Soap is soft

[Barbsbreakingbath]

Soap was very soft after curing 2 days in a box mold with silicon liner. It was firm enough to cut, but just barely. I set the pieces out to cure for 4-6 weeks.
Here's the recipe:
30% olive oil
30% coconut oil
30% palm oil
10% sweet almond oil
4.6 oz lye
10.6 oz water
BB Yuzu Fragrance oil. Total batch yield 32 oz

Did I use too much water? Too much olive oil? Should I use Sodium lactate as a matter of course? Thanks

 

[toxikon]

Soap can take a few days to harden up enough to unmolding and cut. Sometimes even a week.

 

[Arimara]

Did you use a soap calculator with this recipe? Your superfat is extremely high for this recipe and is the most likely culprit for your soaps being soft.

 

[Barbsbreakingbath]

Soap calculator

I used Bramble Berry's Soap calculator and was going for 5% super fat.
I always heard that 5% was optimal?
Oh and thank you for taking time to answer my question
Also, I messed up my lye and H2O numbers. They are now correct. Sorry

 

[Arimara]

Ok, with that in mind, and with a slight variation from soapcalc, you're recipe checks out for the most part. It could be either the lye is a little old or the fact that it's roughly a 30% lye concentration used and the soap didn't gel. I'm leaning more on the latter. Ungelled soaps can remain on the soft side for a while whereas gelled soaps wind up being harder.

 

[Barbsbreakingbath]

Sodium lactate

I usually Soap around 120 degrees. Because I'm a beginner, I really haven't tried to make my soap gel yet. Do you see a downside to using Sodium lactate?

 

[Arimara]

I'm also still a beginner and I have only used sodium lactate once. Interesting experience and it does make for a harder bar. If you decide to gel your soaps, you can use your oven, if you have one or you can wrap your mold in an old towel and place it on top of a heating pad in a storage container.

 

[bumbleklutz]

Ok, with that in mind, and with a slight variation from soapcalc, you're recipe checks out for the most part. It could be either the lye is a little old or the fact that it's roughly a 30% lye concentration used and the soap didn't gel. I'm leaning more on the latter. Ungelled soaps can remain on the soft side for a while whereas gelled soaps wind up being harder.

Your recipe looks fine to me. I'm agreeing with this being a temperature issue. I recently had the same issue with soaps coming out soft, like the consistency of modelling clay. The problem was the that the air conditioning was on and it was blowing in the area where the soap was "put to bed".

In the future, you might try placing your mold on a heating pad set to low or medium, and covering your mold with a couple of heavy bath towels. Leave the heating pad on for 30-60 minutes and then turn it off. That will help encourage gel so your soap will be firmer when unmolding.

As far as sodium lactate, I use it in just about every batch. I use 1 teaspoon per pound of oils. So for your recipe 2 teaspoons should do the trick. It will help with the firmness of your soap as well. I add it to my lye water after my lye has fully dissolved.

You can give your soft bars a good long cure time, and they will probably firm up on their own. However, if you are like me, and can't leave well enough alone; then I wholeheartedly recommend DeeAnna's "cpop after the fact" method. The instructions can be found here: https://classicbells.com/soap/cpopAfterTheFact.html . I used it with much success on my soft batches.

All of us have a failed batch now and then :-? , that's just the soap gremlins having their fun so don't let it discourage you, and happy soaping.