Teach Soap

Hi there,

I decided to make the jump from M&P to CP and attempted my first batch last night. I kept it fairly simple, using oils I could find at a grocery store. When I poured it into the mold last night it was still pretty liquid and I worried at that point but I wrapped it up with plastic wrap on top and encompassed it in towels. This evening it's still very, very soft. Like I could put a spoon in it, soft. I believe the mistake I made was not getting it to proper trace. I panicked about whether it was really trace or not and made what I think was the wrong decision. Here's a picture of the soap about 24 hours later and quite frankly I'm not sure what I'm looking at here and I'm not sure what to do with it (the plastic wrap is off and the mold was clean last night but it moved around a bit when my cat tried to lie down on the bundle of towels around the mold). I thought I would leave the plastic off and let it sit in the mold for a couple more days before deciding to pitch it and try again. Any advice for this total newbie?

Here are pictures of the "soap" this evening:
http://imgur.com/LanKwsy,H5AxUOU
http://imgur.com/LanKwsy,H5AxUOU#1

Here's the recipe I followed. I tested it with two lye calculators to make sure it was good (for a 50oz. mold):
42% Canola Oil (14.3oz)
29% Coconut Oil (9.87oz) - I put this in as the 76 deg coconut oil but after melting it I think it should be the higher one. This is the organic coconut oil from Costco
29% Olive Oil Pomace (9.87oz)
Water - 12.9oz.
Lye - 4.7oz.

I also added 1.6oz. of orange essential oil at what I had thought was trace and some grated orange peel before pouring into the mold.

Thank you! So glad to be here. I haven't been this excited about a new hobby in a long time!

Desiree

Your soap is very very high in "soft" oils. This means it will take a long time to become solid. Maybe a week or so! It SHOULD eventually get solid! The reason it looks translucent now is because it has gone into a full gel stage, nothing wrong with that

Give it a week or so and see if it hardens up, that's how long my soft oil recipe takes. Adding some lard or shortening next time will have it harden up much faster!

_________________
~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

You have way too much canola in there. For me, a high amount of canola causes DOS (dreaded orange spots) from oxidized oils with a short shelf life.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thanks Hestey! I will hold out hope that this will come out eventually.

Soapbuddy, I was following a recipe that I found online. Most of the beginner ones I've found required palm oil which I would have to order and I just wanted to try it once without having to get less readily available stuff. I will reduce canola oil in the future and maybe up the olive and coconut (I believe the coconut makes a harder bar anyway) or the lard that Hestey has suggested.

Be careful with coconut oil above 20%, a lot of folks find that drying. Also, contrary to soap calculators, olive oil really hardens up in soap! You can make a 100% olive oil soap, but it definitely does better with a very long cure. I cure my 100% olive oil soap for 6 months minimum!

Try something like this:
20% coconut oil
30% olive oil
50% lard

with a 7 or 8% superfat.

That makes a great bar, I have bars from that recipe that are almost 2 years old now and are still awesome!

[your coconut oil is probably 76* oil, most of the food grade I've seen is]

_________________
~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

Don't believe everything you find on the internet! This is a fairly common recipe that produces nice soap. You can often find castor oil in nutritional supplement/vitamin stores too.

75% olive oil
20% coconut oil
5% castor oil

This does take a little longer to harden due to the high olive oil content.

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Linda

I learn so much when I can't leave well enough alone!

Thanks so much for the beginner recipes! I will absolutely try those next.

I think your culprit was the orange EO. Did you get the EO at the health food store? There is a component in citrus EOs (orange, lemon, etc) that slows down the process of the soap hardening. That's one benefit to using a "folded" EO. I know my 5 fold Sweet Orange worked better (but not perfect) than the orange EO I got at the healthfood store.

Do you still have your ingredients? Perhaps try another batch without the orange EO. If you want to scent it, you can get EOs like lavender, peppermint and lemongrass from a healthfood store at a reasonable price, and they behave well in soap.

_________________
~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

The EO actually came from Bramble Berry. It was the Red Brazilian Mandarin (which I'm crying over wasting on this soap).

The next soap I make will be without any EOs and colorants so that I can get a good idea of what's supposed to happen as a reference.

I've picked up a few EOs from the health food store (NOW products): Lime, Lemon, couple others I can't think of at the moment. But, I'm afraid to use them because I don't know flashpoints and really not sure how they'll perform. I thought I would keep them for melt and pour and buy EOs from known soap suppliers who can tell me how they'll do in CP.

Just check the ingredients. Adulterated EOs could cause seized soap, heavy acceleration, ricing etc. I learned that the hard way, and wasted a heck of a lot of money doing it

Also, I don't think that this soap was a loss. Just needs some more time, as is normal for a heavy soft oil batch!

_________________
~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist