Rachael
Member
Man, I'm disappointed! Last night I made a batch of pure white unscented soap to use as soap curls. It turned out great and I had carefully placed intricate soap curls in my mold after curling them all up on a pencil. I was then creating a second batch of soap to fill in around the curls to create a circular embed pattern.
All was going great. I had the batter dialed in to the thinnest trace possible. I brought it upstairs, started pouring carefully... carefully... everything was holding up perfectly and I could keep it in place and looking beautiful, awesome.
Until I grabbed my batter to pour again aaaaand.... in literally less than a minute it had turned from perfect light trace to heavy soupy custard.
I tried REALLY hard to get the batter in my mold but it was a disaster as far as my soap curl embeds were concerned. Every time I poured, my pretty soap curls were falling over and coming apart. Things were going SO well before! Aaaaaargh. I ended up with a Domino effect of soap curls. 2/3 of the loaf looks like an utter disaster and 1/3 somehow held up. Lol.
Looking on the bright side it wasn't a wasted batch, but I'm so bummed out that the pattern got ruined.
I have been thinking of where I went wrong... it was a 50% lard, 25% olive, 20% coconut and 5% castor recipe (my favorite). I put in the maximum water recommended on soap calc. Scent was Turkish Mocha which apparently behaves well in CP. Only other additives were Kaolin and sodium lactate. I soaped at 110.
I think it might be the freaking sodium lactate. Could that be? I ordered some off Amazon that was supposedly CP safe, 60% solution. I used one tsp PPO in the cooled lye water. I've previously ordered sodium lactate from BB but I thought well, I have Prime anyway and this is more cost effective and sodium lactate is sodium lactate... right? Or wrong?
I have used this SL in a couple of other batches but I wasn't doing a pattern so I just mixed the heck out of it. I did notice it thickened up pretty quickly but I thought that was due to me not caring about getting a thin trace.
Has anyone else experienced this with SL or am I going wrong somewhere else? With the recipe? Temp?
All was going great. I had the batter dialed in to the thinnest trace possible. I brought it upstairs, started pouring carefully... carefully... everything was holding up perfectly and I could keep it in place and looking beautiful, awesome.
Until I grabbed my batter to pour again aaaaand.... in literally less than a minute it had turned from perfect light trace to heavy soupy custard.
I tried REALLY hard to get the batter in my mold but it was a disaster as far as my soap curl embeds were concerned. Every time I poured, my pretty soap curls were falling over and coming apart. Things were going SO well before! Aaaaaargh. I ended up with a Domino effect of soap curls. 2/3 of the loaf looks like an utter disaster and 1/3 somehow held up. Lol.
Looking on the bright side it wasn't a wasted batch, but I'm so bummed out that the pattern got ruined.
I have been thinking of where I went wrong... it was a 50% lard, 25% olive, 20% coconut and 5% castor recipe (my favorite). I put in the maximum water recommended on soap calc. Scent was Turkish Mocha which apparently behaves well in CP. Only other additives were Kaolin and sodium lactate. I soaped at 110.
I think it might be the freaking sodium lactate. Could that be? I ordered some off Amazon that was supposedly CP safe, 60% solution. I used one tsp PPO in the cooled lye water. I've previously ordered sodium lactate from BB but I thought well, I have Prime anyway and this is more cost effective and sodium lactate is sodium lactate... right? Or wrong?
I have used this SL in a couple of other batches but I wasn't doing a pattern so I just mixed the heck out of it. I did notice it thickened up pretty quickly but I thought that was due to me not caring about getting a thin trace.
Has anyone else experienced this with SL or am I going wrong somewhere else? With the recipe? Temp?