Newly made soap doesn't lather

[Kohalatic]

Greetings all. I humbly ask that you be patient with me. I just made my first batch of soap and am wondering does lather increase with added curing time?

My soap is
10 oz coconut oil
4.5 oz olive oil
7.5 oz palm oil
7.5 oz castor oil
0.5 oz kukui nut oil superfatted
11.4 oz distilled water
4.31 oz lye

The day after I made it I scraped all the leftovers from the stainless pan and smooshed it into a little blob and left it out. That was one week ago. Out of excitement I just tried bathing with it. It doesn't lather much.

Is there something wrong with my recipe or does it just need curing time? I anxiously want to make more this weekend and would like to know if I should adjust my recipe first.

Thank you.

 

[Sunny]

my first reaction is that is reeeally high for castor oil - a lot of people don't use over 5 or 10% because the soap can be really sticky. you have 25%. I'm not sure whether that is what's affecting the lather - you seem to have a good amount of coconut in there, around a third of the recipe.

to answer your question though, yes, my soaps usually lather better and feel better the longer I wait to use them. I like 6 weeks of cure time usually.

and I'm not sure if you've read this before, but adding extra fat after doesn't really mean that that's what the superfat is going to be - in CP, lye will use up whatever fats it wants no matter when they are added.

I do think you should poke around a bit and take a look at other recipes - I would recommend going a lot higher on the olive and lower on the castor!

 

[youreapima2]

Looking at a soap characteristics chart
castor oil creates conditioning, but not fluffy lather...I think you added way too much castor like Sunny said. The bars will be sticky.

Kukui nut oil also does not have fluffy lather and is conditioning.

You have a lot of coconut oil which makes fluffy lather, but is also drying on skin.

Try a more simpler recipe. I believe that if you want conditioning bars, which is what you have, then you have to sub for the bubbly bars.

You could try letting them cure longer, yes they can sometimes produce more bubbles the longer the cure. (I thought the minimum to use the soap was a 2 week cure?)
My Castile soap didn't really bubble even after 4 weeks cure, but after 6 months sitting out, WOW talk about bubbles!

 

[IrishLass]

Ditto what Sunny said, although I just wanted to make mention that I've found a high castor amount such as what you have is actually fine, but it all depends greatly on the formula. I have 2 recipes that use 23% castor and it works great in those because of my extremely high tallow amount which I find counterbalances the stickiness issues.

For your recipe as posted, I personally would have gone no higher than 10%, but that's just me, and also- the jury's still out yet. You'll find that the longer you soap, the more you learn to never judge a soap until after a full cure. Wait at least 4 to 6 weeks and test again. You'll be surprised at the improvements.

Also- the leftovers you scraped up from your soaping bowl the next day more than likely did not go through a gel stage. Ungelled soap takes longer than gelled soap to cure and develop to its bubbly best, so don't be discouraged. It's way too soon yet (for gelled or ungelled soap).

As far as tweaking your recipe, I agree with Sunny to reduce the castor and increase the olive. If it were me, I would leave everything the same except changing the castor to 10% and the olive to 30%.

Oh- and Sunny is right- when using the CP method, it is useless to add a particular oil at the end before pouring in the hopes it will remain your superfatting oil. That's one of those soaping myths that have been debunked in scientific tests by Dr. Kevin Dunn, author of the book, "Scientific Soapmaking". The lye strength at trace is still quite lively (90% to 95% lively or unreacted according to the sources I've read). And when you have a lot of hungry lye on the prowl, it's only wishful thinking at best to think that an oil added at trace will remain intact or unaffected by the lye. It's best (and also easiest) to just calculate your superfat % up front and add all your oils together.


IrishLass

 

[IrishLass]

You have a lot of coconut oil which makes fluffy lather, but is also drying on skin.

Not to everyone, though. I've found it depends greatly on skin-type.

I believe that if you want conditioning bars, which is what you have, then you have to sub for the bubbly bars.

Not necessarily. I've found that sometimes you really can have both. There a few certain soaping 'tricks' to achieve that, such as a higher superfat, for example.

I thought the minimum to use the soap was a 2 week cure?

Actually, the minimum to use the soap (or I should say when a soap is safe to use) is when the soap tests out tongue neutral when the zap test is applied, which I've found with my own soap can be as little as 6 hours to a week or so. But 'safe to use' does not necessarily equal 'best time to use'. For me, the 'best time to use' is after it is safe to use and when it performs to its level best in terms of 'feel' and lather. For me, that doesn't happen until at least 4 to 6 weeks have gone by (4 being what I consider to be my soap's 'earliest best').


IrishLass

 

[Kohalatic]

Thank you everyone for the timely replies! This is an awesome forum.

Per the great advice, I will decrease the castor and increase the olive oil when I make more soap this weekend.

Thank you also for the info about superfatting. I took a class and we added oil in at trace however that recipe was quite different including the oil at the end. The seasoned instructor was likely knowledgeable enough to know what would end up in the final product.

I used a 5% superfat lye calculation so I'm hoping some of the kukui nut oil ended up remaining. My small week-old test blob, even though it didn't lather much, left my skin silky. I'm optimistic!

Thank you again and best wishes to all.

 

[Soapy Gurl]

I will ditto what the other ladies have said. You can't choose the oil to super fat, just the percentage. This was a long believed soap myth that many people still believe. But if you look at the science...

 

[IrishLass]

Thank you everyone for the timely replies! This is an awesome forum.

You're welcome.

The seasoned instructor was likely knowledgeable enough to know what would end up in the final product.

As seasoned as your instructor may have been (I'm in no way dissing your instructor), but it's very possible that she might not know of Dr. Dunn's findings. Even my second most favorite soapmaking book, which I love for so many reasons and recommend to many: "The Everything Soapmaking Book", the author (quite unwittingly, I'm sure) promotes the superfatting myth. It's just one of those things that's been passed down from soaper to soaper for no other reason than it really seems to make logical sense, and it sticks like glue (old myths die hard), but when Dr. Kevin Dunn (a chemistry professor and soapmaker) actually put the theory to the test in his lab, it turns out that the theory doesn't hold up in reality.

If you don't have Dr. Dunn's book, you can read his findings here:

http://cavemanchemistry.com/LyeDiscount-Dunn.pdf

IrishLass

 

[Kohalatic]

Does a '5% superfat discount' (if I'm saying it right) in the calculators mean that the lye runs out when there is still 5% of the oil left? If not, what does it mean?

We've almost beat the superfat horse to death...I really have a super fat horse which is why I thought of it.

 

[carebear]

yes, that's what it means - kind of.

what you wrote is TECHNICALLY called discounting the lye (a lye discount) 5%. TECHNICALLY superfatting means adding an additional dose of fat.

but we use them interchangeably, so close enough.

 

[Tonie]

Thank you everyone for the timely replies! This is an awesome forum.

Per the great advice, I will decrease the castor and increase the olive oil when I make more soap this weekend.

Thank you also for the info about superfatting. I took a class and we added oil in at trace however that recipe was quite different including the oil at the end. The seasoned instructor was likely knowledgeable enough to know what would end up in the final product.

I used a 5% superfat lye calculation so I'm hoping some of the kukui nut oil ended up remaining. My small week-old test blob, even though it didn't lather much, left my skin silky. I'm optimistic!

Thank you again and best wishes to all.

Answer:
The higher the super fat content, the higher the curing time and I suspect more so if you have higher than the recommended amount of castor oil in your soap. This has happened to me before where I thought my soap would not make bubbles. But after 3 months of curing I ended up with a hard, conditioning lathersome bar better than I had made before. Unfortunately I couldn't reproduce exactly what I had done because I threw the recipe away. Always keep your recipes and notes.

 

[Relle]

Answer:
The higher the super fat content, the higher the curing time and I suspect more so if you have higher than the recommended amount of castor oil in your soap. This has happened to me before where I thought my soap would not make bubbles. But after 3 months of curing I ended up with a hard, conditioning lathersome bar better than I had made before. Unfortunately I couldn't reproduce exactly what I had done because I threw the recipe away. Always keep your recipes and notes.

This person to whom you replied to hasn't been here for a year and a half, so probably won't see this. You are on a thread that is from 2011, so you might want to start a new thread and link back to this one.
Please read this about necroposting - https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/smf-culture-and-tone.56833/#post-574424