SMF December Challenge- high and low water batch

[CaraBou]

It seems like there are contradictory results here (really? with soap?? Noooo!). So I suggest that everyone keep a really good record of things, including:
*your pattern (knowing where within your mold you placed your high and low water portions - pay special note to the top and bottom since these are easiest to track)
*signs of gel throughout the process (translucency or other color changes)
*temps throughout the process (how much heat did you apply, when, and for how long? what kind of heat?)
*any "abnormaliites" (i.e., COOL STUFF) you observe throughout the process

You do not have to divulge these details until you want to (if ever), but at least you will understand it better yourself and can adjust your method for future tries.

I did not keep good enough notes from my first batch, nor did I observe closely enough, so I'm not clear exactly what happened. When I'm not so lazy to take/process pics (maybe this weekend?) I will post my first failure, though without good notes I don't know how helpful - or confusing - it will be. I see a few clues, so maybe others will be able to help interpret. I truly want to understand this phenomena so I will be paying more attention next time. That doesn't mean I'll succeed but hopefully I'll be closer to understanding the truth.

SCIENCE!!!

 

[Saponista]

Sadly I don't remember which part of my soap was high and low as I just picked up the pots and poured them into the mould at random to top up the mould. I will be sure to make notes for my challenge attempts.

 

[newbie]

What a fantastic soap, Saponista!! It's extremely artsy and for a mess, as younfeltmit was, it came out just a splendid soap! And yes, I think it does show the difference between high and low.

Auntie
Clara made no mention of trying to control the temp such that the low water portions do not gel. I have no idea if you can or not. When my high water portions gel, they get very hot and hotter to my hand than any low water soap has ever felt during gel. I think just trying to get a solid gel is the first order of the day because trying to regulate temps like that is another level of finesse. I'm not there!

Saw some handmade soaps here. VERY expensive and part of that I'm sure is the cost of shipping supplies here. Nothing to do with the challenge but I thought I'd post it anyhow. The very small bars cost five dollars and the larger bars around ten to eleven. Made of rapeseed and coconut.
I can't load two pics at once off my phone

 

[Obsidian]

Both my attempts worked ok, I definitely have different colors but I'm not particularly impressed, at least not with my soap. Its too hard to tell where the batters are going when pouring so the results are pretty muddled.
Its a neat concept and really interesting but there are easier ways to get contrasting colors.

 

[newbie]

It will be interesting to see what people get. On some of my soaps, it wasn't contrasting colors that made it so interesting. I got shades within shades and lots of outlining of color sections. It looked nothing like working only with a couple different colors because of the shading and the softness it gave. I'll post a pic when I get home.

https://m.facebook.com/helka.finn/albums/756865624411156/?_rdr

If you look at the colors, you can see some of them got nice outlining and variation. I used one color of pink, one of purple, one of yellow and one of green. The pink and purple showed the best, I think.

 

[Rowan]

I absolutely love your soap, the colours are beautiful, but what catches my attention the most are the soft gradations in colour. It's so lovely. Gentle but bright at the same time. It made my heart skip a beat!

 

[Judiraz]

Newbie, That's a stunning soap. I love the snake head bar! Absolutely beautiful colors and you git a lot of variation.

 

[newbie]

Thank you. I scored pretty poorly in that challenge but I was very happy with the soap. I still love that snake head and still have it. And yes, exactly about the shading and the softness it gives the soap. I think that is the biggest draw for me with this technique; you get something different than the flatter singular colors and it softens it up a lot and lends a sort of depth. I'm hoping other people will get some similar results or we can see what else this technique can do.

 

[dibbles]

Agreed - stunning soap Newbie

 

[Steve85569]

I will post my first failure, though without good notes I don't know how helpful - or confusing - it will be. I see a few clues, so maybe others will be able to help interpret. I truly want to understand this phenomena so I will be paying more attention next time. That doesn't mean I'll succeed but hopefully I'll be closer to understanding the truth.

SCIENCE!!!

If you want to see my first attempts ( failures) they are posted in the ugly soaps thread.

 

[CaraBou]

Auntie Clara made no mention of trying to control the temp such that the low water portions do not gel. I have no idea if you can or not.

Actually, she did mention this, at least twice. I think she was trying to impress the idea of not exceeding 60 C / 140 F. But then again newbie, I thought you were too with your constant temp water bath.

First time Auntie Clara mentioned it was in the September / Ghost Swirl post about 1/5 of the way down the page:

Those who have read Kevin Dunn’s book Scientific Soapmaking carefully, will know that (everything else equal) a low water soap goes through saponification faster and enters full gel phase at a higher temperature than a high water soap does. In this case the 60C temperature kept in my oven was not high enough to force the uncovered low water soap to enter full gel phase. The high water soap, however, did go through full gel at that temperature. But, even though the low water soap did not go through full gel phase it probably was fully saponified before the high water soap was.​

The second was in Ghost Swirl Followup post, 5th paragraph:

High water soap enters full gel phase at a lower temp than low water soap and we managed to manipulate the temperature so that it was high enough for the high water soap to enter full gel phase, but too low for the low water soap to enter gel phase. I.e. the high water soap went through full gel phase and the low water soap didn’t – at least not completely. ​

 

[CaraBou]

Ok, here's my less than successful soap. It was 50:50 in the base (colored solely from yellow popcorn CO)and the greens (mica). There is little distinction in any of the bars except near the top, where you can see a limited amount of the 3D effect and a few whiter splotches that I assume are low water and ungelled/less gelled. Most parts of the bars look the same, though (gelled). For a 50:50, it looks more like a 90:10 to me. I didn't stay up late enough to watch the gel or adjust the temp so I am not sure exactly how it all went down.

You know, the pics show the distinctions better than they show in real life, IMO. It looks more convincing!

One thing I did weird was to have more a little more CO in the high water batter than in the low. I was thinking it might help that part gel easier. Not sure exactly what effect (if any) that had, but I wish now I hadn't done it. Next times I won't, until I get this figured out. Then I might take another run at that because something is telling me to do it!

Anyway, your thoughts on why there isn't much difference?

 

[newbie]

WPersonally, I have great difficult believing the low water does not go through gel. Because the high water part gets so hot in gel, over 200 degrees, and it is in cntact with the low water part, I can't see how it wouldn't trigger gel in the low water portion. Yes, low water may get hotter in gel but if I can get a low water soap to gel using just a heating pad. how would it resist gelling next to 200 degree batter? It would have had to be done sappnifiying and I have never had a low water soap be completely done sapponifying, without gelling, in 1-2 hours. Controlling the oven temp ensures the gel of the high water part but I believe the low water part does gel in this situation, just differently.

I know I have said gelied and ungelled parts in other posts. I think that's Inaccurate of me to say. At least I think so. It FEELS ungelled, the low water portions, but as I talk and think it through, I believe both Portions gel, which is supported by no zapping, as well. Sorry about all this. It's a process for me.

I reserve the right to argue myself out of this position.

 

[ngian]

Below is a picture of an experiment I did right after I read the Ghost Swirl article.
I had to use a heating pad for the first time to make sure I gelled and I watched it like a hawk. Both high & low gelled but as DeeAnna said, they gelled differently. High water was markedly translucent and more liquid. The low water also gelled, but looked more opaque. I see more difference in this batch then the two colored ones I've tried so far.

This is great information Juridaz about the different color that different lye concentrations give when both gel. The reason must be the different moisture amount they have and maybe when they have a good cure, their colors (opaqueness) might be more similar at the end because of moisture evaporation.

Kevin Dunn has a nice description about how low and high water soaps behave at page 308:

Clearly, the high water soap saponify more slowly than its low-water cousin. Because they contain the same quantities of oil and lye, both reactions must release the same amount of heat, but the low-water soap does so in a sort amount of time while the high-water soap releases heat gradually over a longer period.

So the peak temperature will be higher in low water, and lower in high water soaps.
He also says that low water soap gel at higher temperature in contrast with high water soaps, as gel phase temperature is moisture amount dependent.

 

[newbie]

My read of auntie Clara is that she thinks perhaps the low water parts don't gel and that keeping soap at 140 degrees for gelling prevents the low water part from reaching gel. I think it must gel but looks different. That does beg the question though of why the different water portions look different in the end. I just have difficulty believing, particularly in a soap like her blue ultramarine one, how being surrounded by soap gelling at about 200 degrees doesn't trigger off gel in the low portions. In the ghost swirls, you would think that if both high and low water gelled, there would be less distinction between the two. I may have to make one of those when I get home and see for myself if the low water gels. I think I'll do a slab so I can check it more readily.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...My read of auntie Clara is that she thinks perhaps the low water parts don't gel and that keeping soap at 140 degrees for gelling prevents the low water part from reaching gel. I think it must gel but looks different...."

I'm not sure I have the answers either, Newbie. What I have learned over time is that a soap that doesn't gel may still vary quite a bit in its appearance. Have you ever had a soap that saponified at fairly cool temps and the soap had a dry, almost powdery appearance to it? And other soap that you weren't certain actually went into gel -- meaning that soft, greasy, translucent vaseline-y stage -- but still ended up after saponification with a slightly-pliable waxy appearance as if it gelled?

I'm pretty sure it is possible to get a soap to "near gel, but not gel" conditions and have it appear after saponification as if it actually did gel. At least I suspect I've seen this several times in my soapy adventures. In my reading in the murky world of soap making technology and chemistry, the soap maker technician chemist types make distinctions between different types of "curd" (solid) soaps from a fibrous solid to a waxy solid. I suspect that variation is what I'm seeing.

I've made up a diagram that's based on actual laboratory information that I think explains what we're trying to do with this challenge.

Each region in the diagram is a different phase of soap -- curd soap (solid), neat soap (translucent vaseline-y greasy), middle soap (waxy mashed potatoes), and isotropic (flowable liquid). The dashed areas on either side of the middle soap are the transition areas where the soap is gradually changing from one form to another.

(Liquid soapers take note -- this diagram explains some things about why KOH soap paste does what it does during the cook, why the Facebook liquid soapers who cook their paste for hours may be totally misinterpreting what they're doing, and why diluting liquid soap can be so annoyingly difficult sometimes.)

I don't have time to explain more right now -- I absolutely have to get back to work -- but I'll post the diagram now and let you guys puzzle on it. I will be happy to answer questions and explain more later.

 

[CaraBou]

Whoa... I'll have to wrap my head around that graph a little more before I can say (or ask) anything intelligent about it.

But I did want to share this... I had the same thought you do, newbie, that it seems the low water portion would be forced into gel merely by touching the high water portion next to it (through heat conduction). I can see where a difference in water could make a difference in color/pattern regardless of gel, but it's confusing me that so much emphasis has been put on temperature. I see your point though -- Auntie Clara had a theory about the effect of temp on gel, but that doesn't mean she was right. Also, she did express uncertainty about whether the low water portion didn't gel at all, it gelled "not fully", or somehow just gelled differently. That combined with your observations and theory (and probably DeeAnna's graph as well) made me say that it would be helpful if people make (and recorded) close observation. I am hoping at the end of this challenge that people will divulge their observations so that we can collectively figure out what the mechanism for the color and pattern differences really are.

Now back to me using different CO amounts... I couldn't fully articulate in my post last night about why I thought two different CO levels may help promote the "look" we are going for. But since high CO gets hot and gels quick I was thinking that if the part I don't want to gel is low in CO, maybe it would increase the chance that my low water part doesn't gel even if my temp (140) wasn't right on the money. I shouldn't have confounded things like that, and it's probably flawed or irrelevant logic, but that was my thought process in trying to improve the likelihood of differential gel. We can ignore this sidetrack for now since it is not central to this discussion but at some point later I would like to come back to it.

 

[Saponista]

I am toying with the idea of using puréed vegetable as a colourant. Do you think this is going to over complicate things and ruin any difference in appearance between the high and low water portions?

 

[Steve85569]

It is my very limited understanding that the low water soap goes through a partial gel which is what causes the halo effect.
If the low water soap goes into full gel or no gel ( if that's even possible) there is no halo effect but the color change can be rather dramatic.
I did a third attempt ( not yet posted) at this challenging challenge and it really seems to have worked. There are four distinct colors and everything shows signs of gel in various degrees. This has been a very interesting learning experience for me and a great excuse to make soap!

 

[dibbles]

Try #2 is in the oven. I don't have especially high hopes, but we never know until we can cut it. I used an EO blend of 10x Orange, Patchouli and a little Litsea. No problems, so if anyone is still wondering about fragrances, this appears to be safe.