After brainstorming on a way to smooth soap made using the Ciaglia technique, but without having to plane the bars, I have a new-to-me way to polish the flat faces of soap. The planer I used in the past to take off razor thin slices has warped a bit and no longer works well. My other planers take off a fair amount of soap unless I use a cardstock shim under the soap. That gets fiddly. Plus, any planing creates trimmings which is exactly what I’m trying to get rid of when I make soap with trimmings.
I’m pretty happy with the result. This soap is not as smooth as glass, but it’s smooth enough for me. I was so enthusiastic about the process that I smoothed out all of the bars without taking a before photo.
It’s this simple: 1) spritz some 70% isopropyl alcohol on a perfectly smooth surface; I used a plastic cutting sheet and 2) rub the flat face of the soap around and around and back and forth in the alcohol until it‘s smooth enough. My next step was to gently wipe the little bit of soapy residue off the face and from around the edges using a paper towel and then I put the soap aside to dry. The dry soap was polished a bit more with a microfiber cloth. I used a palette knife to remove the soapy alcohol residue from the cutting sheet. The best time to use this technique is probably going to be recipe dependent. The firmer the soap gets, the longer it will take to dissolve and more elbow grease will be needed. Trying to polish too early will likely make a mess. The bar above was made with week old trimmings and the base was a few days old when I polished it. I use 40% lye concentration which means my soap is relatively firm at 18 hours.
This technique is also going to work well for non-Ciaglia batches. Soap I made on Friday using clay and AC as colorants, below, went a bit ashy despite using 40% lye concentration. After removing the bars from the slab mold this morning, it was easy to polish the ash off a test bar. My best estimate is that I removed a mm or two from the face of the bar. I’m going to wait a bit to do the others because the recipe for this batch is high in liquid oils and the soap is still just a tad soft.
I’m pretty happy with the result. This soap is not as smooth as glass, but it’s smooth enough for me. I was so enthusiastic about the process that I smoothed out all of the bars without taking a before photo.
It’s this simple: 1) spritz some 70% isopropyl alcohol on a perfectly smooth surface; I used a plastic cutting sheet and 2) rub the flat face of the soap around and around and back and forth in the alcohol until it‘s smooth enough. My next step was to gently wipe the little bit of soapy residue off the face and from around the edges using a paper towel and then I put the soap aside to dry. The dry soap was polished a bit more with a microfiber cloth. I used a palette knife to remove the soapy alcohol residue from the cutting sheet. The best time to use this technique is probably going to be recipe dependent. The firmer the soap gets, the longer it will take to dissolve and more elbow grease will be needed. Trying to polish too early will likely make a mess. The bar above was made with week old trimmings and the base was a few days old when I polished it. I use 40% lye concentration which means my soap is relatively firm at 18 hours.
This technique is also going to work well for non-Ciaglia batches. Soap I made on Friday using clay and AC as colorants, below, went a bit ashy despite using 40% lye concentration. After removing the bars from the slab mold this morning, it was easy to polish the ash off a test bar. My best estimate is that I removed a mm or two from the face of the bar. I’m going to wait a bit to do the others because the recipe for this batch is high in liquid oils and the soap is still just a tad soft.
I will try using the sticky tape remover to see if that helps for the next batch.
I remember 
