Circling Taiwan swirl help?

[dmcgee5034]

Hi all - love how supportive and helpful everyone is here! I am newer to soap making and made a batch of slow moving CP goat milk soap with my first Circling Taiwan Swirl design. It came out better than expected. I was super excited! What surprised me was that the bottom layer wasn‘t as swirly as the top. I used a chop stick to make the design with the smaller tip of the stick down. Do you think I should use a different stick, or thicker side down or any thing else to get a more consistent swirl on both the top layer and bottom layer? Thanks in advance

 

[dibbles]

One of my favorite techniques, and from what I can see your soap looks very pretty. I think trace has a lot to do with which tool is best to use for swirling. It looks like your batter might have been a little thick when you swirled it, and something a little thicker might have been able to move the batter better. It's hard to say without seeing a cut bar.

I always try to keep my batter at thin trace for this technique, and a chopstick works well. If the batter is at medium trace, I use spoon handle. If the batter gets too thick, I abandon the original plan and do a chopstick swirl or something else.

 

[dmcgee5034]

Thanks dibbles! I really appreciate the thoughts and guidance. Here’s a pic of the cut bars. Forgive the soda ash, I haven’t steamed the top layer bars yet. Top layers on the left and bottom on the right.

 

[dibbles]

The soap is lovely, and I'd say pretty typical of a Taiwan Swirl. If you want more movement along the edges of the bar, you could try circling more times.

 

[Zing]

Really good looking soap there. Well done! And I'm truly impressed with your cutting. The 1 time I made a Taiwan Swirl, I ended up with only 4 bars cut correctly! So. Much. Work. for 4 bars!!!