Soap that won't harden while in the mold

Hello guys!

I made a batch of soap about 2 weeks ago, it was carefully measured out, 100grams of coconut oil and 800 grams of pomace olive oil.
I noticed that by the third day it still hadn't hardened inside the mold so I gave it about a week. It's almost 3 weeks later now and it still hasn't hardened, it hardens on the surface but remains at trace phase inside. I was very upset because I had bought new molds that would give a very beautiful look to my soap and I ended up taking it out of the mold in the worst way possible. Once outside the mold it hardens fine.
I didn't have this problem with my Castile soap batch that I made about a month ago.
What could it have been?
I also had a lot of trouble taking it out of the mold although it was a plastic mold.

Has anyone had a similar experience?
Everything was measured correctly and the lye is at 98% purity so it wasn't a problem of the lye. I noticed also that it traced very very fast. And once it reached light trace and I picked up the first mold, it had gone to a medium trace and by the third mold it had reached a very thick consistency.

I'm as beginner as it gets to soap making, so any help and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

High olive oil soaps take a long time to harden and cure in my experience. Just to be sure your recipe is good, can you give the amount of NaOH and water?

It could also be false trace, but how long did it take to trace? And how hot do you soap at?

Hello Susie

To be frank, the lye water was a bit warmer than I've used before but it wasn't too hot, while the oils were at room temperature. It was at an 8% SF so using the Brambleberry calculator, I got 115 grams of Lye and 297 grams of water for 800 grams of OO and 100grams of CO.
I thought maybe it was the fault of the plastic molds since they aren't soap molds, they are pudding molds and are thick, but I also used a couple of silicone molds with that same batch and there was the same problem.
The first batch I made using only OO turned out very nice and it hardened within 24 hours and it's been out curing for a month now, but I used a simple plastic container as a mold because it was my first time and I just wanted to see if the lye was good for soap making.

Thanks a lot

Your recipe checks out perfectly, and it does not look like temperature was an issue.

However, when you say you did not know if the lye is good for soapmaking, why is that? And how do you now know the purity? And is there anything besides NaOH in that bottle of lye?

I think you are just dealing with a slow hardening batch of high OO soap, but checking every detail to be sure it isn't anything else.

When I bought my first bottle of lye, it was a mix of carbonate soda and caustic soda so of course my 3 attempts at making soap failed.
I then received the lye I have now from Greece and the company claimed a 98% purity, which I didn't doubt, but I just thought I'd check it out for myself. So it worked fine with soap making.

Thank you very much, really. I've been googling this issue for a long time now and haven't found any real info as to what the problem could have been :/. What worried me was the fact that it wouldn't harden inside the mold but once taken out it hardened within the day with no problem and it has a nice structure, it's firm, not crumbly or too soft afterwards.

Another thing that might have been an issue I think was the CO :/ I didn't have the exact idea whether it was a 76 or 92 degree type, but seeing how it only became solid under 76 degrees I assumed that was the proper type. Maybe that affected the soap? Maybe the CO was 92 degrees? Can I maybe do a testing of only CO soap and suppose one batch is 76 and one 92 while calculating the lye to see if that causes the hardening problem?

Sorry for the long replies :/


Thanks a lot!

sap value for 76 and 92 co is the same according to soapcalc, so it shouldn't matter. however, i've no idea what happened with your soap.

If it hardened up once taken out of the mold, I'm thinking that perhaps it couldn't "breathe" properly and moisture was being trapped inside?? Other than that, I'm pretty clueless too. Unless your scale perhaps acted up and you ended up with less lye or more oil than intended

hmlove1218 said:

If it hardened up once taken out of the mold, I'm thinking that perhaps it couldn't "breathe" properly and moisture was being trapped inside?? Other than that, I'm pretty clueless too. Unless your scale perhaps acted up and you ended up with less lye or more oil than intended

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Hello

I think it was the mold, but since I've seen large batches put in wooden molds I didn't think it would have been a problem my small molds :/

It could have been the scale, although it is a new one and so far it has always measured correctly and I usually measure things 3-4 times just to be safe.
Anyway, I will do another testing batch for one of the molds just to see if I will have the same problem.

Thanks