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Coconut oil works very well for soaps. You can get great great results with it. I've tried (as a hobbyist maker) red palm oil and coconut oil and I found the latter much preferable. Coconut oil costs more, of course.

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I use it as well in most of my formulations. It yields a high lather and is very cleansing (almost too cleansing -- it's often described as very "drying".) It's best used along with olive oil, to get a simultaneously cleansing + moisturizing bar.

So aside from the additional cost, is there any catch in using it instead of palm oil or tallow, provided you balance it out with a moisturizer like olive oil?

You might get away with just those two, but it would probably yield a very soft bar. A soft bar typically takes longer to cure (be ready to use/sell) and doesn't last as long once it's being used.

In my experience coconut oil, like olive oil, would still need to be mixed with a harder fat like palm or tallow, or hard butters, like cocoa butter. It is on the soft side of oils.

The "old reliable" recipe mixes these three in equal parts: Coconut, Olive, Tallow. Each of them imparts a quality that the others lack. Coconut = cleansing, Olive = moisturizing, Tallow/Palm = Hardness, stability

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