. The Art of Soap-Making: A Practical Handbook of the Manufacture of Hard and Soft Soaps, Toilet Soaps, Etc. · read 2026-09-22
Read from the Internet Archive OCR of the Cornell University Library copy. Page numbers are taken from OCR'd running headers and may be one out where the header digits were damaged.
Read from a scan rather than a proofread transcription, so the figures are checked against the book’s own printed total where it prints one.