Help? New soaper w/ questions

[Judiraz]

I started soaping in January and had incredible beginner's luck. Everything turned out great & I was learning lots of new techniques. Now I'm having problems.... Maybe too many changes too soon?

My last 4 batches have been disappointing. One I just tossed, it was so bad. The others have been salvageable, but not what I was going for.

First of all, I'm trying to narrow down a recipe I like with a little wiggle room for tweeks. I'm using 10% castor, 25% palm & coconut, 30% olive, and the other 10% either butters or other oils. I have used clays, micas and oxides as colorants and various FOs.

Do you just keep experimenting at this early stage or go back to something that worked and stick to it? I use goat milk, want bubbly lather, and something conditioning. I like to play with color & techniques. I would love advice from the pros!!!

 

[IrishLass]

What kind of problems are you experiencing? Your recipe looks like a pretty standard, 'tweakable' recipe to me.

When I first started soaping (and I'm pretty sure all of us long-timers can say the same thing), I was like a mad scientist in my soap kitchen, trying out anything and everything! lol It took a couple of years before I mellowed out some and narrowed my focus down to a more reasonable amount of 'keeper' recipes.

For what it's worth, I have things narrowed down to the following keeper formulas. Each are very different from each other and have their place. I mention them because you may find such or similar categorization helpful in keeping your experimentation from getting out of too much out of hand:

1) Salt bar
2) All-veggie bar
3) Lard/tallow bar
4) 100% Castile bar
5) Shaving soap
6) Super-sudsy 100% coconut oil bar
7) Clear liquid soap
8 ) Creamy/pearly/opaque liquid soap

Oh- I also have facial bar in the works, but I didn't add it to the list because I haven't actually made it yet.


IrishLass

 

[Judiraz]

The throw away was an oily mess with lye pockets, the last batch I made I used Brazilian clay and micas as colorants with Juniper Breeze FO. I used a recipe that allowed me to do a nice tilted swirl before. This time it started to set up right away and was hot to touch in the cups I mixed. I did get it in the mold, but the swirl is not defined and the FO seems to have burned off. The batch before that also got hot. I chilled it for a few hours but it still gelled and discolored my white to a tan color. That was a Neroli FO.

I know the FOs can cause issues. The other difference is the lye. I switched from the lye I was buying at the hardware store to ordering a flaked kind online. I could not get it to dissolve in my goat milk so I switched to a method where I dissolved the lye flakes in 1/2 of my liquid amount in distilled water and then added the other liquid half as goat milk with my oils. Could this method be causing me problems of could the lye be that different?

 

[Susie]

Hey and welcome!

I am going to start with your last post first, so bear with me.

You said you switched from the powdered kind from the hardware store to a flake kind. Is the flaked kind Sodium Hydroxide or Potassium Hydroxide?

Also, do you have hard water or soft?

Are you vegan, vegetarian, or do you have religious objections to using lard?

I have an old standard recipe that I know exactly how it turns out that I use to test new recipes against. But, I am branching out into other recipes now that I can reproduce that recipe over and over with tweaks and without surprises. I don't sell my soap, so I have to keep the production down so that I can store it all.

 

[snappyllama]

As far as your FO burning off or causing problems... From where did you get your FO?

What temperature are you soaping at? Do your oils and lye solution have vastly different temps?

 

[SoapyWater]

Welcome to the wonderful world of soap making

Here is a few things I would advice and wish I knew when I first started to make soap.

1. Document everything. Keep a note book with thorough notes of everything you did. All the way down to the weather outside. The temperature of the oils, the temp of the lye/water solution. Note down everything. Keep it in a binder it will help you narrow down issues that may come about.

2. Keep it simple when you first start off. I know you see all of the luxury oils, swirling, coloring etc.. but at this point you want to just make sure your batch will turn into soap.
Get a few common oils and start with that. Have a few successful batches of unscented and uncolored soap under your belt and start adding little by little. Add colorant and see if its successful. Add fragrance (no colorant) to the next batch and so on. This way if something goes wrong you can narrow it down easy to what may have caused the problem.

On to another thing....
Flakes? Sodium Hydroxide does not come in a flake form. You are using something else. Can you give us the brand or the information on the container?

Graduate to Milk Soap. Once you have the basics down then you should branch off to Milk. Give yourself time and I am sure you will get it

 

[Seawolfe]

The NaOH from Essential Depot does indeed come in flake form. At least my container was. However there is also flaked KOH, so it never hurts to check

 

[shunt2011]

Welcome to the wonderful world of soap making

Here is a few things I would advice and wish I knew when I first started to make soap.

1. Document everything. Keep a note book with thorough notes of everything you did. All the way down to the weather outside. The temperature of the oils, the temp of the lye/water solution. Note down everything. Keep it in a binder it will help you narrow down issues that may come about.

2. Keep it simple when you first start off. I know you see all of the luxury oils, swirling, coloring etc.. but at this point you want to just make sure your batch will turn into soap.
Get a few common oils and start with that. Have a few successful batches of unscented and uncolored soap under your belt and start adding little by little. Add colorant and see if its successful. Add fragrance (no colorant) to the next batch and so on. This way if something goes wrong you can narrow it down easy to what may have caused the problem.

On to another thing....
Flakes? Sodium Hydroxide does not come in a flake form. You are using something else. Can you give us the brand or the information on the container?

Graduate to Milk Soap. Once you have the basics down then you should branch off to Milk. Give yourself time and I am sure you will get it

Just an FYI - Sodium Hydroxide does come in flake form. I get it in 55 lb lots from a local supplier. It's a bit harder to dissolve totally but the price is right.

 

[Judiraz]

Thanks for the great replies

I am positive I have NaOH. It is the flaked from BB. They state on their site it is not as pure but I'm wondering about impurities.

I use goat milk so I soap at <100 F

The last few FOs I used were from WSP

I have softened water but use distilled to make soap

I do keep records on all batches so I bought some of the lye I had used before and I am going to try & replicate a couple of the problem batches.

This last one that got so hot in the mixing cups really surprised me!

 

[SoapyWater]

Interesting. I did indeed find it.... I don't know many soap makers that use the flake form.. But I wanted to know if there was something else in it or was it 100% Sodium Hydroxide..

Hmmmmm Im going to have to look into that. thats interesting indeed. Something for me to research, order and experiment

Thank you Cuddlebug!

 

[kchaystack]

Interesting. I did indeed find it.... I don't know many soap makers that use the flake form.. But I wanted to know if there was something else in it or was it 100% Sodium Hydroxide..

Hmmmmm Im going to have to look into that. thats interesting indeed. Something for me to research, order and experiment

Thank you Cuddlebug!

The big benefit to flake lye is that they are usually too heavy for static electricity to make jump all over the place.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Aye - one of the few drawbacks is when making very small batches where you need to be 0.1g in place, like when making small shave batches. I end up braking a flake in to pieces to get spot on the money

 

[Cactuslily]

As long as we're on the subject of lye. I've always used flake. I feel safer measuring it out, vs beads which can go everywhere, as was stated earlier in the post. Today, I was needing lye, and was only able to find a can at the hardware store. It says it's 100% lye. It is very granular, almost powdery. Can I use this safely in a pinch?

 

[shunt2011]

As long as we're on the subject of lye. I've always used flake. I feel safer measuring it out, vs beads which can go everywhere, as was stated earlier in the post. Today, I was needing lye, and was only able to find a can at the hardware store. It says it's 100% lye. It is very granular, almost powdery. Can I use this safely in a pinch?

Yes, you shouldn't have any problems using it. I usually take a dryer sheet and rub it around the inside and outside of the rim. It helps with fly away bits.

I used hardware lye for quite awhile and no issues.

 

[Cactuslily]

Thanks shunt2011. I'll give it a go using your recommendations.