judymoody
Well-Known Member
I am making soap for my mother-in-law's birthday, which is next week. She will be visiting us the following week. I had meant to get to this weeks ago, but it didn't happen. She knows about cure time, so it's OK. She loves lilac. After searching for a good half hour or more for my lilac FO, I realize I'm out of my preferred brand but I have two sampler bottles of lilac - one from BB and one from AHRE, both well-reviewed, there's just enough for my batch, so I'm off and running.
I figured since lilac can be a bit speedy, I'd try for a layered soap of darker and lighter purple (her favorite color). The color's a bit stubborn to incorporate but I SB for a good while before adding my fragrance and it's slow to trace. I stir in the FO with a spoon and the soap is perfectly well behaved. Hmm, maybe it's one of those FOs that actually slow trace. So I decide to go for a swirl. And I'm attacking it with the SB and it's poking right along. Finally I decide I've had enough and I start layering the soap in the mold, and it's still nice and fluid.
And then....
I've got more soap than will fit in my mold. Oops, what went wrong? I check my recipe (I had halved my normal 1800 gram recipe). Instead of writing 242 for water, I wrote 442. Oops. So 121 grams of lye to 442 grams of water, a ratio of 1:3.6 instead of roughly 1:2. That's some seriously wet soap. Full water in soap calc is about 1:2.8.
Will this even become soap?
I am CPOPing it in hopes that I will be able to cut it before 2015. For now, I've decided to let it saponify as an experiment - how much can you push your water amount without it completely falling apart?
Stay tuned for more developments as they unfold! If it works, the soap will be pretty. It it separates into a complete gooey mess and then I can just rebatch it and cook off the water.
Of course, I am now completely out of lilac but Peak Candle is close by and ships fast.
I figured since lilac can be a bit speedy, I'd try for a layered soap of darker and lighter purple (her favorite color). The color's a bit stubborn to incorporate but I SB for a good while before adding my fragrance and it's slow to trace. I stir in the FO with a spoon and the soap is perfectly well behaved. Hmm, maybe it's one of those FOs that actually slow trace. So I decide to go for a swirl. And I'm attacking it with the SB and it's poking right along. Finally I decide I've had enough and I start layering the soap in the mold, and it's still nice and fluid.
And then....
I've got more soap than will fit in my mold. Oops, what went wrong? I check my recipe (I had halved my normal 1800 gram recipe). Instead of writing 242 for water, I wrote 442. Oops. So 121 grams of lye to 442 grams of water, a ratio of 1:3.6 instead of roughly 1:2. That's some seriously wet soap. Full water in soap calc is about 1:2.8.
Will this even become soap?
I am CPOPing it in hopes that I will be able to cut it before 2015. For now, I've decided to let it saponify as an experiment - how much can you push your water amount without it completely falling apart?
Stay tuned for more developments as they unfold! If it works, the soap will be pretty. It it separates into a complete gooey mess and then I can just rebatch it and cook off the water.
Of course, I am now completely out of lilac but Peak Candle is close by and ships fast.
