In trouble yet?

[GlenS]

Hello,
Produced a CP recipe on SoapCalc. Not sure if I did it all correctly. This is my Batch #4 trial.
100g Coconut Oil
400g Olive Oil
190g Water
69g Lye
7.5g Honeysuckle FO
3g Salt
Experimentation into CP soap with fragrance. Also salt to hopefully speed up the hardening. Mixed salt in lye solution after it was the lye was dissolved. Oil temp @ 74 degrees F and lye/salt solution was 73 degrees F. Mixed the solution and oil until "emulsion?" and then added FO. Mixed to very light trace and poured into silicon oval bar mold. Wrapped the mold with towels until temperature came down to ambient 6-7 hours later.
Unwrapped and put in room used for curing. 48 hours later the exposed surfaces were no longer wet. Seems that the bars shrunk slightly away from mold where I could observe it. Popped one bar out and it was soft, sticky and deformed fairly easily, but retained it's (mis)shape.
Is there hope that it can still harden significantly or is it toast?
BTW it smells wonderful, not overpowering so that is one thing!
While still wet I put some on the tip of my tongue and the sensation was of burning. Is that a "not ready" zap test done successfully?
Any problems in recipe or technique critiques requested.
Cheers

 

[atiz]

It's a high OO soap so might take a bit longer to harden. Your recipe also uses quite much water (many people here use a 2:1 water:lye ratio, which in this case would mean 138g water to the 69g lye), so that might also slow things down when it comes to hardening.

As far as I know, it is advisable to dissolve the salt before the lye in the water (the lye is "more soluable" so it will dissolve easier while for the salt you will have to stir forever), but for such a small amount of salt and low lye concentration it probably does not matter.

For the FO you want to check the max. recommended usage rate; 7.5g seems rather little to me, but it would depend on the fragrance. (Some people use 1 oz / pound of oils, which you might find a bit too strong, but it also fades with time usually. I only use EOs, about .5 oz ppo.)

You should wait and test regularly to see how it hardens up. It sounds like a success overall!

 

[user 29721]

Olive and coconut oil initially produce a very soft soap. My first batch of the soap with these 2 oils was a very soft soap that deformed when I tried to unmold it. With longer cure you can still have a beautiful soap that will last. By longer cure I mean couple months, 6 preferably. It will absolutely harden with time. For now to unmold it without deforming try putting it in the freezer and then unmold & cure.

 

[GlenS]

Hello and thanks for the response,
I thought I copied the values correctly, but I may have input something improperly. Glad to know that there is hope!! Going to crunch the numbers again as see if I copied something down wrong, so thanks for the evaluation. I don't know how long it will last but the smell is just fine !!!?! So there are many factors in play for the currently problematic result. Well it will sit next to my still to moist Batch #2 .

 

[cmzaha]

You should never add sugar or salt to the lye solution. Dissolve them completely in the liquid then add the lye. Sugar especially is troublesome, since it can crystalize in the bottom of your container.

Your issues are first to low a lye concentration (to much water), with an 80% OO soap you would probably want to use a 35% "lye concentration", using the tick box for Lye Concentration not Water as percent of Oils option. For your recipe 27% Water as percent of Oils would result in a 33% Lye Concentration. This is using soapcalc. You will most likely find a little variance in soap calculators since calculators are based on SAP averages.

Your soap would had unmolded fine if you had given it a few days to set up. Best test is testing a corner with your finger and see if it dents, if so it is to soon to unmold. I guarantee yours would have left a dent. Salt is not magic for helping soap to harden up faster, unless you are making a full salt bar or brine aka Soleseife soap.

Remember nothing shortens "Cure" time.

 

[GlenS]

Olive and coconut oil initially produce a very soft soap. My first batch of the soap with these 2 oils was a very soft soap that deformed when I tried to unmold it. With longer cure you can still have a beautiful soap that will last. By longer cure I mean couple months, 6 preferably. It will absolutely harden with time. For now to unmold it without deforming try putting it in the freezer and then unmold & cure.[/QUOTE
Howdy,
6 months, oh boy! Thanks for the idea of how to get it out of the mold. From the description, would it be fairly safe to think that the lye is deactivated or too early yet?
Cheers

You should never add sugar or salt to the lye solution. Dissolve them completely in the liquid then add the lye. Sugar especially is troublesome, since it can crystalize in the bottom of your container.

Your issues are first to low a lye concentration (to much water), with an 80% OO soap you would probably want to use a 35% "lye concentration", using the tick box for Lye Concentration not Water as percent of Oils option. For your recipe 27% Water as percent of Oils would result in a 33% Lye Concentration. This is using soapcalc. You will most likely find a little variance in soap calculators since calculators are based on SAP averages.

Your soap would had unmolded fine if you had given it a few days to set up. Best test is testing a corner with your finger and see if it dents, if so it is to soon to unmold. I guarantee yours would have left a dent. Salt is not magic for helping soap to harden up faster, unless you are making a full salt bar or brine aka Soleseife soap.

Remember nothing shortens "Cure" time.

Confirmed problem with salt addition, thank you cmzaha. On the way back to the Soapcalc to try to determine my recipe problem, that is another confirmation of problematic procedure. As to the salt I have read that it was actually helpful in curing soap at the approx amount I used (incorrectly), haven't tried SL. Is SL used in CP??

 

[dibbles]

I use SL @ 1 tsp PPO, added to the cooled lye solution. I agree with Carolyn that increasing your lye concentration will be helpful with this recipe.

 

[GlenS]

Hello dibbles,
Yes, SL will be the next evolution of my process. I used the default values calculated on Soapcalc. As cmzaha stated I should have used a different parameter for the oil and lye/water mix. If at first............. Concerned that the scent of the FO is noticeably less, again I may not have used enough as noted by atiz.
Thanks for the experienced evaluation and suggestions.
As an aside, I used a bar of the Batch #2 HP Olive/Coconut Oil bars and it has taken over as my favorite. Still needs a lot of curing though but couldn't help myself. Impulsivity is not a soapers friend.
Cheers

 

[atiz]

As an aside, I used a bar of the Batch #2 HP Olive/Coconut Oil bars and it has taken over as my favorite. Still needs a lot of curing though but couldn't help myself. Impulsivity is not a soapers friend.
Cheers

I think I tried my first soap on the same day (Not advisable. But it was good and so exciting.)

 

[GlenS]

I think I tried my first soap on the same day (Not advisable. But it was good and so exciting.)

I do know what you mean!
I don't know where it fits into the grand scheme of things or what is says about our current times but, I enjoy washing with soap I made myself for the first time in undisclosed decades.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

While still wet I put some on the tip of my tongue and the sensation was of burning. Is that a "not ready" zap test done successfully?

LOL It sure is!!! You might want to have a glass of cold water handy next time for rinsing your mouth out several times to reduce any damage to the tongue.

Hiya Glen, and welcome to the forum!
For your next adventure, and to simplify all the suggestions I could make to help you correct your formula, you might want to try making this castile linked below, but sub 10% coconut oil for some of the olive oil in the recipe:

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/zanys-no-slime-castile.72620/

 

[GlenS]

LOL It sure is!!! You might want to have a glass of cold water handy next time for rinsing your mouth out several times to reduce any damage to the tongue.

Hiya Glen, and welcome to the forum!
For your next adventure, and to simplify all the suggestions I could make to help you correct your formula, you might want to try making this castile linked below, but sub 10% coconut oil for some of the olive oil in the recipe:

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/zanys-no-slime-castile.72620/

Howdy and thanks for the welcome. Glad for the response and clarification! Zap seems to indicate and electrical component while all I got was burn. I will recall the difference and have at least an ice cube handy! Appreciate the tip and the link which I will investigate. My next mission is to continue the procedural advancement but a trial of Lavender EO and it's scent is paramount for the next batch.
Cheers

 

[GlenS]

Hello and Thanks Zany,
Did a small batch as close as I was able to your recipe with the Coconut/Castor added. Didn't have enough Lavender EO so just put in what I had. The soap was fairly hard on the first day, on the second they came out of the mold. So far so great! I did notice that the top and sides that were in contact with the mold solidified very well while the open side hardened but appears to have shrunk within itself. Very minor. Smells pretty darn good. The EO I used has changed it's smell a good deal in the past 5 days, getting milder.

Eager to try, on bar is only a partial fill. Will stringently try to hold off until the two week mark.
As an aside, is lard/coconut oil soap known to change colors. My 1st batch from 4/1 has darkened and has several spots on the top surface of the bars that look orange??!!

 

[Steve85569]

Metal exposure like the rack the soap is on in the picture above can cause DOS ( Dreaded Orange Spot). I would insulate the soap from the metal to prevent that.

And NO lard/coconut soap should not turn colors and have orange spots. A rancid smell will usually follow the DOS.

 

[GlenS]

I didn't know that about soaps. Also thanks for the info on color change. I have to assume that it is going bad, rancid is something that you wouldn't want to wash with. The cause if IIRC is that some of the fats did not saponify and are just rotting, yes?
Cheers

 

[decisions]

I think for DOS to appear that quickly you would have had to have started with some pretty rancid oil - were your oils fresh?

 

[GlenS]

I think for DOS to appear that quickly you would have had to have started with some pretty rancid oil - were your oils fresh?

Hello,
Yes the I believe the oils were new when I batched it on 4/1, the can of Crisco was. The recipe and the HP techniques were my first try so there's that. As I've used the soap while the rest dried on a rack and liked it for maybe 2 weeks. I took a a third piece and put it in the shower and it got wet and the orange patches showed up on the original exposed surface, within a day and seemed to get larger. The sides and bottoms just changed from lighter to darker as did the unused bars. Chucked it just in case.
I figured that I just ruined it.

 

[decisions]

Did the oils or soap smell rancid? Those spots just sound really odd - got any photos?

 

[GlenS]

Did the oils or soap smell rancid? Those spots just sound really odd - got any photos?

Nope, I didn't take any photos. The smell of the crisco and the coconut oil didn't seem bad. Not a big problem as I used up all the ingredients of the first batch, except for a small portion of the coconut oil in my second batch. It smells IIRC similar to my 3rd batch which also used lard, but a different brand.
Thank you for your assistance!

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Chucked it just in case. I figured that I just ruined it.

YIKES! Please don't do that, Glen... we can almost always find a solution to failed batches. Plus, we like the challenge of trouble-shooting. Hang in there. Better to be patient than to waste good soap, me thinks.