white powdery spot on soap

[Elizabeth Driver]

Okay not the best picture - but in the bottom soap on the right.....in the swirl - the white as been really showing up a seeming like chalk or powder. I have not seen any of my soaps before - and didn't show until it had cured for a few days. I don't know what it is - it doesn't seem like it is soda ash. I do not get a zap.....some bars don't have it all....but about 1/2 have similar powder looking spot on it. any help would be appreciated, thanks. this was an olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, avocado and shea butter....33 percent lye solution, 6 percent superheat.....

 

[TheGecko]

View attachment 43666 Okay not the best picture - but in the bottom soap on the right.....in the swirl - the white as been really showing up a seeming like chalk or powder. I have not seen any of my soaps before - and didn't show until it had cured for a few days. I don't know what it is - it doesn't seem like it is soda ash. I do not get a zap.....some bars don't have it all....but about 1/2 have similar powder looking spot on it. any help would be appreciated, thanks. this was an olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, avocado and shea butter....33 percent lye solution, 6 percent superheat.....

Assuming you used TD for the white, how much to how much soap batter?

 

[Elizabeth Driver]

Assuming you used TD for the white, how much to how much soap batter?

hi i don’t what TD is? Relatively new to soap making, and don’t use many things for colour - I did use some
Kaolin clay in the soap batter, 2 tsp diluted in small amount water....like 1 tbsp, and for colors inised activated charcoal in base, green clay 2 tsp diluted in distilled water, and I used a small amount of tumeric in one cup better yellow, rest of batter was just plain soap colour. It wasn’t there when I first cut the bars, but appeared about theee days into curing, thanks

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I had something similar happen recently in a swirled batch I made. I‘m leaning towards the white streaks in my soaps being clay.

 

[DeeAnna]

Blew up the photo to see what you're talking about. There are a lot of white spots and light colored wisps in the bottom layer. It looks to me like something (the clay?) was not fully hydrated so some stayed in clumps. And then this colorant wasn't mixed sufficiently with the soap batter.

And then there are bright white layers in the swirls through the upper half, with the lower right bar having an especially obvious one. I'd lean toward something similar -- an unexpected colorant issue -- but I don't know how you got the swirl set up, so I can't say much more than that. The only white-ish colorant is the clay, so I imagine that's the culprit. Maybe too much clay for the amount of soap batter, giving that dead-white look.

Sometimes colors develop over several days after the bars are cut and some of the water evaporates out. Colors that seem unobtrusive in the beginning becomes more obvious later, colors that are lighter turns darker, whites become whiter, etc. Hard to say in your case exactly what happened. If you split a bar in half, the colors on the freshly cut surface may look similar to what you originally saw.

 

[Elizabeth Driver]

Thanks for the input - I cut a bar in half - white powder spots also in the Middle. I poured my colors down the side of a pitcher as a swirl method
I dissolve my white clay in my essential oil and used that in the plain soap batter.....must have been some small lumps....the soap is almost 3 weeks cured....no zapping - oh well - poor hubby....he ends up with all the “weird” batches.....

 

[DeeAnna]

I wouldn't try to mix clay into EOs or fats. Clay isn't lipophilic (oil loving) so it's not going to form a smooth mixture. Disperse it in water or water-based liquids. Also some clays require time to fully hydrate, so don't be in a hurry to use the mixture right after mixing if you don't want the clay to thicken your soap batter while you're making it.

 

[Elizabeth Driver]

I wouldn't try to mix clay into EOs or fats. Clay isn't lipophilic (oil loving) so it's not going to form a smooth mixture. Disperse it in water or water-based liquids. Also some clays require time to fully hydrate, so don't be in a hurry to use the mixture right after mixing if you don't want the clay to thicken your soap batter while you're making it.

Thank you.....I haven’t had difficulty in other batches...mind you sometimes I use water - I’m going to review my notes.....I’ll try mixing in water even a couple hours before making the soap....thanks!

 

[DeeAnna]

Bentonite clay and French green clay are both expansive clays, meaning they absorb water into their structure. Any clay with "montmorillonite" or "illite" in its common or INCI name is an expansive clay.

Kaolin is not an expansive clay, so giving it a rest time after mixing is not quite as important. Can't hurt, but not as important.

 

[TheGecko]

hi i don’t what TD is? Relatively new to soap making, and don’t use many things for colour - I did use some
Kaolin clay in the soap batter, 2 tsp diluted in small amount water....like 1 tbsp, and for colors inised activated charcoal in base, green clay 2 tsp diluted in distilled water, and I used a small amount of tumeric in one cup better yellow, rest of batter was just plain soap colour. It wasn’t there when I first cut the bars, but appeared about theee days into curing, thanks

TD = Titanium Dioxide. One thing I learned about using clays is that you want to stir them again before adding to your batter and then make sure it's properly mixed in. Clay is heavier than water, it also absorbs water. You probably had some clumps of clay that ended up drying out.

 

[Elizabeth Driver]

Yes lesson learned in this batch!

 

[Hanh]

View attachment 43666 Okay not the best picture - but in the bottom soap on the right.....in the swirl - the white as been really showing up a seeming like chalk or powder. I have not seen any of my soaps before - and didn't show until it had cured for a few days. I don't know what it is - it doesn't seem like it is soda ash. I do not get a zap.....some bars don't have it all....but about 1/2 have similar powder looking spot on it. any help would be appreciated, thanks. this was an olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, avocado and shea butter....33 percent lye solution, 6 percent superheat.....

I would still sell them. It’s looks good to me