hello new soap maker here

[Natalie Lanier]

i made a bar of citrus soap for my mom but its still soft. i made it last wk. is there anything i can do to harden it.

 

[atiz]

i made a bar of citrus soap for my mom but its still soft. i made it last wk. is there anything i can do to harden it.

Hi Natalie,
Welcome to the forum.
If you say something more about your recipe and your process, then people might be able to help you more.

 

[shunt2011]

Hello and welcome. What did you use as a mold. It looks like a foil bread pan. Hopefully not. Is it? Also, post your recipe and process.

 

[lsg]

Welcome to the forum. Did you run your recipe through a lye calculator?

 

[SaltedFig]

i made a bar of citrus soap for my mom but its still soft. i made it last wk. is there anything i can do to harden it.

Hi Natalie,

Looking at your picture, it does look like an aluminium foil mold (as shunt2011 has suggested).
If this is correct, then your soap batter would have reacted with the aluminium of the mold, which would consume some of your lye and lead to softer soap as a result (of there being less lye to react with your oils to make your soap).

I also can see some orange pieces in your soap - did you add any orange juice to your batch (or other citrus juices)?
Citrus juices also react with lye, and can lead to soft soap.

As others have requested - the recipe and details of your process do make it a lot easier to troubleshoot.
There are usually things that can be done, but the choices really do depend on what caused the softness is in the first place.

The soap itself looks pretty, from what I can see.
Welcome aboard

 

[Relle]

Welcome Natalie . As this is your first post, would you like to go to the Intro forum and tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into soaping.

 

[RobinRogers]

i made a bar of citrus soap for my mom but its still soft. i made it last wk. is there anything i can do to harden it.

I made a beautiful batch of Bay Rum. It didn’t harden after 8 weeks. I cut it up into cubes and placed it into my molds. I then made a batch of white Bay Rum and poured it over the chunks. When I cut it, it turned out to be a beautiful mosaic soap. I probably did something wrong in the first batch, maybe mismeasured something? Still, it salvaged the soap beautifully.

 

[cmzaha]

to the forum Natalie, and to soapmaking.

Never use metal pans even coated pans for making soap

Do not use chunks of any food items in soap, they will eventually mold.

If adding in citrus juice, especially lemon, you need to add in the proper amount of lye to react the juice and not up your superfat. Probably a little too much info at this point so I will just mention to not use juices if you used some.

As the others have mentioned, if you post your recipe we can better help you.

 

[Richard Perrine]

I'm not sure how much the aluminum has contributed, but adding acidic slices of orange is my guess. The acidity and the extra water content from the orange slices will kill the batter from saponifying as needed.