Salt soap flob

[DragonQueenHHP]

okay pretty darn new to soap making and today we tried our hand at salt soap Made the following recipe

2oz Sweet Almond
2oz Castor
6.5oz Cocoa Butter
42.5oz Coconut Oil
20oz water
8.5oz lye

at trace removed two cups and added cocoa powder to it (was mixed in with a small amount of cocoa butter )

added 30oz of salt to the main pot but not to the chocolate one ( first boo boo )
baked it in oven at 170 for 45 minutes then allowed it to sit for 3 hours in oven
and it crumbles bad :cry:

 

[Hazel]

Darn it! I just lost everything I typed.

I'll try to remember everything I wrote - all of my salt batches got very hot and gelled quickly. IMO, putting a batch in a hot oven, etc is unnecessary. You want to cut the loaf while it's still warm and slightly soft. Once it gets hard, it's difficult to cut and will crumble. It sounds like it overheated a bit. Was it hard when you tried to cut it?

Also, I'm curious where you got the recipe. I checked it on soapcalc and it's only about 8% superfat. Personally, I would find this low of a superfat very drying. But some people prefer a lower superfat.

Hmm...I think that was everything.

 

[DragonQueenHHP]

I created my own recipe

wasn't really hard just tended to crumble when you got to the bottom
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[Hazel]

I created my own recipe

wasn't really hard just tended to crumble when you got to the bottom
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Yeah, they tend to do that if you're a little late with cutting them.

Why did you decide on an 8% SF?

 

[DragonQueenHHP]

really new at soap making and everything I read said that 8% superfat was ideal

 

[TessC]

I typically do a 20% sf on my salt bars and love them, did a couple batches at 15% and even that 5% made my skin like them a lot less.

My go-to salt bar recipe is 86% coconut oil, 7% shea butter, and 7% castor with 80% salt at a 20% sf, but you can omit the shea and castor and do just 100% coconut and it makes a perfectly nice salt bar.

 

[Hazel]

What did you read? Perhaps what you read was discussing regular bars which would use more conditioning oils so a lower SF would be fine. I use 8% for facial soaps.

Salt bars have such a high percentage of coconut oil that they can be drying. Your batch might turn out fine for you. I'm just saying it would be too drying for me. I've found even 13% is too drying for me. I use 18%-20% SF in salt bars.

You'll find lots of discussions about salt bars if you look through the CP section. There is also this tutorial if you haven't already seen it.

http://smftutorials.com/drupal/how-to-m ... p-tutorial

There's definitely a learning curve with soap. TessC's recipe sounds nice. I usually do 85% CO and the remaining 15% is either a conditioning oil or split between a conditioning oil and castor.

 

[VanessaP]

really new at soap making and everything I read said that 8% superfat was ideal

For most regular recipes that aren't more than 20-25% coconut oil, most people use a 5-8% superfat. The reason most 100% CO salt bars are at 20% superfat is to keep that amount of CO from being drying to the skin. A lot of people can't use more than 20% CO in a formula with a 5 to 8 % superfat because it feels harsh to them due to the high cleansing of the CO.

FWIW, I made a batch of salt bars last week, and I only waited about 6 hours to cut, and they weren't HARD, but fairly firm, and crumbled at the bottom. 90% CO, 10% castor and I think I did 75% salt, with an 18% superfat. So now I will try to remember to unmold and cut within 3 hours or so to try to avoid the crumbling.

 

[carebear]

well, now - I've never heard that most people use 8%. learn something new every day, I do.

 

[brandnew]

is anybody still there? I have another question concerning salt bars!! I just made some and I cut them whilst they were still warm but it looked like I may have interrupted the gelling or SOMETHING!! there were clear-ish stripes in the bar. Is it because I didn't mix the salt well enough and it's melted? Now that they've cooled the stripes are still there. I used fine sea salt...should I have used gross salt? It's a 100% coconut oil recipe. Thanks! :?

 

[Hazel]

I generally use fine grain sea salt and I've never noticed melting. Could it be streaks of salt that settled in place as the soap set up? Would you be able to post a picture?

 

[brandnew]

hope this works, sorry about the blurriness

 

[brandnew]

how do I post it? having trouble! tried downloading imge shack

 

[Hazel]

There has been some problems with imageshack. You might want to try photobucket.

 

[brandnew]

ok you have a real dunce here...got it on photobucket how do I get it here?

 

[Hazel]

You're not a dunce. If you're not familiar with it, it can be confusing. There should be a box that shows an image link for posting into forums. If not, there should be one that allows you to post a link that will take people to the pic on photobucket.

 

[brandnew]

http://s1258.photobucket.com/home/brandnew39/index can't find it..will this work?

 

[green soap]

you gals are brave. After reading about salt bars and my crude cutting technology, I purchased silicon molds.

Brandnew: no need to use the oven for salt bars. I leave mine on the counter uncovered. I really like your idea to use chocolate. Well, cocoa butter + cocoa powder = chocolate. I still have 30 lbs of premium dark chocolate to use.

I use fine-medium mediterranean salt, or ground up (fine) gulf sea salt. I am scared of coarse, so would like to hear form someone who has done coarse. Sounds a little masochistic but one never knows.

 

[Hazel]

Sorry. This just takes me to your profile page. I didn't see a picture.

 

[brandnew]

sorry I guess since it's my computer the photo is on the right!! Alas... :cry: greensoap it wasn't me who used the chocolate but it was nice to be called brave anyway!! :wink: