Hi Lindy!
No problem – those calculators can be confusing to figure out at first! :)
First – how we know if a recipe is a 3 lb recipe or 5 lb recipe and so forth:
If you add up the ounces of oil, water, and lye in this recipe, you get 44 ounces. There are 48 ounces in three pounds, which is really close to 44 and why we call this a recipe for a 3 pound mold.
A five pound mold can hold around 80 ounces. (5 lbs x 16 ounces/lb = 80 ounces) Your recipe can be 77 ounces or something a little different, you don’t have to aim just for 80, just somewhere close.
On the lye calculator main page, they have different oils listed with a little box beside each one. Fill in the number of oils in this recipe. So beside olive oil, write in 14, beside coconut oil, put in 8 ounces, and so forth. The superfat % for this recipe (and pretty much all of my other ones) is 6%. There’s a place for that too.
Then you hit the little button at the bottom to calculate the recipe.
The next screen shows you the results with percentages of oils and recommended amount of lye and water.
It will say “Current Batch Total Weight): 30 ounces
Then a place under that where you can resize the batch from 30 ounces total oil to a new number.
For the new number, you can choose 50. (Think 10 ounces of oil per pound of soap. That’s not technically correct, but it’s a good starting point.)
If you put in 50 then hit the resize button, you see that the total of oils, liquid and lye is a little over 73 ounces, especially when you count in your honey, you’ll be about 74 ounces.
You’re aiming for 80 ounces or close. If that’s close enough for you, you can go with that, or if you want to get a bit closer, you can try 52 or 53 ounces of oil and then resize again.
Once you’re done tinkering with totals, just use the numbers they provide for you (i.e. for the 50 ounces of oils type of batch then olive oil becomes 23.3 ounces, coconut oil becomes 13.3 ounces and so forth.)
I hope that helps. Soon, very soon, I hope to have a detailed tutorial written up on lye calculators and substitutions. (Maybe this coming week, if I work on it hard!) :)
