CP Shave soap slow to trace?

[KiwiMoose]

Well I never - I had previously made a CP shave soap and have tweaked the recipe to try and make it a bit thicker. Essentially I use soy wax instead of stearic acid, and the main tweaks I made were increasing the soy wax amount, and using dual lye Koh/Naoh.
I was expecting it to trace rapidly ( as it did last time, I barely had time to pour it into the six cups I had waiting) but no! In fact it was slow to come to an emulsion, and every time I stick blended, you could see the colour difference with the creamier batter underneath and the 'oilier' batter on top. I was afraid of separation, so kept stirring and blending, stirring and blending until when I blended there was no apparent difference in colour. It traced fine on top, even at the earlier stages when i was sure it hadn't emulsified properly. I've never had a soap separate before and I'm sure if I hadn't been persistent this may well have separated in the mold.
I happily poured my 11 cups, weighing and taring ( is that a word?) each one as I poured. It didn't start to thicken until the very last one ( which was going to be hubby's 'test' cup anyway).
So do you think this was the result of the KoH? I've never used KoH before - ever. All the FOs/EOs were known to me and I've used them dozens of times before.

Oh - I forgot to add that I did inlcude camellia oil for the first time. It was at 4% of my oils. That might be significant?

 

[Tara_H]

I don't have hands on experience with it, but isn't one of the characteristics of stearic acid a particularly fast trace? So swapping it out would have made the recipe a lot slower.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I don't have hands on experience with it, but isn't one of the characteristics of stearic acid a particularly fast trace? So swapping it out would have made the recipe a lot slower.

I didn't use it in the first one either.

 

[Obsidian]

KoH does trace slower the NaOH in my experience

 

[Tara_H]

I didn't use it in the first one either.

Ah gotcha, sorry, I interpreted that as a tweak you had made since the previous batch.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm not surprised at all (not only because I previously did a high-stearic cream soap with soy wax before).

Stearic acid and oils containing stearic acid are two very different things. The soap made from either is very similar (just cut down the extra glycerol a bit), but it makes a huuuuuuuuge difference if the lye has to cleave the ester bond (in the oils, slow), or just neutralises the free fatty acids (quick).
In my experience, soy wax (or rather the stearic/elaidic canola wax that I'm using, but I don't think that makes much of a difference) is a medium-quick-tracing oil, maybe comparable to rice bran oil or cocoa butter, but slower than palm and coconut. You know yourself that soy wax gives you a decent amount of time for swirls and fancy designs, trace in CP anywhere within several minutes and hours.
Free stearic acid however reacts instantaneously with lye, and in the typcial double-digit percentages of shave soap, it will solidify within seconds, to a point where CP isn't possible at all; and also in HP, you'll be instantly “through the cooking by X%” for X% of FFA stearic acid in your recipe.
All that makes me prefer soy wax over free stearic acid

[ETA: Re-reading your initial post, and the comments in between, it seems that my comment isn't wrong but neither overly relevant for your situation: IIRC you already had adapted your recipe to soy wax to start with, and never used FFA stearic acid? and just increased soy wax content by some small percentage? I have no systematic experiences with KOH/dual lye, but my impression is that the cation doesn't make a difference at all, in the early stages where everything is liquid and dissolved anywax.
However, haven't you recently switched your soy wax supply? Do you notice slower tracing with your regular bar soaps as well? Have you soaped on a particularly cold day?]

By the way, I love the look of these soaps, as if they were pure olive oil (but I guess they'll lather a WHOLE LOT better than castile soap). And the idea with the mugs is cute! I guess the “tea bag tags” are still from the mug shop? If you plan to label the soaps, it might be awesome to copy this idea and make soap labels like tea bag tags and knot them around the handle.

taring ( is that a word?)

I'd guess @Tara_H would wholeheartedly affirm this.

 

[Mommawolfe]

Well I never - I had previously made a CP shave soap and have tweaked the recipe to try and make it a bit thicker. Essentially I use soy wax instead of stearic acid, and the main tweaks I made were increasing the soy wax amount, and using dual lye Koh/Naoh.
I was expecting it to trace rapidly ( as it did last time, I barely had time to pour it into the six cups I had waiting) but no! In fact it was slow to come to an emulsion, and every time I stick blended, you could see the colour difference with the creamier batter underneath and the 'oilier' batter on top. I was afraid of separation, so kept stirring and blending, stirring and blending until when I blended there was no apparent difference in colour. It traced fine on top, even at the earlier stages when i was sure it hadn't emulsified properly. I've never had a soap separate before and I'm sure if I hadn't been persistent this may well have separated in the mold.
I happily poured my 11 cups, weighing and taring ( is that a word?) each one as I poured. It didn't start to thicken until the very last one ( which was going to be hubby's 'test' cup anyway).
So do you think this was the result of the KoH? I've never used KoH before - ever. All the FOs/EOs were known to me and I've used them dozens of times before.

do you by any chance have pics of the different stages of your cook? All the "recipes" i have seen with pics, none of them show what it is supposed to look like when it is ready to pour...

 

[ResolvableOwl]

It's CP = Cold Process. No cooking involved.

 

[Mommawolfe]

for anyone else, that answer would be discouraging, but for me, it makes total sense! Thank you!

i saw HP when it said CP! oops!

 

[JanaN]

KoH does trace slower the NaOH in my experience

I have the opposite experience. KOH traces faster then NaOH.