With the coconut oil added, is it possible to wait it out, or no?
Can this soap be saved?
- Thread starter camproses
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@camproses -- I haven't taken the time to redo the calculations. I'm feeling disheartened to learn I spent a fair bit of time to give bad advice based on wrong info. That said, there are no hard feelings on my end -- just lost my mojo. I hope others can advise.
I understand, we only have so much time and energy each day. If someone could explain to me how to figure it out myself, I would really appreciate it.
Just for fun, I have attached a photo of my cut soap waiting to learn its destiny lol.
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@camproses
Any of my soaps that do something weird (like don't pop cleanly out of a single mold) or are too harsh for body use get used as laundry soap. That's always an option, especially if the soap isn't heavily colored.
Any of my soaps that do something weird (like don't pop cleanly out of a single mold) or are too harsh for body use get used as laundry soap. That's always an option, especially if the soap isn't heavily colored.
Does it zap?
And what are the speckles?
the lye concentration is now about 35%
soap can always be rebatched later
there is no harm in curing at least some of these for a long time to see if the lye heaviness cures out
keep some testers if you do decide to rebatch
rebatch like colours (green with green, pink with pink) to avoid a muddy look
And what are the speckles?
the reduced water and addition of ice is new information
the lye concentration is now about 35%
soap can always be rebatched later
there is no harm in curing at least some of these for a long time to see if the lye heaviness cures out
keep some testers if you do decide to rebatch
rebatch like colours (green with green, pink with pink) to avoid a muddy look
Thank you for responding! I have not tested it because it has only been a few days. The speckles are ground kelp. The green color is from French green clay and spirulina, and the pink color is from rose clay. I scented it with 3.5 oz tea tree oil.
I think I will keep at least some of them as an experiment, if nothing else. I need to do some reading to better understand what lye concentrations will produce a useable bar of soap. Right now I have no idea what a 35% concentration will mean for the soap. I have always just put numbers into websites like soapcalc or Brambleberry's recipe calcularor without having a working knowledge of those numbers. Again, I really appreciate your response. Thank you
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atiz
Well-Known Member
Your lye concentration does not matter as much, provided you use the appropriate amount of lye.Thank you for responding! I have not tested it because it has only been a few days. The speckles are ground kelp. The green color is from French green clay and spirulina, and the pink color is from rose clay. I scented it with 3.5 oz tea tree oil.
I think I will keep at least some of them as an experiment, if nothing else. I need to do some reading to better understand what lye concentrations will produce a useable bar of soap. Right now I have no idea what a 35% concentration will mean for the soap. I have always just put numbers into websites like soapcalc or Brambleberry's recipe calcularor without having a working knowledge of those numbers. Again, I really appreciate your response. Thank you
Lye concentration means that you can dissolve that appropriate amount of lye in either more or less water. Most soapers use anywhere between 28%--40% lye concentration (33% is perhaps the most common and also the simplest -- 1g lye with 2g water).
While the lye concentration may affect how fast your soap traces and how fast it hardens, as far as I know it does not affect the final, cured soap very much. (But I have not experimented with this.)
When I enter the numbers you actually used, based on the information provided up the the most recent post, into SoapBuilder (SoapmakingFriend Calculator), the result I get is that you have a soap with a -8% SF. (Unless I also made an error.)
See this link for the results i got: Soapmaking Recipe Builder & Lye Calculator
Potentially you could hold onto this soap for a very long time and eventually the lye would neutralize, but is it worth it to wait until that happens for all the bars of soap? If it were me, I'd probably grate it up and just use it in a rebatch mixed with a new soap batter that has a higher SF than I normally use, and give that a nice long cure, to be sure the lye in the shreds interact with the rest of the soap to even out the lye in the new soap (while the curing process does it's thing forming the crystalline structures). The problem with that is that when it's a large batch of soap being grated, incorporating into a new batch (my preferred method to use up soap scraps), it takes a long time to use it up if I only use a little at a time for visual interest. Or I could make a huge batch to use it all up at once. And how much soap do I really want to have lying around curing at one time?
I do agree that holding onto a couple of bars which are clearly labeled as to the Negative SF and the date made, to re-evaluate periodically, is worth doing as long as you know you will go back to it periodically to re-evaluate. Of course if you do that and go ahead and rebatch the rest of the entire batch of soap all at once, your end result calculations may be even more difficult, so just adding the missing oil won't give you the SF you started out with as your goal, but at least it will be in the positive range and not the negative range.
When I was new to soapmaking, I rebatched every time I made an error like this. Eventually I learned to just toss out the lost causes and move on. That's not saying this is a lost cause, as it is a learning opportunity, but for me even tossing something out is a learning opportunity as well.
See this link for the results i got: Soapmaking Recipe Builder & Lye Calculator
Potentially you could hold onto this soap for a very long time and eventually the lye would neutralize, but is it worth it to wait until that happens for all the bars of soap? If it were me, I'd probably grate it up and just use it in a rebatch mixed with a new soap batter that has a higher SF than I normally use, and give that a nice long cure, to be sure the lye in the shreds interact with the rest of the soap to even out the lye in the new soap (while the curing process does it's thing forming the crystalline structures). The problem with that is that when it's a large batch of soap being grated, incorporating into a new batch (my preferred method to use up soap scraps), it takes a long time to use it up if I only use a little at a time for visual interest. Or I could make a huge batch to use it all up at once. And how much soap do I really want to have lying around curing at one time?
I do agree that holding onto a couple of bars which are clearly labeled as to the Negative SF and the date made, to re-evaluate periodically, is worth doing as long as you know you will go back to it periodically to re-evaluate. Of course if you do that and go ahead and rebatch the rest of the entire batch of soap all at once, your end result calculations may be even more difficult, so just adding the missing oil won't give you the SF you started out with as your goal, but at least it will be in the positive range and not the negative range.
When I was new to soapmaking, I rebatched every time I made an error like this. Eventually I learned to just toss out the lost causes and move on. That's not saying this is a lost cause, as it is a learning opportunity, but for me even tossing something out is a learning opportunity as well.
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