time to trace

[WilsonFamilyPicnic]

last weekend was a 5 batcher....and some questions have arisen.

i was using a 30% lye solution as was suggested to me. on earlier batches it was lower. anyway, the soap seemed to trace really quickly. within about 5 minutes with the stick blender doing blend then stir, blend, then stir (making 1 lb batches mostly). is this how quickly it usually goes with a higher lye %? we also colored with ultramarines and micas in the oil.

we also made a big 4.5 lb batch to try out our cool plastic shoebox mold. this took a little longer, is that becuase it was a bigger volume of stuff to mix so it takes longer to get it all to react?

 

[morsedillon]

The modified Castille that I usually make (64% Olive, 18% Palm, 18% Coconut) takes about 7 or 8 minutes to get to the pour-trace phase. This is for a 3kg (6.6 lb) batch with a 12.5M (33%) NaOH solution.

Generally speaking I would say the smaller batch size in proportion to your mixing capacity would cause quicker trace, while larger batches would be somewhat longer.

Trace time is also pretty dependent on what oils you use and other things like fragrance oils, et cetera. If you weren't doing anything too off-the-wall though, I would say that 5 minutes is a pretty reasonable trace time on that small of a batch.