good new and a problem with fast trace

dryalligator · Apr 9, 2012

I made some fab soap for my granddaughters--2 1/2 and 2 weeks. Turned out great. There was some wrinkling? on one loaf, but I think the oven was a little warm.
Problem soap was shea-mango. I put the oxide with glycerin in the oils not thinking and it dropped to the bottom and became little mushy bee-bees. Wasn't worried--I"ll just stick blend until color incorp. Oil was at 100, lye (being stubborn in a cool water bath) would not drop under 110-115. You guessed, I added it anyway. If felt thicker than what I was used to stirring with spoon, but figured it was amount of oil. Got thicker in less than 2 min so I added mango frag and grapefruit seed and barely got it mixed and in the mold. Unmolded and it has oil spill looking circles. Licked and tasted soap. What gives?

IrishLass · Apr 10, 2012

When you say, 'shea-mango', do you mean that it was scented with a shea/mango scent, or that it was made with shea butter and mango butter?

If it was the latter, how much of each did your recipe contain? I find that when I soap with mango butter and other high stearic fats, that I have to soap warmer (120F) to keep things from going into a 'pseudo-trace'. A pseudo trace simply means a false trace whereby it may look like your soap is tracing- and way faster than normal (usually anywhere from immediately to 2 minutes or so)- and all before the FO has even been added. But what is really happening is that the temp of your soap batter fell too far below the melting point of the fat/butter, and now the fat/butter is quickly re-solidifying before the lye has a chance of acting upon it.

IrishLass

dryalligator · Apr 11, 2012

The recipe called for 12 oz each of shea and mango. The rest was 24 oz olive, 24 oz palm kernal, 25.5 oz water and 10.2 oz lye. The soap feels leathery after only 36 hours. Are you saying that you need to soap above 100 deg when you use mango butter?

Genny · Apr 11, 2012

Yep, it's best to go above 100 when using butters like that.

Also, high amounts of butters & palm kernel oil will trace faster.

If you're just testing recipes, you may want to scale them down to a smaller batch so you don't waste money on ingredients if the batch doesn't work out.

IrishLass · Apr 11, 2012

Yes indeedy- exactly what Genny said- especially with the PKO in there, too. That's a perfect recipe for pseudo trace if ever there was one. If not soaped warm enough, such solid fats will begin to precipitate out of their melted states before the heat from the lye reaction can get full underway and bring things to a true trace. And it can become even worse when subsequently adding other things into the batter that are cooler in temp. It's all a balancing act to keep that temp up high enough throughout the mixing/tracing process in order to keep things from precipitating out long enough for the lye reaction to get full underway. It's much like one of those circus performers trying to keep all the plates spinning on all the poles at the same time. :lol:

What works for me with such formulas and the particular way I do things is to soap them when my oils/fats are at 120F, and my lye solution is cozily warm to the touch when I feel the outside of the container (probably around 100F or so). All things considered (especially those things that get added to my batter mid-process that are slightly cooler in temp), I've found that these particular temps are sufficient to keep my solid fats in suspension long enough throughout mixing/tracing step for the lye reaction to take over and bring things to a true trace.

IrishLass

dryalligator · Apr 11, 2012

:?:
If I use coconut oil instead of palm kernal flakes will I still need to soap hotter? The recipe called for either. As said earlier, I tasted the soap and it was very mild on the tongue. The color wasnt mixed well and the glyicern (sp) is leaking out of the oil looking spots. I think I reached ok trace just the color wasnt incorporated well and the soap is dog ugly.