I'm a novice...what did I do wrong?

lotzacatz · Mar 5, 2009

Greetings everyone!

I love this forum! I've come here many times for tips and hints (like not adding water for rebatching!), and you guys are amazing. You're so knowledgeable and helpful.

I'm new to soapmaking. I've made a few batches of castile soap, making them cat-shaped for a local cat rescue charity to sell. Another charity event is coming up, and I wanted to make them more soap for their craft table. I decided to make the Three Oil Soap located at:

http://www.thesage.com/recipes/recipes. ... lay&id=119

There weren't any instructions given to make it, so I followed the instructions for basic soaps in the book "The Complete Soapmaker" by Norma Coney; with the lye solution & oils at 100º. It traced nicely, and I thought everything was going well until I checked on it later that day. It had heated up to the point that the center had liquified to an almost clear gel, with the edges remaining a solid white. It was so warm, I think I could have fried an egg on the bottom of the container, had I flipped it over. :lol:

Anyway, the consistency of the soap is like modeling clay. I'm able to take it and squish it between my fingers. It didn't become solid and grateable like the castile soap. As with the castile soaps, I was going to rebatch it to scent, color, and press it into cat-shaped molds, but it seems way too soft. If I were to rebatch it as is, would it remain this soft when cooled and dried?

Where did I go wrong, and is there anything I do to salvage it?

Thank you for your help.

Kat

IrishLass · Mar 5, 2009

Hmmm... How big was your batch and how much lye and water did you make it with? Did you check everything using a good lye calculator first?

I've found that Castile soaps can be quite soft and putty-like at first, unless you go with a 33% lye solution or higher, that is. The first Castile-type soap I ever made used a full water amount (27% lye solution) and it took a week before it was firm enough to even unmold, nevermind cut! :lol:

I use a 33% or higher lye solution nowadays and I can unmold and cut my Castile-type soaps within the space of 12 hours. They are good and firm by then.

The heat that your soap went through and the gel phase that you witnessed happening are very normal - it is actually your raw batter going through the saponification stages of changing into soap as the lye chemically reacts with the oils. Some soapers try to prevent gel by sticking their soap in the fridge just after pouring, but I'm one of those that likes to gel. Ungelled soap takes longer to set up and cure but they still come out as good soap in the end. Gelling just makes the saponification process go by quicker.

I would try to rebatch it without adding any extra water to it. I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that this sounds like a case of having too much water in the original recipe. If so, then rebatching would help to evaporate that excess water out.

HTH!
IrishLass

lotzacatz · Mar 5, 2009

Thank you for the speedy reply.

Again, I'm a novice. I've made two successul batches of castile soap, and when anyone talks about percentages, my eyes glaze over. I haven't gotten to the level where that makes any sense to me.

The recipe I used was:
8 oz wt Palm Oil
8 oz wt Coconut Oil
32 oz wt Olive Oil
6.5 oz wt Lye
18 fl oz Water

The reason I was concerned about the heat the soap generated was because my previous castile soaps had never heated to that extent. They were warm, but not hot enough to toast marchmallows. :wink:

I'll try rebatching it this weekend and let it reduce as much as possible on the stove. I appreciate your help and I'll post with the results.

Kat

Lindy · Mar 6, 2009

Way too much water....and btw the recipe you have is actually for a Bastille - Castille is 100% OO.

Anyway back to your recipe - you should only have had 16 oz of water so you are going to need to rebatch it. Don't add any more liquid, just put it into a pot in the oven at 200F and let her sit for a few hours. It is going to go back to looking like vaseline and that is a good thing. Stir it a couple of times and once it's at the vaseline stage you can put it back into your molds and let it set up. Once rebatched you will be able to use the soap within a few days....

HTH

Cheers
Lindy

ETA - one of the first lessons I learned was to always check recipes, even those from books, with a lye caluclator so you get your proper lye & water amounts.

surf girl · Mar 6, 2009

I think lotzacatz knows it's not castile...? In the OP she mentioned it was a Three Oil Soap...

lotzacatz, don't let the whole percentage thing get you too frazzled.

Your lye solution was 26.5%

(Do you know how percentages work at all? If you don't, it goes like this: take the weight of whatever it is you're trying to figure the percentage of, and divide it by the total weight of your mixture, and then multiply by 100. So, for a lye solution (i.e. lye in water), if you want the percentage of lye, take the lye weight (6.5 here) and divide it by the weight of lye+water (6.5 + 18.5 [since fl oz is the same as wt for water] = 24.5) which will give you a number (0.265) which you multiply by 100 (to get 26.5%). If you're figuring out the percentage of a particular oil in your batch, take the weight of that oil, divide it by the total weight of all the oils (add all the oil weights together), and then multiply by 100).

A lye solution of 26.5% is not very concentrated (there's not much lye in it compared to a more concentrated solution, or, put differently, there's more water in it than a concentrated solution). Most people soap somewhere around 30-33% for their lye solution, and some soap at even higher concentrations - say 40%. So this is what Lindy means when she says you have too much water. And you do have a whole lotta water.

Having said that, I have made more than a few batches of soap using a lye solution as low as 25% - that's a whole lotta water, but that's soapcalc's default, and I didn't think to change it. The soap is still soap, it's just soft and it takes a long while to harden, as per Irish Lass's post above. I made one of these goofy batches a couple of months ago that was high in castor oil and is still a little soft-ish, but usable.

As for your heating thing, that would be the soap gelling. I am not good at figuring out how hot is too hot, or whether there's any need to to try to cool a soap that's in super hot gel. If your soap isn't all separated or weirdly textured, I don't imagine it overheated.

carebear · Mar 6, 2009

I don't want to come off too strong, nor do I want to be too mild about this though.

I do not believe you or your soaps are ready for sale. Soap is a serious buiness. And while the process overall is quite simple there are many opportunities for disaster - some potentially harmful to people, some potential economic disasters.

I strongly suggest that beyond gifting soaps to a few people in exchange for their feedback that you not "share" and certainly not sell your soaps until you have much more knowledge (%s for example!!!!) and experience.

You need to know the math, the oils, about the cure period (castile, for example, or any soap that has that much olive oil needs a cure period of at least 8 weeks to be its best - 3-6 months is even better. You need to know the difference between using individual molds and larger ones, about gel and insulating, and different techniques. And then there is the insurance. What happens when one of the people who bought your charity soap has a problem (it does happen) - they sue the charity AND YOU. The charity might have insurance - do you?