solidified quickly - what happened?

[danomyte]

while stirring last night, when i just hit trace, i added fragrance oils, pumice and color and it solidified in the pot almost instantly when i started to blend. what happened? i've made about 10 batches of CP soap and never seen it happen this quick.

did the temperatures of the fragrance oils do that? or the color?

 

[Susie]

Not the temperature of the FO, just the FO itself. Some are notorious for doing that. You might want to let us know what FO it was and from whom, so others can tell you if they had that problem before. I add my EOs to my oils before my lye water to prevent this.

 

[danomyte]

Not the temperature of the FO, just the FO itself. Some are notorious for doing that. You might want to let us know what FO it was and from whom, so others can tell you if they had that problem before. I add my EOs to my oils before my lye water to prevent this.

i used essential oils of lime, thyme, rosemary and palmarosa

didn't know you could add the EO's to the lye water! that's a great tip, thanks. can i add color and exfoliants in there too?

 

[dixiedragon]

It's the pumice.

 

[Susie]

And the palmarosa. Had my first soap-on-a-stick from that stuff.

 

[kumudini]

i used essential oils of lime, thyme, rosemary and palmarosa

didn't know you could add the EO's to the lye water! that's a great tip, thanks. can i add color and exfoliants in there too?

Susie said, add EOs to base oils, not lye water. I think additives go in at trace although clays can go into the oils for easy and complete mixing. water substitutes go with lye. salt and sugar go in the water and fully meaning fully dissolved before addition of lye.

 

[Susie]

^What Vkumudini said about EOs into oils, NOT lye water, BEFORE lye water.

 

[danomyte]

^What Vkumudini said about EOs into oils, NOT lye water, BEFORE lye water.

yikes, good save. thanks! reading comprehension goes down on a friday.

i'll drop the palmorosa. any way to work with pumice or should i avoid that too?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

How much are you adding, compared to your oil amount?

 

[danomyte]

How much are you adding, compared to your oil amount?

base oils totaled 35 oz; i used 2.75 oz of essential oil & 1 oz of pumice. the color was 1.5 tsp indigo dye

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Ah, sorry - I meant how much pumice

 

[danomyte]

been doing some googling and thyme might be the culprit. from brambleberry product review of white thyme oil:

I'm so glad you loved the way the White Thyme Essential oil smells! Though I' sorry you were disappointed in how it behaved in Cold Process Soap. We decided to do some more testing of this essential because of your reviews and found it does accelerate! To help slow this down, take 1 oz. (basically equal amounts of fragrance oil to fixed oil) liquid oil out of your recipe and heat it up to 100 degrees. Then, add your fragrance into this oil. This simply dilutes the fragrance oil’s initial acceleration. You can also add the oil/fragrance mixture earlier than usual. Rather than adding the fragrance at a thick trace, you can add it at the first sign of thin trace. Always hand stir the fragrance/oil mixture in with a fork/ladle and never, ever use a hand blender for problem oils. Lastly, raise your temperatures to about 110 to 115 degrees. This will help to keep your mixture more liquid than at a lower temperature.

 

[danomyte]

Ah, sorry - I meant how much pumice

1oz pumpice to 35 oz base, 2.75 oz EO