Your lye and oils do not need to be the same temperature. I am not sure why everyone thinks so, but no. Your oils can be hot, your lye cool, or vice versa. The only thing that matters is if you are swirling, you need to soap cooler than if you are not.
Hi Susie, from what I understand reading countless online articles (AKA Online Diploma in Soap Education. . . ah, the hours!
) oils congeal when they hit cold lye water, especially hard oils which are solid at room temperature, causing a false trace.
Funnily enough, though, when I tried to warm oil and lye solution up, I still hit false trace regardless.
I'm now not sure what is what and what to do.
Thanks again.
Yes, this will happen. If you make an NaOH solution, let it cool to say room temperature, and then add more water to this solution, it will warm up again. Not as hot as when you made the original solution, but it will heat up[...]
You know, the science of soapmaking never ceases to amaze me, like I'm 'dabbling' in science for real?
Thanks so much for the tips, DeeAnna, it's so much clearer now and I am certainly going to use the {(oil+water) + lye solution} tip next time.
But, if I don't allow things cool down a bit, won't that cause my soap to heat up excessively and, I don't know, crack or do whatever nasty thing soap does when it has heated up too much?
Thanks again!
Sure MissE, hi!
I stopped caring about temps a while ago. Master-Batching is a 50/50 (any percent offset), Lye to Water solution. You will do this usually in larger quantities and use the solution over time. The MB will be cooled to room temp before placing into the proper HDPE #2 bottles.
When making a Soap recipe with a 50/50 solution, you will need to calculate the amount of water to offset the difference. If you put the offset into the mixture, it will heat up again. To avoid this, I put this offset into the oils before the lye solution. It doesn't matter which way you do it, the process will create a lot of heat. It seems to be delayed a bit when I put it in the oils first. It also seems to gel better for me.
I actually do a 100% master batch. Like I said, I use the same recipe over and over and so doing this, I can just take the quantity I want and go. But if I am going to continue to masterbatch and also still need to soap at slightly higher temperatures, a 50/50 solution is a good starting place. Yes, adding water to heat things up is so neat it just seems planning ahead for it by doing a 50-50 solution is the ONLY thing to do.
I really would prefer to continue to do my room temperatures ultimately, but for now I have to figure out false trace issues hence the troubleshooting with higher temperatures.
Much love for weighing in, AngelBar.