Why has my soap white stripes?

[bjoergeskogen]

Hi!

I have been making some soap the last 6 months and it's an amazing hobby. I have signed up to join a marked in Bergen the 1 of june and since I first make the soap base, let it lie for 6 weeks and then melt it down again and add essential oils.

I am so glad I found this forum, since I had my first troubled batch some days ago.
So I was hoping to get some help from more experienced people out there.

The thing is I made a new soap batch from a recipie I found without palm oil. It went like this:

Tea Tree Soap

Coconut oil – 42 oz
Shea butter – 10 oz
Apricot kernel – 10 oz
Avocado oil – 10 oz
Castor oil – 8 oz
Olive oil – 40 oz
Rice bran – 10 oz

Lye – 18.3 oz
Water – 36 oz

Tea tree essential oil – 4 oz

The thing is, I didn't add the tea tree oil since i want to add it when I melt it down again. But I added 2 ounces of jojobaoil that I had instead.
All the ingredients were new and fresh, and I used unreffined shea butter in it. Everything went smooth, and I weighed every ingredient correct and mixed the lye water and the melted oils at about 55 degrees.

When I was unmolding it the next day it had an uneven color. the soap itself is some sort of yellow, very natural color that looks like the shea butter, but the problem is that it has white stripes in it. Not very clear ones but they are there. And also some tiny holes here and there in the soap, but these are not filled with oil. And its only some places.

I wonder now if the soap has a to high concentration of lye in it where the white stripes are, or if its only the unreffined she butter that makes it look like this. I made quit a big batch. Can I sell it if I rebatch it? What is the quality like then?

I would jump out of happiness if someone would take the time to answer be!

The kindest greetings from Norway.
Ida
https://www.facebook.com/bjoergeskogen

 

[OliveOil2]

I think you need to wait to sell your soap, please take the time to learn more before you start selling. This is not meant in any way to hurt your feelings , but you shouldn't start selling until you know the basics. Your Lye isn't a problem, don't know how you managed such a steep water discount, and your cleansing is at the very top of the chart, which means your soap may be too harsh for individuals with sensitive skin. Also when you do sell it isn't cost effective to use as many luxury ingredients as you have in your recipe, and you don't need them in such large quanities. I am sure others will chime in on the white stripes, I think it's the large amount of Shea Butter, but not sure.

 

[coffeetime]

Learning to make soap can be an expensive hobby. I've had to accept that there will be a lot of money spent on test batches, failed batches, and supplies. It can be tempting to rush into selling, but if you do, you run the risk of ruining your business early on. I mean what if you have a terrible batch and don't know enough about soapmaking and your recipes to recognize it? Then you sell your soaps to the public, they hate it and spread the word...no more customers. Or heaven forbid you make a soap that actually harms someone (as it can).

To answer your questions though, the holes are likely air bubbles either from mixing or from pouring at too heavy a trace. The streaking happens sometimes if your soap has gone through gel phase. And you can't just add extra oils at the end- your superfat will go up and it will change the lather and shelf life of your soap. Always run your recipes through a soap calculator before making changes.

Edit: OliveOil2 we responded at the same time, but I agree that the Shea could be the culprit. I get that in one batch that has Shea and cocoa Bs but I quite like the effect. And I CPOP my soaps.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I'm also not sure why you would melt it down again to add the EO. I imagine it has something to do with curing the soap without losing the scent as much, but it also seems that it would be annoying to have to do that.

Oils and saponified oils have different melting points, and so don't always solidify together - this is thought to leave streaks which can be noticable

 

[shunt2011]

I agree with the previous poster. Please do more research etc and know what you are making and that it's a quality product before selling it to others. Your cleansing is way too high, being so new to it you should also be usinging more water at least 1:1.5 but that is still pushing it for a beginner. Are you running your recipes through a soap calc? You can see your approximate properties of the soap.

 

[coffeetime]

I ran that recipe through a soap calc and it is 31% CO with only a 3% SF. In my opinion, that would not be a pleasant soap to use. And that's including the last minute jojoba. And I'm not sure how you got it to work with that steep a water discount. Did it try to seize?

 

[coffeetime]

And it looks like it would make about 40/4.5oz bars, that is a huge batch for a beginner soapmaker. There are so many things that can go awry, and then you have 10lbs of wasted money and materials. I would definitely stick to smaller batches if you are trying to save cost. Trying to save time when soap making is often a false economy.

 

[evought]

I'm also not sure why you would melt it down again to add the EO.

The OP is probably doing that to prevent the EO from interacting with the lye. If EOs (sometimes colors and other additives) are added during remill when the lye is done acting, you get tighter control. With some combinations of EO or color, you can get very unexpected results in the first run. When people run into that, they tend to not do it again, so first run recipes that get published and reused don't have the problem. I remember one of my early batches of soap where the green dye ended up as a soft pink after it cured. I also find that cedarwood oil likes to be added during remill, etc. Your Mileage May Vary.

One other advantage of re-batching is that I like to make big batches of first-run soaps to maximize economies of scale and then I often split the cured soap into smaller batches to remill in different ways. That gives me a 2-week turn around to produce a custom bar instead of a 6-week turn around for the cold process to complete. (I know, I could hot process, but it is not my preference.) But, I agree with the other posters that I would not recommend big batches for a beginner and especially not for a new recipe! I make big batches of recipes I already know work.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

The OP is probably doing that to prevent the EO from interacting with the lye. If EOs (sometimes colors and other additives) are added during remill when the lye is done acting, you get tighter control. With some combinations of EO or color, you can get very unexpected results in the first run. When people run into that, they tend to not do it again, so first run recipes that get published and reused don't have the problem. I remember one of my early batches of soap where the green dye ended up as a soft pink after it cured. I also find that cedarwood oil likes to be added during remill, etc. Your Mileage May Vary.

One other advantage of re-batching is that I like to make big batches of first-run soaps to maximize economies of scale and then I often split the cured soap into smaller batches to remill in different ways. That gives me a 2-week turn around to produce a custom bar instead of a 6-week turn around for the cold process to complete. (I know, I could hot process, but it is not my preference.) But, I agree with the other posters that I would not recommend big batches for a beginner and especially not for a new recipe! I make big batches of recipes I already know work.

True, but then there is HP for that. It's not always perfect, but if there is something like Goats Milk that doesn't like being HPd, will it work well after remilling?

And just to be clear, what do you mean by remilling?

 

[bjoergeskogen]

Thanks for feedback!

First of all, thank you for the feedback, it's been really helpful to me!
Second I found this recipie on http://www.lovinsoap.com/2013/04/playing-with-silicone-and-tea-tree-oil-soap/ so it's not my own. I wanted to find good recipes without palm oil and this looked like a good site.
I have learned to make soap by reading books, blogs, watching youtube and with the help from a woman who has many years of experience and is shippping worldwide her products. So I have about 5 months experience now and have been making some successful batches that both my friends, family an I use and are happy with. But that was from a much more simple recipe (with shea and cocoa butter) but also with some palm oil and smaller batches.
So I have not much experience with trouble shooting, and you're absolutely right that I should get more experience.
I'm also not looking upon this as a real business, more a interesting hobby where I learn something new every day. The marked in june is some sort of mix of flea marked and private persons selling their products and I would ofcource not sell a soap I wasnt sure about. So I will wait selling stuff untill I'm 100% sure of the quality. :wink:

Third: The reason I rebatch is to prevent the EOs to interact with the lye, and also because I want to test out different blends of EOs before making a big batch with it. But I have made some batches with EOs added when tracing and those turned out good, especially my coffee soap.

Sorry if my english and soap language is not so good, still learning. And again, thank you all! :grin:

Ps: Is there a good way to test the ph value of the soap? I have some strips but they're supposed to be tested in something liquid.

 

[pamielynn]

Personally, I think the pic looks stearic heavy. Is the recipe you posted the one you used for this particular batch?

Also, even if you are selling as a hobby - please make sure that you are selling the best quality of soap you can. The public doesn't know it's a hobby and newcomers to handmade soap can get a bad impression of the industry as a whole from one bad bar of soap.

 

[neeners]

I'm sorry to sound harsh, but I agree with everyone here. I don't doubt you have SOME experience, but unless you're 100% sure you know exactly what you're doing, why your soap has streaks in it, how your soap will perform in a year or two year's time, then it's not a good idea to sell. are you well versed in the regulations in your area? is your product safely made and to standards for public sale?

you should also be testing the pH of the soaps before handing out to people to try - either by zap testing or testing on your pH strips. how have you known that your soaps weren't lye heavy? if you don't test, how are you guaranteeing the safety to your consumers?

I urge you to read this before selling your soaps to the public - http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=16002

 

[evought]

True, but then there is HP for that. It's not always perfect, but if there is something like Goats Milk that doesn't like being HPd, will it work well after remilling?

And just to be clear, what do you mean by remilling?

Yes, goat's mill works during re-mill (substitute in place of the water). That gives total control over the amount of unprocessed milkfat left behind in the bar, especially useful if you don't have enough goat's milk to make the entire batch from it.

By remilling, I am talking about what many people refer to as "french-mill": grating the finished cold-process soap down, melting it with some amount of liquid (usually 12 fl ounces per pound), adding whatever 'foofy' ingredients desired, and putting it back into molds. "Re-batching" is also a workable term.

I tend to avoid the term "french mill" because I started doing this stuff in a historical reenactment context and french-milled referred to a specific process using rollers to knead/press the soap and work new ingredients into it. French-milling was done *cold* whereas I usually use gentle heat to melt and remill. I've played with using a pasta machine to reproduce the actual french process but only as an experiment so far: very labor intensive.

 

[bjoergeskogen]

What lye calc did you use? I ran the recipe trough soap calc and the cleansing turned out to be 22 recommended is 12-22 so I can see that its a little high. And again it's not my recipe, i found it here: http://www.lovinsoap.com/2013/04/playing-with-silicone-and-tea-tree-oil-soap/ and she seemed to be quite pro. But now I have learned A LOT the last weeks about the balance in recipes. Thanks for replying

 

[coffeetime]

What lye calc did you use?

If this was directed at me, I used soapmaker3. But soapcalc.net works. It doesn't matter who you get a recipe from, you should always put it through a soap calculator before making it. A typo can happen anytime, and it seems a few of the purported soap experts on the internet and in books are clearly not as expert as they seem from the bad recipes I've seen and heard of.