Too late to unmold from PVC pipe? Won't come out! (SOLVED)

[Guest]

Jeanette, I'm guessing the 12" is used to free up like under baked goods, maybe cookies? It's more or less just a flat piece of thin steel about an inch wide and slightly tapered. I just used it in place of a saw in my miter box. I discovered that it works best if you hold each end and rock it down through the log until you reach the bottom. (I premarked 1" intervals first.) I've cut it up already but don't have time to take pictures because I'm doing batch #3 before dinner.

Sonja, couldn't have done it without your suggestion! And yes, I'll shoot it tomorrow and post it. They're rather interesting looking, have sufficient scent, but oops when you wash with them you get slightly colored suds. That's it between me and annatto powder. I'm switching to mineral pigments, and already got my first order, 2 kits of about 7-8 colors each (about a tablespoon per color). When I find colors that work I can up the quantity on single colors.

 

[kwahlne]

Lovehound, I have a sidenote question about your original post. I use soapcalc as well and you indicated you had a hardness value of 44. My soapcalc doesn't indicate that my soap will be "hard" until the value is up to the 150's. Was 44 a typo or do we have different soapcalc versions or something? Just curious.

 

[Guest]

It beats me but I've read other discussions about hardness numbers and they were all two digit numbers. I'm using this one:

http://www.soapcalc.com/calc/soapcalc.asp

Actually yesterday and today I've been getting "Bad Request." Luckily I saved SoapCalc to my local computer and was able to use that yesterday although its ability to save recipes is not functional unless it runs on the server.

Note also that I am referring to combined hardness numbers and not the individual ones which may go up over 100 (not sure).

 

[kwahlne]

Oh, sorry! My mistake! I have SEEN that soapcalc before but the one I am actually using is a different one. A book that I have also refers to 145-165 being the "hard" soap. Yours probably uses a different rating scale.

 

[digit]

also you can try taking a can like a soup can that just fits inside place the pvc pipe bottom on top of the can and push down. Thats how I got mine out.Sonja

Works like a charm every time.

Lovehound - I can picture myself banging a pipe and screaming like a wild banshee demanding it release my soap.

kwahlne - I believe you are looking at the INS numbers which are related to hardness.

Digit

 

[Guest]

I've seen INS should be 160 as an ideal goal, but only saw INS explained one place. (Dr. Robert McDaniel's book.) Is that 160 in common agreement or is there some other goal?

 

[kwahlne]

Digit, yes you are correct. I found where I read that, and it was referring to INS, which is what my soap calculator uses to determine hardness.

Lovehound, I read that 145-160 INS is a good hard soap.

 

[SoapyGal]

I really got a kick out of this thread.... thanks you crazy soapers

How is this soap working out for you now, Greg... almost a month later...

 

[Guest]

As I recall the batch that got stuck was my failed batch with too much colorant (annatto, so much it colored the bubbles) and too strong a scent (ylang EO). However I produced an avocado batch and a lard batch next and both were among my nicer results.

Although some don't like them, the circular soaps are very attractive in a geometric sense and offer the beginner an easy way to make very regular bars. Since the log is a uniform 3" diameter, the thickness is the only dimension you have to control. It's a lot easier to whack off a bunch of 1" thick circular bars than to make rectangular bars with good edges, good corners, and uniform weight too. Getting sharp corners is much easier with circular bars because there's only two edges on a circular bar where a rectangular bar has 12 edges. Considering that it's obvious that it's a lot easier to make a good, uniform circular bars than to make rectangular bars of the same uniformity.

If other beginners have as much trouble as I did producing perfectly uniform bars then they will appreciate the acceleration this circular pipe mold can give to their soaping careers. These days my rectangular bars are approaching the same uniformity of my circular bars, but in the beginning the nice circular bars allowed me to focus on the more challenging problems of getting the scents, colorants, and decorations (swirls) right.

I was shopping at Lowe's over the weekend and found nice 3" ABS pipes available in a shorter length, one foot instead of two foot, so I couldn't resist picking up the cute 12" baby pipe mold, less than two bucks, along with the flexible rubber test cap bringing the total cost up to about $5. A two pound batch fills about 80 cu. in. of the 85 cu. in. pipe, leaving about 3/4" at the top.

A two pound mold is a great size for making one to two pound batches, and accepts varying batch sizes while still producing uniform bars, just more or fewer. With a rectangular mold if you reduce the batch size you simultaneously reduce one of the dimensions, making thinner bars in a flat mold or shorter/narrower bars in an edge-on mold, which is not acceptable.