What is your favorite recipe for swirling techniques?

[SunRiseArts]

What is your favorite recipe for swirling techniques?

I have found that different recipes give you different times for working your designs .... some of them, and my new favorite with lard, needs you to work quickly.

What is a good recipe when you need plenty of time to play?

 

[dibbles]

I find lard to be slow tracing. I use lard at 40-50%, coconut, and a combination of soft oils, usually olive (not pomace), and avocado. I keep the castor lower, 2-3%.

 

[Susie]

Lard is a slow trace oil. You just have to be sure to soap warm enough to avoid false trace, yet cool enough to avoid speeding true trace.

 

[milky]

From what I could find online, lard has a melting point around 86F.
Since I always use goat milk for my liquid part, my lye solution is usually a lot cooler than most to avoid scorching. It brings down the temperature of the melted oils quite a bit. I try to avoid false trace by keeping it all just above 86F, or the temp of the oil/butter with the highest melting point (shea is around 90F).

In the future I'm going to try the method of dissolving lye in an equal weight of water and blending ~86F milk into the oil before adding the lye solution. I'm hoping it yields more consistent results. Then again, might need to use an ice-water bath to avoid overheating.

Do you think it could have been false trace or another aspect of the recipe?
Knowing your recipe would definitely help troubleshoot.

 

[toxikon]

Lots of lard and olive oil will give you swirly time! When I want a bit more working time for a complex recipe, I'll just scale down the coconut oil in my normal recipe and add more olive. Then only stickblend to emulsion and switch to a spatula. Gives me lots of working time, assuming I'm not using a temperamental FO.

 

[SunRiseArts]

WhenI use lard, it hardens pretty quick, and I have no working time. :-?

 

[SunRiseArts]

Bump?

For more ideas?

Which oil exactly is the one that hardens fast then? Coconut?

I just did a soap with only OO and CO, and I am so darn mad. It harden too quickly on me, and is not what I envisioned.

 

[Britannic]

@SunRiseArts, SBing, temperature and lye concentration (and of course the recipe itself) are key factors, by decreasing lye concentration (e.g. 29% from 34%) and mixing lye and oils at 100F, I can drastically slow trace. I usually stir and blend to emulsion only, before introducing colour.

 

[lenarenee]

WhenI use lard, it hardens pretty quick, and I have no working time. :-?

I use a lot of lard and I have the opposite problem you do - waiting for the batter to thicken enough to do swirls (without feathering)

I soap cold, use 30 - 33% water, and stick blend to thin trace.

Does your recipe also contain palm or butters?

Your oo and co recipe: how much of each? Soap temp? How much do you stick blend? Was it pomice olive oil?

 

[Soapprentice]

For me, CO-70, OO-20, Shea-10, SF-20... temperatures-80-90F... full water works great... SB till emulsion and then a whisk or spatula..

 

[cmzaha]

The recipe I posted in the white soap thread is a slow trace recipe even with all the tallow

 

[aihrat]

This is my personal swirl recipe. I use it for ombre soap and/or accelerating EOs. It's a bit spendy but makes an enjoyable soap with good hardness and lather after cure.

20% Sweet Almond oil
15% Coconut oil
15% Canola oil (or Sunflower oil)
20% Olive oil (EVOO or Pure)
20% Shea butter
10% Cocoa butter

Works best at about 30 degrees celsius. 30 minute working time after emulsion.

 

[DeeAnna]

I agree the recipe can certainly affect the working time, but I think technique is just as important. I get a lot more working time by doing far less stick blending than I used to. If I want more working time, I don't necessarily change the recipe or use a special recipe, instead I carefully control my stick blending time.

My go-to recipes vary with time, but they are usually some variation of 50%+ lard and around 10-15% coconut oil with the balance usually being some high oleic oil (HO sunflower at the moment), occasionally a modest amount of tallow, and sometimes a dab of castor. Temperature of the soap batter at first is 100 to 120 deg F -- high enough to keep the lard fully melted.

Carolyn (cmzaha) says castor accelerates trace. I haven't done any side-by-side comparisons of a castor recipe vs a no-castor recipe to have an opinion of my own, but I've kept that in mind.

Another important factor is using non accelerating fragrances, whether EO or FO. That might seem like a no-brainer, but it's easy to overlook.

Colorants can affect working time too -- a lot of titanium dioxide (or other pigmented colorant, I suppose) tends to thicken the batter more quickly.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

IME, lard can be fast or slow depending on temperature. If you're careful about hitting 110F, you can have a moderate time to work. OTOH, if you soap at 150F, you'll have pudding really quickly.

And I think some of the issues are communication. Fast and slow are subjective and each person will judge them against what they think is "normal." When I say lard and olive can be slow, I mean I'll have enough time to do designs, but I still can't dawdle. OTOH, I'll see a youtuber with 15 or 20 minutes of working time which would be glacially slow for me.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Good points! It can also be tricky because soaping cooler is helpful, but you need to make sure that it's not so cool that the hard oils want to solidify again

 

[lenarenee]

This recipe: 5% castor, 15% of some ho oleic oil, 20% co, 60% lard (give or take a few percentages)
, sb'd to barest trace, soaped cold, uncolored and unfragranced until divided out for the mold you're working on, can sit in the bowl for one hour and look like pudding, but then can be stirred out to perform successful drop swirls.

I can make a triple or quadruple recipe and swirl all 3 to 4 molds with this one batch. Keep in mind that excludes extremely complex swirls with dividers and more than 4 or 5 colors per mold. But itp, drop, tiger.....all good. And I'm a slow worker. At times I even need to sb the batter to a thicker state (thin batter makes feathery swirls, and I prefer crisp well defined swirls).

 

[SunRiseArts]

Thank you all. I think I need to keep the temperature a little higher, and try to control my obsession with the blender.

I will make a list of the suggestions and try another batch next week if I have time.

I kind of safe it. So many things went wrong, including the blue morphed on me. The top is more uneven that I wanted, but since it was the ocean, I do not mind the uneven top. as much.

I will wait until Monday to cut it, and hopefully I do not have a lot of air pockets from trying to drag the cement like batter!

I am practicing because I am an oil painter and want to start translating my artist work on soap.

 

[styarr]

My go to for swirling is:
50% Lard
25% Canola
15% coconut
5% shea
5% castor

Lye concentration at 30% in soapcalc and soap around 110. Stick blend until emulsion.

 

[SunRiseArts]

My go to for swirling is:
50% Lard
25% Canola
15% coconut
5% shea
5% castor

Lye concentration at 30% in soapcalc and soap around 110. Stick blend until emulsion.

I am not a fan of canola. Any suggestions of what to substitute it with?

 

[styarr]

I am not a fan of canola. Any suggestions of what to substitute it with?

Most liquid oils would work, olive or soybean would be what I usually swap with.