"Room temperature" method

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Yeah... it's frustrating! But oh well, I just have to try to forget about it until next week.
In the event that it would gel in the PVC mold, I put a small amount of the soap in a small silicone mold (muffin type) to try to avoid gel with that one and be able to see the difference. But neither of the molds seem to gel.

Yet, I can see that it is progressing. Today the soap seemed thicker/more dense if you know what I mean. I guess it's just starting to set.
 
Recently I have been doing my oils at room temp. and it has been working great. First I prepare the lye (I put my lye/water mix cup in a bowl of ice). Once the lye has cooled, here's what I do for the oils. I put my hard oils in a plastic mixing bowl and pop them in the microwave just until melted. Then I add my liquid oils straight from the containers into my plastic bowl. The liquid oils at room temperature will cool down the heated oils and it is ready for mixing immediately. If there are no hard oils in my recipe, I just skip the microwave step all together and mix my room temperature oils and add the cooled lye. Quick and easy.

I also take about a tbsp. of my batch oil (before adding the lye) and mix in a seperate container with my fragrance oils. Then when I add the oil/fragrance mixure at trace, no seize problems.
 
Bergamot & Bubbles said:
Recently I have been doing my oils at room temp. and it has been working great. First I prepare the lye (I put my lye/water mix cup in a bowl of ice). Once the lye has cooled, here's what I do for the oils. I put my hard oils in a plastic mixing bowl and pop them in the microwave just until melted. Then I add my liquid oils straight from the containers into my plastic bowl. The liquid oils at room temperature will cool down the heated oils and it is ready for mixing immediately. If there are no hard oils in my recipe, I just skip the microwave step all together and mix my room temperature oils and add the cooled lye. Quick and easy.

I also take about a tbsp. of my batch oil (before adding the lye) and mix in a seperate container with my fragrance oils. Then when I add the oil/fragrance mixure at trace, no seize problems.
Click to expand...

Great idea. I'll give it a go on my next batch. Thanks!
 
I try to soap as cool as possible with my GM soaps that I want to not gel and stay light in color. The other day I made a Pink Grapefruit soap that I wanted to be able to toss into the freezer to prevent gel. Made sure everything was almost room temp so that I wouldn't get a partial gel in the freezer. It worked, and I'm very happy with it!

I think this method is better if you have all day to wait. Melt the oils and let them cool for a few hours. They'll still be liquid for awhile till you are ready. If you only have an hour or so to make a batch, then it's probably not going to work.
 
I posted on another thread that I'll make my lye water and melt my oils first thing in the morning, go to work, come home and all is ready. I find myself getting impatient if I'm at home waiting on it. Or, the water and oils could be readied in the evening and soaped in the morning.
 
Me too as you can see above. I used M&P on a couple of small ones and a big one in the picture above. They make great massaging type bars.
 
why not make your soap in a crock pot. I do. I make both hp and cp in it. My oils/water are anywhere between 90-110, no need to make them the same temps.
 
Has anyone noticed if their oh us a bit high in this method? I super fat at at least 10% and employ a water discount of no more than 10%; i do the zap test and while it doesn't zap, per se, but I get something.... There but not a zap! And it goes away in a day... Yet I wonder if my ph is high and all the ph strips I can find are for fish tanks and pond water and I can't find the liquid stuff at all... I actually dig this process and then crock it for hp, I'm one of the impatient ones, lol! However I also do a two to three week cure time, despite that it's hp. I even insulate. I reeeeaaally don't want a high ph!!!
 
Soapfromthehip said:
Has anyone noticed if their oh us a bit high in this method? I super fat at at least 10% and employ a water discount of no more than 10%; i do the zap test and while it doesn't zap, per se, but I get something.... There but not a zap! And it goes away in a day... Yet I wonder if my ph is high and all the ph strips I can find are for fish tanks and pond water and I can't find the liquid stuff at all... I actually dig this process and then crock it for hp, I'm one of the impatient ones, lol! However I also do a two to three week cure time, despite that it's hp. I even insulate. I reeeeaaally don't want a high ph!!!
Click to expand...

HP needs as long, if not longer, cure than CP for me - while the "performance" is better in that it lathers and is not so harsh as a younger CP soap, the bars are much softer and are used up too quickly. 6 weeks is good for HP to get a harder, lasting bar.

The pH of each bar depends on the oils used to make it. I don't see how using the heat of the lye solution to melt the oils and/or then cooking the soap would have much of affect it all that much. You're still using x grams of lye and y grams of oils.

But two important questions are - what do you consider a high pH and why don't you want it?
 
Hi and thanks for the info!! To answer, I am new to soaping (have done two rebatches, four cp and six hp and two shampoo bars...that's all so far) and my understanding is that while a ph of 7-10 is great for soap, the higher the ph, the harder it can be on your skin and hair. I've done a lot of reading and gotten books and everything but there are so many opinions back and forth that I felt a ph of 9-10 may be not so friendly? I typically have a dry hide and hair so this ph thing is something I think about a lot, lol!
 
Also, and I apologize for this question being so ot, but I cannot seem to find how to start a new post or thread. Yup, I'm a doof. Could you point me where to do that here?
 
You will never find a lye-based soap with a pH under 8.5 to 9. The normal pH for properly made soap can go as high as 10.5 to 11, give or take, depending on the fatty acids that the soap is made from. It's ~normal~ for lye-based soap to be decidedly alkaline, and most people's skin most of the time is just fine with that.

Also, there is a huge amount of misinformation about soap pH on the internet that is based on pH measurements that are incorrectly done. These incorrect pH measurements typically show a lower pH than what would be measured if the pH test was done properly. In other words what someone thinks is a soap with a pH of 7 or 8 might really be a soap with a pH of 9 or 10 if correctly measured.

If you have dry skin, formulate your recipe to be mild by choosing suitable fats, use a sensible superfat for your recipe, give your soaps a decently long cure time, and see what you think. If that doesn't work, then there are other options to consider, but why not see first if the soap you're making works for your skin or not before deciding whether you have a problem?

As far as using lye-based soap to wash your hair ... well, that's another and totally different story.

Edit -- To start a new thread, go to the forum you want to post in. Click on NEW THREAD at the top of the forum page. You can't start a new thread while reading an existing thread -- you can only reply to that thread.
 
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I read something interesting today which pointed out that using an alkaline product on the skin does indeed strip the acid mantle...........but that is a good thing. A regular complete refresh of the acid mantle is healthy and the mantle will be effective within a short time and fully recovered after a couple of hours.

Also to remember that many people here use soaps with a pH around 10-12 and have great, very healthy skin. The whole "high pH is bad" idea is not the complete picture by any means, but has been touted by marketeers to play on our fears for so many years.
 
Thank you for that! I understood ph would be as high as ten but I didn't know it could be even more! I feel much better! Also I have been choosing oils and additives that were suitable for my dry self but the ph thing still gave me pause...! Plus I'm all about the superfat! I will be leaving a longer cure time, for sure. At least 6-8 weeks for cp unless it's Castile or something, and 4-6 for hot process. So far they've all felt great tho I have one that's a shade drying and another that's super soft, so I've adjusted those two and will see how that pans out next run. And thanks for the posting info, I was feeling like a dolt and getting frustrated..
 
The Efficacious Gentleman said:
I read something interesting today which pointed out that using an alkaline product on the skin does indeed strip the acid mantle...........but that is a good thing. A regular complete refresh of the acid mantle is healthy and the mantle will be effective within a short time and fully recovered after a couple of hours.
Click to expand...

Would you mind citing the source or providing a link. I would be very interested to read the article. Thanks:)
 
Soapfromthehip said:
Hi and thanks for the info!! To answer, I am new to soaping (have done two rebatches, four cp and six hp and two shampoo bars...that's all so far) and my understanding is that while a ph of 7-10 is great for soap, the higher the ph, the harder it can be on your skin and hair. I've done a lot of reading and gotten books and everything but there are so many opinions back and forth that I felt a ph of 9-10 may be not so friendly? I typically have a dry hide and hair so this ph thing is something I think about a lot, lol!
Click to expand...
Shampoo is not Soap. Soap ruins hair no matter what superfat you use. Also why do you want a lot of free oil going down your drains?
 

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