Soap shrank and crumbled :(

[mavalia]

I made CP soap for the second time using Brambleberry's lye calculator and I thought everything went fine until I went to unmould the soap yesterday afternoon (I made the soap on Monday night) and discovered that the soap has shrunk. Or at least I think it shrank because the sides were no longer sticking to the mould, a Wilton silicone brownie pan, and it sort of 'caved in' in the middle or is it more accurate to say that it warped? It has a curved shape to it.

So I thought ok, nevermind, and left it to dry under the fan for another day because it felt soft still on the bottom.

Today when I went to check on the soap, a portion of the soap had collapsed! And although still soft in some parts, when I tried to cut the soap it just crumbled into pieces.

I'm not sure what's wrong. I followed the measurements for lye and water provided by the calculator and added 30ml of fragrance oil. I also poured the soap in at a light to medium trace to get the swirls.

Could it be a temperature problem? I mixed the oils and lye mixture at 43 degrees Celsius but I'm thinking that maybe I didn't insulate the mould enough. I also made the soap with a 2% lye discount just to see how it would turn out.

 

[ericllucas]

I found Brambleberry's calculator has something like a 2.75:1 water:lye ratio built in. That is a conservative amount, if not too much, of water, in my novice newbie opinion. I have read on this forum that when soap crumbles, it is because there is too much lye (somehow). The lye discount makes your situation curious. Let's see what the more experienced have to say.

 

[mavalia]

Hi ericllucas, I read through some of the threads in this forum and that some members mentioned that they used SoapCalc. I ran the figures through the SoapCalc and the Brambleberry calculator again and the amounts called for lye are more or less the same: 130.359g and 130.458g. The difference is in the amount of water. SoapCalc gave me 304g and Brambleberry gave me 264g.

At first I thought that it could be the lye, although I made sure to follow the measurements given by Brambleberry's lye calculator, since some of the FAQs online said that too much lye results in crumbly soap so I cut a piece and washed my hands with it but it was perfectly fine! No weird tingly feeling or itchiness and my hands feel perfectly fine. In fact, I thought the soap was quite moisturising.

 

[judymoody]

Your complete recipe would be helpful in attempting to get to the bottom of your soaping issue. Also what fragrance did you use?

 

[mavalia]

This is the recipe I used:

Coconut oil 240g
Palm oil 240g
Olive oil 320g
Lye 130g
Water 264g

I added 30g of Brambleberry's green tea fragrance oil after achieving a light trace. Then I separated the mixture into two additional measuring cups (about 150g each) and to add in the powdered colourants - they are from TKB Trading - while the remainder was left uncoloured. I also poured in a bit of body glitter into the coloured mixtures.

 

[dieSpinne]

You say it was under a fan in a silicone tray mold?

 

[Hazel]

How long did you mix it? When you press a little of the soap between your fingers, does it feel oily or dry?

I've had problems with soap being soft and crumbly and I found out it was due to inadequate mixing. Basically, my batches had started to cool and I had false trace. I didn't realize and poured them into molds. They set up but remained soft, felt oily when I pressed some pieces and crumbled. The loaves didn't really shrink but they pulled easily from the sides of the mold and popped out easily.

I've found Kathy Miller's section on troubleshooting soap problems very helpful. Here's the link if you haven't seen it.

http://millersoap.com/trouble.html

 

[Relle]

Here's what I got when I put your amounts in soapcalc-

304g water - same
115.314 lye

So slightly less lye than what you put in.(approx 15g)

Thanks Hazel I'm going to add that troubleshooting page to my favs.

 

[khermsen]

mavalia....although the soap didn't set up well, I must say you have a beautiful swirl in both color and technique.

 

[Pentazole]

I agree these are some beautiful swirls

As someone said above, you could have miscalculated as I'm also getting about 115 g lye in my lye calculator (I made my own based on average SAP values out there).

I must say if the bottom part of your soap is unpigmented, it is way too white, at least from my experience - although I don't usually have such high percentage coconut/palm. Usually too much whiteness can also be indicative of excess lye.

Could it be possible that your palm oil isn't really palm oil? (labelling issues - palm oil, palm olein, palm stearin) Or perhaps you clicked "palm kernel oil" instead of "palm oil" in the calc?

 

[mavalia]

dieSpinne: Yes, I put it under the fan because more than 24 hours after pouring, the soap was still soft at the bottom parts so I thought putting it under the fan will help to dry it out and make it harder.

Hazel: I must have mixed it for about 10 minutes using an electric hand mixer. I didn't want to mix it much longer once I achieved trace because the first time I made soap, the mixture became like a soft pudding and it was hard to pour into the mould. The soap didn't feel oily at all. The surface, with the swirls, had a very smooth feel to it but the inside was chalky, like how it'd be if I mixed chalk with some water.

khermsen: Thank you! I hope I can make much nicer swirls next time.

Just another thing though, it seems that most people are able to unmould and cut their soap into bars 24 hours after pouring.

The previous times when I made soap, the first being a beer soap recipe from Soap Queen that worked out nicely, the inside of the soap was sticky. The sticky surfaces dried out eventually and the soap became much harder but even after a month of curing, when I cut the soap into smaller pieces, it's still like that. Is a perfectly cured bar of CP soap supposed to be hard inside as well?

The second batch I made was similar to the disaster soap that crumbled, only I used 100g more oils with the same percentages, a different fragrance from Brambleberry, and calculated the ingredients' weights using the formula I learnt in a soap making class.

After 24 hours, the soap was still damp and sticky at the bottom although it felt quite solid on top. So some of the soap got stuck to the silicone mould. Then when I cut into the soap, more parts of the soap got removed because they stuck to the knife so I had to slowly slide the knife off the soap to prevent that.

I think I insulated the soap better that time though.

Would humidity or temperature affect how fast the soap cures? It's the rainy season here so the temperature's cooler than usual. Malaysia is also humid all year round and I'm not sure how it affects CP soap although it is such a nightmare for MP soap and bath bomb making.

 

[mavalia]

I agree these are some beautiful swirls

As someone said above, you could have miscalculated as I'm also getting about 115 g lye in my lye calculator (I made my own based on average SAP values out there).

I must say if the bottom part of your soap is unpigmented, it is way too white, at least from my experience - although I don't usually have such high percentage coconut/palm. Usually too much whiteness can also be indicative of excess lye.

Could it be possible that your palm oil isn't really palm oil? (labelling issues - palm oil, palm olein, palm stearin) Or perhaps you clicked "palm kernel oil" instead of "palm oil" in the calc?

Oh no! It IS labelled palm olein on the bottle - could that be the reason why? Are they different? The Brambleberry lye calculator didn't have palm olein listed so I keyed in the weight I intended for palm oil instead.

I also wondered why the soap was so white since the soaps I made in the soap making class was a nice light yellow colour.

As I'm just starting out, I decided to stick to the three basic oils first (the other oils are much too expensive *sad*) and I read that olive oil should make at least 40% of the total oils so to make it simple, I just split the balance between coconut and the palm olein oils.