Sticky! Did I do something wrong?

[chibi-soap]

Hi,

I'm not terribly experienced at making soap, but I think all the batches I've made have been pretty firm 24 hours after making them. The latest batch is now 36 hours old and it's very sticky, like pizza dough that's too wet, or something.

My recipe is
4% avocado oil
15% coconut oil
15% lard
8% macadamia
58% Olive oil

SF = 5% water= 38%

Fragrance Peppermint and Eucalyptus oil

I've made this recipe before but using milk for some of the water and adding colloidal oats at trace.

Would you expect this to be sticky? Will it be OK for Christmas?

 

[Millie]

It will not be sticky by christmas It has a lot of extra water to evaporate, especially for a high OO soap. It will be ok by christmas, and fabulous by summer. For a fabulous soap by christmas, try swapping your lard and olive oil percentages.

Try a 33% lye concentration for your next batch - it is very easy to work with. DeeAnna recently wrote a useful article on the problems of calculating water by oil weight here: https://classicbells.com/soap/waterInSoap.html

 

[Cellador]

Since it has a high percentage of liquid oils & 38% water, it will take longer to firm-up. Did it gel? If not, that will also increase the amount of time needed. Check again in 2 days ir so.

 

[MorpheusPA]

+Above. High water, high olive soaps take a while to firm up and not be sticky.

I think my record is five days in the mold before I could remove it, and even so, it was still a bit tacky. And as noted, high-olive soaps will take a while to really shine. I just tested an 80% olive soap I made 2 1/2 years ago. I was unimpressed with it in 2015, but nowadays? It's pretty good.

Yours isn't so high olive. I'd test it in December...but I'd also be tempted to make a high lard, modest coconut soap just in case you have to substitute and store the olive soap for another year.

 

[chibi-soap]

Thanks everyone.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for December.
I made other batches with 80% and 70% OO a few weeks back. The 80% was a bit soft, but not like this.

I cut the soap this morning. It stuck to knife but I think it's OK.