New Soap Recipe - 100% Coconut Oil

So I'm fairly new to the cold soap process. I've made about 1/2 a dozen batches of soap and have a pretty good understanding now of the reaction between lye and water as well as tracing. The only thing that I was looking for was a soap recipe that wouldn't make my soap bars turn to mush after halfway used up and was probably my lack of understanding on the recipes I was choosing on-line. I experimented with a few different ratios and the last batch I made wasn't too bad which was equal parts of coconut oil, olive oil and lard (Crisco). I try to keep my recipes simple as these are just for my own personal use and want to make sure that the ingredients are easy to find locally. I did some research and found that some people use 100% coconut oil and superfatted at 20% which pretty much goes against the rules of soap making but people swear by the results. I tried a batch this weekend and even after the first day it was just as hard as the soap that you would find at the store.  There was a really good lather and felt good on my skin. Success!!  

These are the soap bars removed from their mold the next morning.

Typically you have to wait 4-6 weeks with the cold process method to wait for the lye to cure out of the soap. I use the hot oven process where you keep the temperature of the soap above 160° for about an hour. This speeds up the curing process. There are a few DIY ways to check if the pH is too high before using if you don't want to buy ph papers or like me didn't even know where to look for them. The old method from way back in the day is to do the ZAP test where you stick you tongue on the soap.  If it zaps like when you put your tongue on a battery, there is still too much lye in your soap and is not yet safe for use.  Another way is to puree red cabbage into distilled water, then filter the solids out. It is important to use distilled water as there are no contaminates it it. Put a few drops of the filtered liquid directly on the soap and if the liquid is still lye heavy it will turn green. If the soap is balanced it will turn blue. I've tried both methods and work, only depends if you have red cabbage on hand. Here are some pics below but please don't judge as I took these pictures when I did my first batch so the soap is not so pretty. LOL

               

The first picture is my filtered liquid.  I used a dropper to place a few drops right on the soap. In the last picture you see that the colour of the drops have turned from purple to blue showing that the soap pH is balanced and safe for use.