Cloudy LS

[Zany_in_CO]

My Recipe today :
50gr Palm Oil
50gr Buffalo Tallow
50gr Glycerin
So, what would you think better to fix my recipe?

Palm and Tallow tend to make opaque LS.

 

[mawarliar]

Ditto what Susie and DeeAnna have said......

....and you can't go wrong with the recipe in the link Susie gave you. I would practice on that one until you have the basics of liquid soapmaking down before branching out into formulating your own recipes. I pretty much consider it to be a fool-proof recipe that's perfect for both beginners and old-timers alike. And it makes great soap that dilutes out as clear as a bell every time.



Very true. Making soap is a lot like baking a cake, as opposed to making a pot of stew. When making stew, one can improve it/make it better by intuitively tossing in a little bit of 'this' or a little bit of 'that' without any harm just as long as you taste it along the way and it tastes pleasant to you in the end......but when baking a cake, one can't just intuitively add things by taste. One needs to be very precise up front with the ratios of leavener, the amount and type of flour, and the amount and type of liquid (especially if it's an acidic liquid), or else the cake won't rise properly or come out with the pleasing taste, texture and crumb you are hoping for in the end.

For example, if you add just a little bit too much leavener to cake, it will turn out tasting either unpleasantly bitter or soapy in the end and can even fall/sink/deflate after taking it out of the oven.........and when it comes to soap, adding more KOH/glycerin to fix a cloudy soap will zap you in the end, unless you pre-calculated your recipe to have an adequately high enough superfat up front to compensate for the extra amount of KOH added later.

If you didn't pre-calculate things to enable your soap to take on the extra amount of KOH that you added after the fact, then cooking it, no matter how much longer, will not lessen its lye-heaviness. That's just the nature of the chemistry of saponification. The only thing that will help lessen it is to add more oil/fat to react with the extra KOH.

If you haven't thrown it away yet, you can always try to save it by adding more oil to it bit by bit until zap is no longer present, but unless you were able to keep track of how much extra KOH you added, it will become a guessing game as to how much extra of whatever specific oil/fat you'll need to add in order to compensate, and there are no guarantees as to how the soap will turn out in the end (i.e., cloudy or clear, bubbly or flat, etc..). On the bright side, though, you will have at least saved it from the trash and have learned something useful in the process, and if for nothing else, you can always use it for washing dishes.


IrishLass

Hi Irish..
Thank you so much for your reply..

Didn't think about it before to add some oil..
Yet, I did put 35gr of coconut oil in there, considering I did put somewhere between 8-10gr of KOH and it turns out OK (in this case, not lye heavy)

Yes..
I know that I have to measure everything, I did (usually, but in my latest LS soap I did get frustrated, goes mad, throw anything and just hope that any beginner's luck will help me..

Yup thus give me a very valuable experience..

My soap turns out OK, but still very thin..
I think I'll try the link that Susie give tho..

Thank you so much.. :bunny: