Trouble with lard soap

[Barbsbreakingbath]

I learned something here- with lard soap you can play with colors- yet another reason to put piggie in your soap.

 

[penelopejane]

^^^ OO is the same. Come back to the veggie side [emoji2]

 

[Navaria]

There should be no problem with 24 hours. Maybe you just got the perfect storm of things going wrong.

(1) Remember that room temp soaping is not a general-purpose technique. It became popular when crafters got into making a lot of soft recipes (maybe because Soapcalc told them to). Recipes with a lot of hard oil need traditional soaping temps, like 110 F or sometimes more.

(2) Use less water for slow recipes. Don't use less than 28% lye concentration for anything. When I want to do a high-water batch I use 30% concentration. Testing has demonstrated that with too much water there can be slight separation that makes your soap more alkaline at the bottom than the top, even when things seem to go mostly okay.

(3) With some recipes you have to be more careful to mix enough for a stable emulsion. You didn't necessarily portion it at the wrong time, but it's really useful if your color portions are big enough and in containers that are suitable for stick blending. Otherwise it can be hard to give them a good kick before pouring if they're too thin.

(4) Personally I would skip the cottonseed oil. It only helps slow things down and I don't feel it's likely to bring anything useful to the party. I'd suggest keep it simple and make the 80/20 recipe, or if you want to soften it a bit you can add some olive oil and/or 5% castor.

Thank you TOMH, I'm going to print this off and put it with my recipe so I remember all this when I make my next lard batch Cause there WILL be another one. I'm a big believer in "If at first you don't succeed; try, try again" lol