Avoiding stearic crackle

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Aunt Polly

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My daughter made soap yesterday, and in cutting it this morning, saw that the soap has stearic crackle. She used TD, and the crackle is only in the white portion of the soap. The soap was insulated to gel.
My question is:

In using titanium dioxide, can stearic crackle (and the snow on top) be avoided by freezing the soap instead of gelling it?
 
I've experimented for a while and figured that gelling is a big no no, and soaping at lower temps also helps a lot! Also, I've cut down on the amount of TD, which also helped...
 
She used water-soluble TD. Next time we will order oil-soluble, if not too costly. Skatergirl, I have attached a pic.

photo.JPG
 
She used water-soluble TD. Next time we will order oil-soluble, if not too costly. Skatergirl, I have attached a pic.

That looks like glycerine rivers. Hard to avoid when gelling oxides. It happens whether colored with an oxide or not when they overheat, for me. (i have found that fragrance oils with Phthalates in them tend to overheat some) So, I either don't gel, or I let it gel, watch it like a hawk so it doesn't over heat and then put a fan on it when it reaches almost a full gel. I sacrifice a few rivers on the edge for a full gel in a soap that is a uniform color.

I have had this same problem when doing a swirl in my vertical mold along the swirls. I think it happens there because I can never get the colors to the same trace consistency, one is always thicker and therefor hotter. It also happens for me when I've had to glop soap in the mold after a really thick trace. It seems to happen between the glops some.

I get stearic crystals on my soaps in the fridge. I've just read somewhere that I may not be heating the oils up enough before cooling to mix with the lye. I don't want these soaps to gel, so I try to keep them cooler. However, we've started keeping them above 102 which is the melting point for the Palm Kernal and the source of a lot of the stearic. I thought this would work, but no. The last batch in the fridge: stearic plus a partial gel. *headdesk* Now we are going to research back in the batches to see if it is the palm kernal flakes creating the problem. We've soaped with both solid and flakes but have to look at the batches to see where we've switched them out.

I do blend all the oils with my blender to incorporate ROE before mixing with lye. So, they are well blended....
 
I don't know what causes it but it seems to be something that's doesn't exist very long. A year ago I could barely find any info on it and now it seems like every soapmaker has experienced it in the last year. Or is that just my idea?
 
I don't know what causes it but it seems to be something that's doesn't exist very long. A year ago I could barely find any info on it and now it seems like every soapmaker has experienced it in the last year. Or is that just my idea?

Maybe people use TD more often; but I've seen it numerous times since 2009.
 
One thing you can try is to let the TD sit in it's oil or water overnight - before you use it. Seems to saturate the TD better. Also, TD really doesn't seem to like too much heat :) When I personally try to avoid TD crackle, I don't gel.

And stearic spots are different than TD crackle (or what people are calling "glycerin rivers"). You can try to avoid stearic spots by making sure your palm oil is really well incorporated or switching to lard.
 
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