Soap Making - Know Your Lye Amount

I realize that I have posted rather extensively on this subject, however I feel the need for one more post about "lye calculating" before I leave the subject.  There are several good calculators on the internet and they will all give you the same thing, or close.  I have mentioned two calculators in previous post, the SoapCalc and the MMS.  MMS is user friendly and is mainly for just finding the amount of lye and water to use for a specific selection of oils in a recipe that you may have found on the internet, whereas the SoapCalc is more for finding soap properties, etc. and learning to create recipes on your own.

In this case, I am showing you MMS and I am using one of my easy soap recipes for an example.
It is very simple to add your amount of oils into the proper slot and then click Calculate.  This is what you will see. 

Under Liquids, you get your amount of water to be used.  You can use the low amount for quicker trace or higher number for slower trace, or go middle ground is good, even for a beginner.

You see the oils you entered in the Fats and Oils Section.  Next section is the Lye Table.  Scroll down and select a number that you choose to "Super Fat" at.  I use 6.5% but it is ok to use 6%, to be less confusing.  I would use about 5.25 ounces of lye in this recipe, (using 6.5%).  Never use less that a 5% lye discount for body and face soap.  The red area is considered the danger zone, your soap will be "lye heavy" if you are in the red area.  To super fat in the turquoise are at 9% - 10%, your soap will be too soft and worse, "too fat" and will go rancid on you, smelling bad.

For making your own laundry soap, super fat at 1%.