Newbie question on first ever batch with pics

[GMN]

I too think it looks like it overheated on the bottom. Did you use Avocado Butter or Avocado Oil? Which did the recipe call for? Also, as others stated, you must run all recipes throught a lye calculator regardless where you got it from. Errors can happend. Welcome to soapmaking!

The recipe called for avocado butter and that's what I used.

I am positive now that overheating is my problem. I have the 12 cavity silicon mold. The bars that were in the middle all have the burned bottoms and up the sides so I'm expecting that when I cut in to them they will be overheated all the way across but will stop about 1" from the top where the outsides look smooth. The 5 that I had in the outer cavities only have the messy stuff on one side and the outer side is smooth and pretty. I might be able to salvage them with a shave. Thanks for the advice on what to use!!! I am not sure if the blade of my veggie peeler is SS or not. If it's not caustic any more do I still need to worry about that? I guess it still could cause DOS right?

Well thank you ALL so much for your input!!! I am quite confident it's the heating pad I used and next time if individual bars, I won't heat at all but will cover and try that, or maybe the just 100 degree oven. Your tips have been soooo helpful!!!

Thanks for the welcome and hopefully my next batch will be totally right! I did calibrate my scale last night and it was dead on so I also know that was not my problem. I need to work harder at mixing my colorant, esp. the rose clay in water mixture, the all in all, I'm thinking this batch wasn't as bad as I though!

 

[penelopejane]

You can let the clay sit in a little water from the water in the recipe not extra water for a little while and it soaks up well.

Stainless steel potato peelers are the norm I think, in Oz, anyway. It's not the caustic it's the metal earlene is worried about but SS will probably be fine - lots of people use them to trim soap.

 

[earlene]

There are a couple of reasons I want stainless steel for beveling the edges of my soaps. One is of course I want it to be soap safe, even if the soap is not fully finished saponifying. (Yes, there have been times I've trimmed the edges when the soap was still pretty young.) The other is, I don't want the metal to corrode or rust.

Also some potato peelers are nickel plated. Some are made of carbon steel, which can rust if not cleaned & dried immediately. Stainless steel does not rust as readily as carbon steel. You can also purchase potato peelers with a ceramic blade, which I expect would be safe for soap, but I've never used one, so don't know how much about them. All I know is that when I drop a ceramic cup on my porcelain tile floors, the cup usually shatters, although I expect a better quality ceramic is used for these utensils than the tea cups I have broken by my butter-fingerness. :think:

I have used a really cheap (cost-wise as well as flimsy in design) and it was a waste of $1.98 because the blade wouldn't even hold up the edge of a bar of soap, let alone a carrot without bending every time I used it. I really don't know what that one was made of because the packaging said nothing at all other than the price code.

 

[cmzaha]

The ceramic blade potato peeler works, and many are very sharp