Lye spots??

[busymakinsoap!]

Hi everyone,
I made this Lemon Verbena by Sweet Cakes with poppy seeds a couple of weeks ago. I noticed all these spots, over time they have gone powdery. I have licked and licked the soap, I have dug out the powder and put it on my tounge - a slight tingle, but no zap.

This has never happened in any of my batches before, and I almost always use the same recipe.

Then the strange thing is, today I made another Lemon Verbena and I noticed after I had added the fragrance that I got lumps again. I havnt unmolded yet, but am fairly sure it will have the spots.

Is this Lye??



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[calico21]

Do you use palm oil? Are you at the bottom? Could be steric acid spots, but I've been told by others in my soaps that I don't gel that they are unsure of the slight tingle. The soaps have been fine for me after the full cure. HTH some.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Hi calico,

Im unsure what steric spots are? I have recently changed palm oils, and Im finding the one I use doesnt want to dissolve fully, it kinda gets all whispy (if that makes sense? But I brought 5 kgs and the whole lot is like it.

As I mentioned it has only happened with this fragrance.

 

[Relle]

Did you put TD in the soap ? If that is not mixed in properly that could happen.

Relle.

 

[calico21]

Stearic acid is a natural part of oils and fats. Generally palm oil and lard are high in it. There doesn't seem to be a problem with it in the lard but lots of people will say to fully melt large containers of palm oil and mix as it cools or seperate into batch amounts because usually the bottom of the container is higher in stearic acid than than the rest. Could be your container was stored upside down and thats the issue. The white spots come from it not getting fully melted and mixed in with the rest of your oils.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

My palm comes cut into kilo blocks and wrapped in paper, not sure how I could avoid steric?

Would steric become powder though, I think Ive seen those silvery kinda lines on soap and thought that was steric?

Ive just cut my second batch, and its the same. There are yellow oozy spots which i just licked and no zap. Its under 20hrs old (Im only this brave cos ive never had a zap before!), these will dry to powder. Could it just be FO? Would FO dry to a powder.

If it is FO, I might try adding it to oils before lye next time.

Hmmmmm....the mysteries of Soap Making, just when you think you got it, something else pops up :roll:

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Did you put TD in the soap ? If that is not mixed in properly that could happen.

Relle.

No relle not TD or colour

 

[soapbuddy]

It looks like stearic spots to me too. I would melt your palm oil and keep stirring til a soft solid. Then partition off into your containers.

 

[opalgirl]

I'm curious about this too. I've gotten these spots as well. I've zap tested the heck out of them and they don't seem like anything. I use palm oil.

 

[LavenderLady]

I agree with the others, looks like fractionation. The stearines in Palm Oil collect into groups of "like" stearines. We want/need a homogenous mixture so that there is a constant saponification value and the soap is consistent. To ensure that, we need to heat the entire batch of palm oil and stir it all together, creating a homogenous mixture.Then separate it out into smaller containers to cool it faster and to avoid the fractionation problems.

There is a blog post on the fractionation of Palm that probably explains it better than I can/have.
http://blog.thesage.com/2010/07/22/frac ... -palm-oil/

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Is it safe to use? I can look past the spots....

 

[busymakinsoap!]

I need to add though, my palm is from a one kg block, I made 2 batches at the same time, one lemon, one green tea. Nothing wrong with the green tea. Infact, I have used this block to make several batches with no prob, including 3 more today. Its only ever happened with the lemon verbena.