Where did that stupid rule that you should superfat half of your cleansing number come from? I suspect I rinse it down the drain and I think it interferes with lather.
I have not run across this 'rule', but then I don't really belong to any other online soapmaking group than SMF (well, maybe a couple others, but not particularly active & they're on FB, which I rarely open except to communicate with family).
I agree with you, that makes little sense to me as well. The higher the SF, the less lather is the general rule I've read, or should I say 'experience' rather than 'rule'. More like a rule of thumb, which is not really a rule, but gathered experience.
Most (all?) soaprecipecalculators use an automatic built-in 5% superfat. Some calculators do not even allow SF adjustment. Some allow for adjustment to lye purity, while others do not. The reasoning behind this (the built-in 5% SF) was explained as to give a safe product that would not be lye heavy if the resulting recipe is closely followed (good while learning the craft, but not necessary in perpetuity.) However, that built-in SF does not take into account increasingly lower lye purity over the course of the lifetime of a container of lye which, if not used up all in one setting (like in the old days when recipes were for enough soap to use a whole bottle of lye) will absorb water from the air everytime it is opened to take a little NaOH out to make a small batch of soap. (one more reason I like masterbatching my lye solution - no need to expose dry lye to ambient water in the air) Also because the SAP values for oils can vary with differences in crops, the ranges used in calculators allows a certain amount of leeway as well, so the built-in SF is not always what it seems either. It could actually be a bit higher (or lower?) than the recipe result states, so the built-in 5% SF is supposedly giving the soaper a safe soap that is not lye heavy. HOWEVER, we can test our soap with phenolphthalein or do a ZAP test and determine if it is lye heavy or not. And as we gain experience, we can learn to adjust SF in the calculators accordingly.
In any case, I find that a very low SF makes more sense for me. The less oil to go rancid the better. AND the less oil to go down the drain and clog up my plumbing, the better. I don't pour cooking oil down the drain (same reason), so why would I want to wash soap oils down the drain? I like the soap better with a SF between the 0-3% SF range, and only once had a problem with soap turning out with a lye problem and it had nothing to do with weights & measure. It was an iced lye solution problem that I won't go into here.
Like you, when I first started out I just followed the norm (of what was presented to me at the time by books & whatever I found online & later by my soapmaking instructor). Luckily I joined this group within a year of starting to make soap & was fortunate enough to avoid some of the weird stuff, but not all of course. Newbies do like to experiment, so I still did that. But I learned a lot from folks here and also from the experimentation.
As for turning bars, I found (& it was reinforced here by others) that soap with high water content, cut thinly, do warp and become misshapen as they cure, which seems like a good reason to rotate the bars. However, even with frequent rotating, mine still warped. But thicker cuts don't seem to warp so much, so hefty square or rectangular bars became my favorite for shape, both for feel when holding and no warping. However, when I followed advice here to increase lye concentration (less water to lye ratio), even thin bars stopped warping. But I still don't really like thin bars (of course that's a whole other topic.) I may like to 'fondle' my soap, but I don't bother turning them regularly. The curing bars have sufficient air flow on all surfaces as they are, although less on the bottom surface, but even that is on plastic mesh, so there is air under them as well as above and around.
As for allowing soap to cure in the mold before cutting, I have a couple or more things to say about that. I let my first Castile sit in the mold for quite a long time, then it was REALLY hard to cut into bars (with a knife -- I had no other cutter at the time.) Some soap recipes are ready to cut sooner than others. Some can wait. It really does seem to depend a lot on the recipe, IME.
But most of all, how many molds does the soapmaker have to have on hand if the soap is to remain in the mold for the entire cure? Sure you could cure the block of soap outside the mold, on the shelf and I am sure that would work just fine. But again, it depends on the recipe and how stored, whether cutting will be a challenge or not. I have stored soap wrapped in plastic wrap to allow it to be soft enough to cut later & that works, but of course, the recipe does matter. And even plastic wrap will not prevent all water loss from soap; water loss does still occur as evidenced by measurable weight loss, and the soap does become a tad harder to cut using a wire cutter (fear of breaking a wire).
