Cold process recipes for column tube molds

[madde hughes]

Hi,
I am looking for some recipes that are good to use with the column molds that you use to make embeds to put inside your soap. We tried a recipe that we use for our bas relief soap but it came out extremely brittle when we cut the individual pieces. We are looking to use a crown, a bunny, and a flower. So they need to be tough enough to come out the mold but not so tough/ hard that they are brittle and crumbly.
This is the recipe that has been used:

 

[bookworm42]

When are you cutting the embeds? Are you waiting 24 hrs? Cutting them sooner might help with the crumbling.
Other than that you could try decreasing your palm oil and and using more of the olive oil or sweet almond.

 

[dmcgee5034]

Maybe try adjusting to 40% OO, and 20% for your other oils, PO, SAO, CO? That’s closer to what I use for those oils, and my embeds in column molds have come out fine. Keep us posted on what you try and the results.

 

[AliOop]

I also wanted to note that you originally put palm kernel oil into the calculator. You crossed it out by hand, presumably because you meant to enter palm oil. Is that correct?

If so, please be aware that palm oil has a significantly lower SAP value than palm kernel oil. This means that, due to the swap you made without changing the entry in the calculator, you used significantly more lye than you intended, or needed. That could definitely make the soap hard and crumbly.

Fortunately, with a 5% SF, it probably isn't lye heavy. But this is still a good example of why you shouldn't make changes to a recipe without entering those changes into the calculator, so that the numbers will be adjusted accordingly.