Hi Miss P! While the rest of the forum on the other side of the world sleeps, I will welcome you and try to troubleshoot.
First up - don't worry, you've only gone and done what 95% of us do the first time making soap, and that is overmix it until it becomes 'soap on a stick' (stick blender). It will still be soap - it just may not be pretty is all.
I encourage you to post your recipe (with percentages) - maybe in the recipe feedback or beginners forum to see if there's anything in there that needs adjusting that might have encouraged your soap to seize other than too much stick blending. At least we know in your case that it's not a naughty fragrance oil!
Oh - and not ANOTHER Aussie!
Lol! ( Sorry had to say that as I now seem to have gotten into the habit of doing it for every new Aussie that joins)
Thank you, that makes me feel a bit less stupid!
Oh - and I think you will find the politically correct way to welcome is 'Strewth! not another Aussie!'
Welcome to the forum. Always run a soap recipe through a
lye calculator such as SoapCalc or The Soapmaking Friend before making it. Pulsing the stick blender before adding lye/water to oils just helps release air bubbles from the blender bell. The saponification process will make soap heat. Putting soap in the refrigerator will slow down that process.
Thank you, I used a Brambleberry calculator and measured very carefully - is that a good one? I remembered to get the air bubbles out, but then I forgot to turn it off while pouring the lye in, only took about 15 seconds to turn to crumble. I took it out of the fridge about half hour later, and is sitting on a cake rack now. They actually look edible!
Welcome.
I can't even begin to tell you how many 'puddings' I plopped in a mold until I came to understand that my little 50oz batch of soap was not the same as a 5lb or 10lb batch of soap and/or that not all stick blenders ran at the same speed. And I've had a couple of batches of soap that I was sure were going to catch of fire and tossed them in the driveway. The only soap that I refrigerate is my goat milk soap and only during the summer when inside temps exceed 75F and that's because you really don't want your GMS to overheat.
As for 'fragrance free' that is a bit of a misnomer. I make unscented versions of my Regular and Goat Milk soaps and both 'smell'...like soap.
Yes! Pudding is exactly what it turned into after the dry crumble stage. I have a Bamix with only 1 speed, a really old one. I used the mixing paddle (not the flat round one, but the one with the aerating humps around it) could that have been a problem? Should I have used the chopping blades instead? I hadn't planned to refrigerate it, but it is quite warm here, and it was heating up so fast, I chucked it in for about half an hour.
I know I should say no 'added' fragrance, just can't tolerate all those strong perfume smells, but I did add chocolate powder (after the mix went haywire) was planning to make a pretty swirl effect, and now I have 2 lovely looking mud cakes.
Since
@KiwiMoose has gone to sleep, I'll slip in here. Welcome to the forum!
When I first started soaping, I would use my stick blender for minutes at a time and got to thick trace very quickly. Now I use my stick blender more as a spoon. I do a lot of stirring with just a few 3-second bursts.
Soap will always heat up initially because it's a chemical reaction. I prefer to gel my soaps so I bury my soap under towels to keep the heat in. I unmold after 24 hours. I have not had a soap over-heat or volcano.
Some soapers prefer not to gel and use the fridge or room temperature.
All my entire adult life, my dermatologists recommended Dove Sensitive. It wasn't until I started making my own soap that my skin health
dramatically improved. Now Dove Sensitive feels caustic to me!
Good luck!
Thank you. Hopefully I won't make the same mistake again, too used to cake making! How hot is the mix supposed to get during gel? Mine went up to almost 70 degC (over 155F) and I hadn't read anywhere how hot it should be, so I did the panic thing. I was planning to cover it and just let it do it's own thing, oh well next time. Not giving up, will try again.
I used to buy Herbon Botanical's soap, but not available everywhere and often out of stock, so tried Dove, and you go through more as it is soft stuff, but it seemed OK. Getting a fragranced batch really threw me, have reported it and sent samples to them to show, as I don't think they believed me. But now I have stopped Dove, I have noticed other mysterious health problems are a little bit less, and thinking back I think they got worse when I started using Dove, but I hadn't made the connection.
