What soapy thing have you done today?

[earlene]

Well, my T&S shoe box mold wasn't skinny enough. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be, but then I thought, 'maybe I can cut the soap in half to get it to be skinny enough' but then it's too skinny. And if I cut it in half in the other direction, it would just defeat the purpose.

So I am again on the lookout for a substitute T&S mold (shoe box or something similar) to test out. But so far I haven't really found any design that jumps out at me to use with a T&S mold, so am not in that great a hurry. I'll just have to keep an eye out when shopping in future. Or re-visit my cardboard boxes upstairs. I think I have one around here that caught my eye as a possibility.

But the tall shoe box mold worked out pretty well for a crockpot full of rebatch. With the size of my crockpot I can fill this mold completely and not have to use two, so I may keep it around for a while for that purpose.

 

[Soapstars]

I made two batches of 100% coconut oil soap with only 5% superfat by mistake! Operation rescue....crockpot!

Its all back in the pot now earlene, thanks for advice.

 

[sugar_soap]

Unmolded a soap i made yesterday...and posted here after about an eon

 

[earlene]

Unmolded a soap i made yesterday...and posted here after about an eon

Very pretty! Nice job, sugar-soap.

 

[Soapstars]

Unmolded a soap i made yesterday...and posted here after about an eon

Great looking soap, will the shower water turn grey/black though? I made one with a bit too much red oxide I think and the water turned almost red!

 

[sugar_soap]

Thanks, verybpleased with it myself Tried a little - water did turn greyish. Then again it cleaned off the charcoal/oily mess i couldn't get off my hands.

 

[earlene]

Tested more soap made last December. OMG, the amount of lather is totally over-the-top incredible, far more lather than I would ever want unless I was shaving. And slightly greenish. Scratchy, too. I used walnut hulls for brown, which did produce a nice brown, but I won't be using this in the shower. I will have to take photos of this lather; it's very creamy, but just too too much of it and tinged with green. I am as yet not in love with this soap; a bit too drying as well as the skin on my hands and forearms are now itching! If the itching doesn't stop soon, I may not be getting any photos of this lather after all.

I was going for a slow-to-trace recipe and it was that for sure, but also too much CO & palm in the formula. But I also used some dandelion-infused olive oil in the formula as well. Next time I try that, I won't add walnut hulls, though, and not all that CO & palm. I was trying out the Spectrum Brand palm shortening because I wanted to see how it was to work with and it is impossible to find where I live. Too many variables in this soap to come to any conclusions about any given ingredient except the walnut hulls are too scratchy.

ETA photos:

Too much green-tinged lather:

What it looks like when not covered in lather:

 

[Kittish]

Well, my T&S shoe box mold wasn't skinny enough. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be, but then I thought, 'maybe I can cut the soap in half to get it to be skinny enough' but then it's too skinny. And if I cut it in half in the other direction, it would just defeat the purpose.

So I am again on the lookout for a substitute T&S mold (shoe box or something similar) to test out. But so far I haven't really found any design that jumps out at me to use with a T&S mold, so am not in that great a hurry. I'll just have to keep an eye out when shopping in future. Or re-visit my cardboard boxes upstairs. I think I have one around here that caught my eye as a possibility.

But the tall shoe box mold worked out pretty well for a crockpot full of rebatch. With the size of my crockpot I can fill this mold completely and not have to use two, so I may keep it around for a while for that purpose.

Make your own mold exactly the size you want. Pick out a sturdy cardboard box, and start cutting! Duct tape the whole thing together.

 

[SoapAddict415]

Got two batches of soap in progress at the moment, both 500g batches. One is intended to be soap dough, so is unscented and uncolored for now. The other is going into the new small slab mold I found on ebay. It's 6 inches square on the inside and close to two inches deep. Depending on how thick I pour I should either get 4 square bars or six chunky bars. Planning on red/orange/yellow swirls for that one, coloring with iron oxides. I don't really have much in the way of spicy EOs to use in it, though, to match the fall colors, so went with orange, patchouli and a touch of lemongrass.


Next day-ish (I have a weird schedule)- Soap dough seems to have about the texture of sugar cookie dough, the kind you can roll out and cut. I lined the mold I poured it into with a freezer bag, and after it sat just long enough to firm up a bit in the mold I closed the bag up, and am going to let it sit (mostly) undisturbed for at least another full day. Lifting out the bag and poking at it from time to time... that doesn't count as disturbing it, right? As long as I don't open the bag?

The red, orange and yellow soap is looking good. I spritzed it with alcohol and covered the top of the mold with plastic wrap and have left that alone. So far, there doesn't seem to be ash forming. Unless I see it starting to ash, I'm going to leave it alone, too, for another day. This recipe stays soft enough to cut easily for two or three days out of the mold, so I don't have to be in any hurry.

And I finally got my raw meat soap grated up and in the crock pot to rebatch again. I added most of my orange peel batch, too (in an effort to offset adding WAY too much iron oxide in the first rebatch) so there's between three and four pounds of soap there. I also added 3/4 teaspoon of activated charcoal to hopefully make it look less like raw meat when I'm done with it. I used my food processor to grate the soap up, with the smallest shred blade. Worked fairly well. Took about as long to set up, use, and clean the food processor as it would have to grate the soap by hand I think, but there was considerably less effort in using the processor.
Further update regarding the rebatch- the raw meat is now cooked meat! Huzzah! Um. Or something. I smooshed the grated soap into balls, between 2" and 3" in diameter. Didn't really want to mess with trying to get it into a mold and cut, especially since it wasn't really getting very melty. It seems to have stuck together fairly well, I'll check and see how much structural integrity my giant soap meatballs have in a few days.

I spent half an hour updating my soap binder, adding pics of each batch and making sure all of my notes were fully up to date.

Pictures! Pictures! I wanna see how your soap meatballs turned out !

 

[SoapAddict415]

Got two batches of soap in progress at the moment, both 500g batches. One is intended to be soap dough, so is unscented and uncolored for now. The other is going into the new small slab mold I found on ebay. It's 6 inches square on the inside and close to two inches deep. Depending on how thick I pour I should either get 4 square bars or six chunky bars. Planning on red/orange/yellow swirls for that one, coloring with iron oxides. I don't really have much in the way of spicy EOs to use in it, though, to match the fall colors, so went with orange, patchouli and a touch of lemongrass.


Next day-ish (I have a weird schedule)- Soap dough seems to have about the texture of sugar cookie dough, the kind you can roll out and cut. I lined the mold I poured it into with a freezer bag, and after it sat just long enough to firm up a bit in the mold I closed the bag up, and am going to let it sit (mostly) undisturbed for at least another full day. Lifting out the bag and poking at it from time to time... that doesn't count as disturbing it, right? As long as I don't open the bag?

The red, orange and yellow soap is looking good. I spritzed it with alcohol and covered the top of the mold with plastic wrap and have left that alone. So far, there doesn't seem to be ash forming. Unless I see it starting to ash, I'm going to leave it alone, too, for another day. This recipe stays soft enough to cut easily for two or three days out of the mold, so I don't have to be in any hurry.

And I finally got my raw meat soap grated up and in the crock pot to rebatch again. I added most of my orange peel batch, too (in an effort to offset adding WAY too much iron oxide in the first rebatch) so there's between three and four pounds of soap there. I also added 3/4 teaspoon of activated charcoal to hopefully make it look less like raw meat when I'm done with it. I used my food processor to grate the soap up, with the smallest shred blade. Worked fairly well. Took about as long to set up, use, and clean the food processor as it would have to grate the soap by hand I think, but there was considerably less effort in using the processor.
Further update regarding the rebatch- the raw meat is now cooked meat! Huzzah! Um. Or something. I smooshed the grated soap into balls, between 2" and 3" in diameter. Didn't really want to mess with trying to get it into a mold and cut, especially since it wasn't really getting very melty. It seems to have stuck together fairly well, I'll check and see how much structural integrity my giant soap meatballs have in a few days.

I spent half an hour updating my soap binder, adding pics of each batch and making sure all of my notes were fully up to date.

Pictures! Pictures! I wanna see how your soap meatballs turned out !

 

[SoapAddict415]

Picture please! I want to see how your soap meatballs turned out !

 

[earlene]

Make your own mold exactly the size you want. Pick out a sturdy cardboard box, and start cutting! Duct tape the whole thing together.

I've never used a T&S mold, so don't really know what exact measurements I want. I don't really want to cut up cardboard and tape it all together. I'd rather find something that really fits a reasonable size so that's what I'm looking for as I look at some boxes.

Maybe what I should really do is make a divider for the ED mold to make it act as a T&S mold. That mold is already really tall, but quite wide. It makes for some really hefty bars of soap when it's filled to the top. So perhaps I'll look for something to fit to measure the length of that mold. I'll probably enlist my husband to cut something up for me. I truly don't like cutting cardboard.

 

[Kittish]

Pictures! Pictures! I wanna see how your soap meatballs turned out ��!

As you wish. They're not pretty. And I've decided I really don't like the fragrance in them. And they've probably still got WAY too much red iron oxide, hands show color even with brief handling. And after a week, they are starting to show a tendency to shed shreds. I think this is gonna be a toss.

earlene- a divider sounds like a great way to go! If you can get your DH to cut you one out of a heavy weight plastic sign (garage sale sign; we had an old 'beware of dog' sign; for sale signs, anything similar) you'll have an easily reusable divider. Get him to cut more than one for you, and the end support pieces, and you can do multiple colors vertically in a soap as well. The ink on the one I used didn't bleed into my soap the first time I used it, and the plastic itself seems to be ok. Haven't used it a second time, yet.

sugar_soap, that's a beautiful soap!

 

[toxikon]

Wet rendered my jar of leftover bacon fat and ended up with 500g. Slight bacon scent but not bad, and the colour ended up being a cream colour.

Decided to make a batch of "bacon" soap with it today, everything seemed to work nicely so I'm excited to slice it up in a couple days!

Woohoo for recycling!

 

[Dahila]

made a batch of Devil's claw salve, designed the labels, printed got ready for market, then packed some soaps

 

[Viore]

Made two soap batches today: sandalwood and coffee. Of course, the coffee soap is made with actual coffee and has the grounds for exfoliating. I wish there was a way to combat that nasty smell the coffee makes when it mixes with the lye!

 

[psfred]

Made a mostly successful "fluid" HP soap. Ended up a bit lumpy, will use a little more water initially next time I think. Actually turned into soap in less than 15 min, though. I think the secret is to use some sugar in the lye water for extra heat, otherwise it tends to hang for a long time and the "applesauce" stage unless you beat your poor stick blender to death. About the same after it volcanoes, though, as just stick blending without sugar.

Fortunately I'm not bothered by lumps. It did stay nicely fluid though, with some extra water and a tablespoon or so ppo of buttermilk (no yoghurt around, and I'm too lazy to go buy some). Use 1% sodium lactate in the lye as well, so I think I'll be able to do a hot process set of scent test bars.

Now I'm off to mop the basement floor again, gonna take forever to get all that honey up from our massive honey harvest yesterday.

 

[Soapstars]

What it looks like when not covered in lather:

My - that's a pretty soap!

 

[earlene]

I was up most of the night; not sure why I was so awake, but I used the time to watch a few soapmaking videos. I finally found something I want to do in a T&S mold here in this video. It doesn't have to be in a T&S mold, but I think it might be a nice one for this technique.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gnavyOqdTk[/ame]

 

[earlene]

Okay, I found I can order the size of HDPE board I need to use to make my standard ED mold into a T&S mold for $10.00 from TAP Plastic. My brother the engineer has always spoken very highly of TAP Plastic and when I lived in California, that's where I would go. But the shipping would cost me $15, so I wonder if maybe my town's home appliance and kitchen remodel store could beat the price. I may give them a visit and see what I can find out.

If I get a piece that is 11.25 inches long, 0.75 inch thick, 3 & 11/16 inches tall (or wide, depending on how you look at it), it should fit inside the standard ED mold and stay firmly in place and I wouldn't have to worry about an unstable side if I used a thinner piece.

ETA: When my husband came home and I told about what I want, he tried to find a TAP Plastic or other such store where we could stop off and get what I want, but nothing between here and the East Coast where we are going next week. So he asked if other materials would work. We settled on a piece of wood cut to size and sanded smoothly enough not to cause any tears to the silicone mold, that I could cover in freezer paper while in use. It will be cheaper and I won't have to pay the shipping. So perhaps I'll be doing this soon.