Soap is looking weird - HELP

[soap-rc]

Still new to soap making. First few batches turned out pretty good. The latest batch looks weird and not sure if there is anything wrong. None of my books describe what i've got, so I hope someone will be able to shed some light.

The mould used is PVC pipe.
After 4 days sitting in the pipe, the soap is fine (hard and with solid colour) on the outside close to the pipe, but the middle of the soap looks translucent and is soft to touch.

The only variant between this and the previous batches is the temperature where the soap was left since pouring, the room is not heated and around 16-18C. Could this be the cause?

 

[soapbuddy]

Sounds like you got a partial gel. Here's what I would do. Either put a heating pad around it and force the whole thing into gel again, or put it in the freezer til hard. Then run warm water over the outside of the pipe for the soap to relase. When the frozen soap comes to room temp, see if you can cut it. If it's too soft to cut, give it a couple of days then try cutting it again.

 

[soap-rc]

Can this be done now, after 4 days? I would have thought the gel should have disappeared by now, because the soap was made on Monday.

Normally we would have put it in the freezer and taken it out, but this time we decided to leave in the pipe for a week until it shrinks so we can take it out, because putting in the freezer appeared to make the scent much weaker.

 

[soapbuddy]

Yes it can be made to go back into gel. It does take patience though. It will take some time before the gel goes all the way to the inside. With the freezer method, mine didn't diminish the scent. Yes, the scent was weak while the soap was frozen, but once cut and cured, it worked out fine.

 

[soap-rc]

shame we haven't got heating pads of any sort in the house. I may bring into a warmer room.

Maybe it will get hard on the inside in a few days.

 

[soapbuddy]

If you don't need the mold right away, then just leave it in, til the middle gets a little harder. It might help if you can get the whole soap out, so it has a chance to dry up faster.

 

[Chris-2010]

Did you insulate your moulds after your pour? You want the temperature of the soap to stay high for more than 18 hours, I like 24.

I have a tube set up also, which I occasionally use in conjunction with my regular block moulds. The tubes have a much higher surface area to volume ratio (compared to big blocks), so it's a lot harder to keep them hot than an array of big blocks.

I use an insulated sleeve over each tube, and then position the tubes right-close to the regular block moulds so that all the moulds can share heat together. Then all of the molds are 'put to bed': bundled under multiple layers of comforters to keep in the heat from the exothermic saponification reaction and drive the temperature up. Heat is good. I poured and put to bed 11 block moulds this afternoon, but no tubes this time, but I included a set of tubes in the previous run, all was nice and hot during the cure, and all came out well. I also use thick plastic sheeting as a tube liner to make it easy to extract the soap.

 

[soap-rc]

No, we didn't insulate this batch nor the previous batches. Previous batches were great, but they were made in summer. I suspect this time the tubes did lose their heat very quickly because the room is cold.

The question is, what do we do now? Do we put the tubes on the radiator to warm up again or leave in the hope that the soft gelly-like middle will set eventually?