Deanna, I have a question...

Cmzha -- You said "...-30 superfat with a 38% lye solution...." Okay, I got that added to the list in Post 473. Just want to doublecheck -- is that 38% "water as % of oils" or a 38% lye concentration? I think you mean the second one, but I'm not absolutely sure. Thanks!

Btz -- It's hard to say whether the dots in your soap are lye crystals. When you posted pics of making this coconut oil soap, I noticed you had a lot of clumps of soap in the batter -- almost a type of ricing. I thought at the time that this might have been one type of fatty acid reacting very quickly to make grains of soap. The spots in your soap might possibly be grains of that early soap, but I'm not sure.

You said: "... It passed the zap test, has a strange salty aftertaste though..."

I am of the opinion that this odd taste from a soap is probably from soda ash. I tasted a sample of just the ash recently, and the flavor was reasonably similar. Fragrance can affect the flavor in odd ways too, if you added any.

Post 473: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=409854&postcount=473

DeeAnna said:

Btz -- It's hard to say whether the dots in your soap are lye crystals. When you posted pics of making this coconut oil soap, I noticed you had a lot of clumps of soap in the batter -- almost a type of ricing. I thought at the time that this might have been one type of fatty acid reacting very quickly to make grains of soap. The spots in your soap might possibly be grains of that early soap, but I'm not sure.

Post 473: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=409854&postcount=473

Click to expand...

Yes, that happened, but overnight, all the soap turn into the same color as the ricing thingies. I just notice that the white dots appears again in the past few days. When I trimmed the soap, I found more under the surfaces. AnnaMarie talks about lye crystal appears and then disappears in her oo soap, so I thought that may be the same thing.

Just to be safe, I'm going to wait for 1 more week before zap testing .

"...It's interesting that you are having this same on and off lathering, DeeAnna. I thought about the ash issue but it was when I first lathered it up that I had the best results. Then it was left overnight to dry. My first lather of the night next day was pretty good, but then on subsequent washings within an hour window, it would simply not bubble up...."

Newbie -- yes that's pretty much my experience, although I've not been as careful to document when I do get lather vs. not. I'm puzzled too -- we'll just have to keep working on it....

edit: Another thought is that the water evaporation will also carry glycerin to the surface of the bar. I think AnnaMarie is seeing this too when she soaks a sample in water -- a clear, sweet-ish layer on the surface. Glycerin would inhibit lathering. I can't say why the soap surface would have more glycerin at some times vs. others, but just another idea to think about.

BTZ- I have gotten similar crystal in my CO soaps. Mine were definitely not lye and I'm pretty certain it related to the rate of cooling of the soap. They look like crystals or bits of fuzz. very annoying but they didn't affect lather. Come one, on touch of the tongue, a mouthful of water available.....

I was wondering if the goo on the soaked soaps was glycerin as well but I think AM said that it was thicker on the bar with the 32% excess than it was on the 40% excess lye bar. Would that make sense? I would think the more thoroughly saponified the oil, the more glycerin would be produced, which would result in the 40 % excess bar to have more glycerin, or is my thinking wrong?

newbie said:

BTZ- I have gotten similar crystal in my CO soaps. Mine were definitely not lye and I'm pretty certain it related to the rate of cooling of the soap. They look like crystals or bits of fuzz. very annoying but they didn't affect lather. Come one, on touch of the tongue, a mouthful of water available.....

Click to expand...

Must.
Resist.
Temptation.


I love my tongue too much.

And I'm a bit of scaredy-cat about zap testing.

I thought you guys might enjoy these pictures of the soda crystals forming on my latest batch of this soap. Definitely not lye (I tested).

WOWSER! Pretty cool! Looks almost like fur. Thanks for sharing. The crystals on my soaps were more flat to the surface, but really glittery in bright sunlight.

I picked up one bar just to check it out and it crunched under my fingers. Some bars are furrier than others and some have the incredibly long crystals I tried to catch in pictures. No idea why this batch is like this.

Looks like the surface of some far off planet!!

woah, that's actually looks great newbie. What do you use as additive in your soap? Milk?

i did the lather testing for both soaps but couldn't get it on photos coz i was doing it alone

to sum up, the lather is not bad, but certainly hasn't reach their full potential.

i've been using my good soap (-40 sf) on my face for 2 nights in a row. no funky stuff, except my skin feels really clean but not tight nor dry, which is funny. you can really feel the difference on your skin a soap with sf and w/o. my face is really oily to begin with, so that's prolly why it's not dry and tight at the end. someone with a dry skin might feel different.

I am chagrined; I have a true confession to make -- I had an inadvertent tester for my -40% superlye soap (name withheld to protect the innocent). She said the soap irritated her skin -- it was itchy for awhile after bathing. She also reported her face was reddened and unusually oily the next day, which we both agreed was due to the soap stripping her skin of too much oil. We also unanimously agreed the soap needed more cure time before repeating this experiment. :???:

Ahem. Moving on....

I did some reading about why olive-oil soap has a slimy lather (or very silky lather depending on who you talk to) and gets goo on the bottom of the bar if it sits in water. It's all about the amount of oleic acid in the formulation. Irish Lass reported her findings on this, so I'll share a couple of the best threads and let you read her words for yourselves:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=26367
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=24908

I intentionally let two bars of superlye soap (one from each batch) sit in a puddle of water the other day along with a well-cured bar of my "normal" soap -- a blend of beer, lard, RBO, high oleic safflower and castor. The beer soap got slightly softer and whiter on the wet face, but the structure of the soap stayed intact. The superlye soaps both acted differently -- they had a separate thin layer of a firm, translucent gel on the bottom. I could scrape this layer off with my finger. The soap beneath the gel layer looked pretty much like the beer soap -- white, slightly softened. When I let the bars dry out, they returned to their usual firm pale-colored state. I also observed a slight amount of stickiness in the translucent goo that seems to be similar to what Irish Lass described -- I could pull short threads from the goo by pressing my fingertip into the goo then drawing it away.

Another thing that I think is connected to this -- Newbie and I have seen in our superlye soaps is an odd variability in the lathering of this soap. One time, the soap will barely lather. What lather it does make is rather sticky and scant, and looks to me a bit like the goo I just described. The next time, the soap will make a lovely suds with a nice blend of creamy and fluffy lather.

The difference in lathering is (I think) the relative amount of water in proportion to the soap that is being rubbed off the bar. Oleic acid soap will create a gel when mixed with a low amount of water, unlike the straight chain fats in PKO, CO, palm, lard, tallow, etc. That is why the snot/slime/gooey thing happens, if I'm understanding things correctly. If the oleic soap gets more water, it will dissolve into solution with the water and can then finally create a nice lather.

Now what's interesting is that one of my soaps is 100% olive oil, but the other is a 70% HO safflower and 30% lard blend -- no OO. Both of them are behaving the same way with the gel formation and the on-again off-again lather. I intentionally created the blend to have an estimated fatty acid profile close to OO. In my opinion, the goo or gel issue is not so much about the olive oil itself, it's about the % of oleic acid in the formulation. It may also be related to when only water is used to make the soap -- some folks in the links above even mentioned that using milk with 100% olive tended to cut the goo/slime factor.

Now are my superlye soaps as gooey or slimy as "normal" castile soap? I don't have a clue -- I've never used castile before this -- but AnnaMarie says they aren't and I'll take her word for that.

DeeAnna said:

I am chagrined; I have a true confession to make -- I had an inadvertent tester for my -40% superlye soap (name withheld to protect the innocent). She said the soap irritated her skin -- it was itchy for awhile after bathing. She also reported her face was reddened and unusually oily the next day, which we both agreed was due to the soap stripping her skin of too much oil. We also unanimously agreed the soap needed more cure time before repeating this experiment. :???:

Ahem. Moving on....

Click to expand...

*raises hand* .. guilty as charged .. *hangs head in shame*

It's really quite silly because I've been reading this thread from the beginning. I KNOW when you made that soap and how long it's had to cure. I really have no idea why I didn't think about that before jumping in the bath with it :think: No real excuse for stupidity is there? :mrgreen:

I sent you two samples of the normal castile so hopefully you have enough to do some experimenting. It was made Jan 27, 2014 .. so while it's considered fresh for a castile that's supposed to sit for a year .. it's safe to use hahahah *ducks*

Hope you get your package soon, I'm curious to see what you think when comparing the two.

Oh, Molly -- ya didn't need to out yourself! Okay, so we're both chagrined and ashamed.

But I hold myself more responsible cuz it was MY soap that caused the trouble. I do apologize.

I got your package today -- THANK YOU -- so many lovely treats to enjoy! I explored briefly this morning, but did not have time to try anything out, much as I want to. I am very curious to compare your castile compared with my superlye versions. I'll PM you with more soon.

Sit up and take notice, y'all -- our Molly does nice work!

I intentionally used my lye heavy soap early.
I just wanted to see what it would do.
I was just thinking of the 85 year old lady with beautiful skin

ETA
I had slight tingling after the wash and some peeling
the next day which I just buffed away.

Ilovesoap2 -- You are much braver than I! Maybe we could market young superlye soaps as a whole-body-exfoliation product?

(I am seriously not serious with this idea, just in case someone is wondering!)

i think this soap would be too harsh for the face, coz like DeeAnna said, it stripped the oils from our skin too much. but it sure is good for like a once a week thing me thinks.

DeeAnna said:

Sit up and take notice, y'all -- our Molly does nice work!

Click to expand...

Oh stoooopppp you're making me blush!

Hey .. on a side note. To anyone that's reading this. DeeAnna and I were talking (around the water cooler) about a, not lye heavy, semi-normal Castile I made on March 13th, that's acting like frozen cheese .. I took a look at my notes.

It's 100% pomace, 2% SF, 40% lye

I took it to thick emulsion (not tracing) with hand stirring and then poured it into round cavity molds and just left it alone. It didn't separate but it also didn't turn into soap. A week after pouring and it's super soft and crumbles like cheese that's been frozen.

I decided to rebatch it today.

Here's pics, if anyone has any feedback or thoughts on why this soap didn't harden I'd love to hear from you.

Well, I've been using my soap daily with no ill consequence. My skin feels a little taut after cleaning, but that goes away in about a minute. No drying. No flaking. Nothing. This soap is rock hard and lasts forever! I may try it as laundry soap too. Since I've been using it for a couple weeks now I decided it was safe for the rest of the crew, and so I added it to the rotation.