weird swirly indents and cold temp soapmaking

[sevenebulas]

I've been soapmaking for several years but recently made several changes. I started doing it in the cold basement, switched from using 38% water to 33% lye solution (which solved my soda ash issues!), using more varied scents (some make it crack! ahh!) and have been experimenting with soaping at cold temperatures so I can do more masterbatching (I used to soap between 100 and 110 degrees) and hopefully avoid cracking issues. Suddenly I feel like a newbie because I keep having problems I've never had before.

My latest problem was with a batch where lye and oils were both at 70 degrees (my oils were clear, not cloudy). I was making a christmas batch with cocoa butter, which I've done once at 100F before, but tried doing it at 70F two days ago. When I cut it a day later, it had weird swirling impressions in the slices instead of being smooth. I use a wood mold and don't insulate so it stayed pretty cool. I used sodium lactate also..is it possible not stirring it in evenly could cause the uneven surface? Here is a picture. It's hard to see but more obvious near the top.

It's not a huge problem but I just wish I understood what was happening.

 

[toxikon]

That's a very nice looking soap! The swirly effect totally looks intentional.

It does look like you didn't fully stir in your TD/colourant. Did it trace pretty quickly?

 

[sevenebulas]

Thank you! No it was slow to trace and I had to stick blend more than usual for the layers. I don't know why but adding cocoa butter to my normal recipe has slowed trace compared to normal. The swirl is something you can feel with your fingers like it's bumpy. The micas should have been well dispersed, I premixed into oil and then stickblended oil into each portion of soap batter.

 

[lenarenee]

This is interesting - and I can't wait to see where this discussion goes.

As for your slow trace despite having cocoa butter, I wonder if the amount of cb was small enough that it didn't offset the positive benefit of soaping at colder temps.

I also wonder if the swirl and the fact that you can feel it means that it's a higher concentration of cocoa butter in that part of the soap. Maybe the colder temps/slower trace meant the cb didn't mix in well so you ended up with almost 2 separate types of soap in the same batter.

Soap can look very uniform and smooth - but from reading DeeAnna's posts, I know that it really is more complex than that. Again...I can't wait to see where this goes...

 

[DeeAnna]

I think the white freckles are stearic spots -- bits of harder soap due to the fats not being fully melted. I get them especially when I soap too cool with my high-lard recipes. My rule of thumb is I want the solid fats to be melted until they're fully clear, not milky. That's above 100 F. Or you can get them when using full fat milks to make your lye solution -- the lye saponifies the fat in the milk by the time you add the lye solution to the rest of your ingredients and that makes white spots too.

The other swirls look to be what I call streaking and mottling and others call glycerin rivers. The ones in your soap are similar to Auntie Clara's "ghost swirls" which are due to variations in liquid content. If you look closely at the patterns, you'll see they follow the path of the soap batter when it was poured into the mold.

If you just mix with your stick blender and don't scrape the bowl with a spatula and mix that batter into the main portion, you can get that kind of pattern. Or adding scent or other liquids at the end and not mixing them in well enough.

 

[penelopejane]

I have real trouble soaping too cool because I use some hard oils. I melt my hard oils and add all my additives including FOs (except citric acid which I mix with lye water before the lye is added) and SB them into the other oils then add the lye mix and SB again. I soap at no less than 100*.

I find masterbatching my lye a bit of a pain. Invariably the soap doesn't work out. I reheat my materbatched lye now and that seems to work much better. Generally I just mix the lye on the day. With cold masterbatch NaOH I had problems with trace, problems with swirls, problems with odd unidentifiable blotches in the soap (not dots) and spots. I don't soap too cool anymore.

 

[sevenebulas]

Oh! Thank you DeeAnna that all makes perfect sense. I've made a ghost swirl that turned out like Auntie Claras and I was wondering if my bumpy swirls could be related to glycerin because of the impressions it made in the soap, but since it was soaped at 70F I didn't know if it could be. I recall her article talking about glycerin rivers being worse with heat.

lenarenee-this soap had 10% cocoa butter.

penelopejane--how do you reheat your lye water? Do you take heat it to the same temp as your oils?

All my recipes are high lard ~40% and coconut ranging between 15-25% (can't figure out what works best yet). I'm struggling right now to find the best temperature for my soap. Now that some are cracking even with no insulation I thought cold would be best, but then things happen like this and I think cold is not best and I switch back to 100+, then I get cracking again and wonder if I just needed to figure out a better way to soap cold, like maybe I need to drop sodium lactate or change my lye concentration or something. I'm kind of questioning everything now
When soaping above 100 with something that is likely to crack, how do you prevent it? I'm not thrilled about the freezer/fridge, but i have done it when I saw soap cracking. I have poplar wood log molds and I worry that blowing a fan onto the soap would make cracking more likely because it would dry the top too fast. I have decorated soap tops.

I've thought about soaping cracking fragrances cold and normal ones at 100+ but perhaps there is an alternative.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...I was wondering if my bumpy swirls could be related to glycerin because of the impressions it made in the soap, but since it was soaped at 70F I didn't know if it could be. I recall her article talking about glycerin rivers being worse with heat...."

Don't confuse glycerin being in the soap with "glycerin rivers". They really have very little to do with each other except for having the same word. "Glycerin rivers" are really best called streaking or mottling, but I'm sad to say that what I think doesn't really matter -- the "glycerin river" name is gonna stick regardless.

The streaking/mottling being worse with heat isn't exactly accurate. Streaking and mottling is caused by a combination of factors -- variations in the water content throughout the soap, the soap getting warm enough so the higher-water portions go into the gel state, and fairly slow cooling. Streaking and mottling are more obvious in high water soap that someone insulates well or CPOP's, but it can happen in any soap that gets sufficiently warm enough and then cools under just the right conditions -- it's my opinion that streaking and mottling are pretty common, but it's not always visible to the human eye.

Pigments like titanium dioxide tend to migrate into the parts of the soap that cool the most slowly, so they can enhance the pattern by making parts of the soap more clear and parts more heavily colored. This effect is a little like putting a cola drink in the freezer and forget about it -- there will be solid clear ice crystals (the parts that freeze first) in a dark cola-colored syrup. If you get the whole thing cold enough, the syrup will freeze too and you'd end up with a block of stuff that has veins of clear ice running through the frozen brown syrup. But you don't have to have pigments in the soap to get streaking and mottling; it just makes the effect more obvious.

 

[SaltedFig]

This effect is a little like putting a cola drink in the freezer and forget about it -- there will be solid clear ice crystals (the parts that freeze first) in a dark cola-colored syrup. If you get the whole thing cold enough, the syrup will freeze too and you'd end up with a block of stuff that has veins of clear ice running through the frozen brown syrup.

That right there.

So poetic.

Crystal rivers.

 

[penelopejane]

penelopejane--how do you reheat your lye water? Do you take heat it to the same temp as your oils?

All my recipes are high lard ~40% and coconut ranging between 15-25% (can't figure out what works best yet). I'm struggling right now to find the best temperature for my soap.

I put reheat my masterbatch lye in the microwave just for a few seconds. Or I make the lye mix on the day. I wait for it to get to at least below 100*F. I did this while it was winter here and this may not be necessary in summer. I don't heat my oils (olive etc) but I do heat my coconut and shea butter if used. By the time I mix everything it's about 85*F but it warms up as it starts to saponify. I use 31% lye concentration. I tend to get grainy soap with higher concentrations.

I think you will find your problem is that you are soaping too cold for a high lard and coconut oil soap. I don't use lard but I think you have to soap at about 100*F to keep it liquid.

If I am using coconut oil or shea butter I heat it until it is clear. If the coconut oil isn't warm enough and it hits a cold oil in the pot that might make it cool too quickly and create swirls or unmixed globules. I find SBing the oils before adding the lye solves a lot of problems.

I do the crazy things I do because they work for me and I like to end up with a pretty close to perfect looking soap.
Other people seem to be able to be much more slap dash, breeze through soapmaking and they still produce perfect soap. :cry:

My method is try everything until your soap works. Then start tweeking so you don't have to be so particular about certain parts of your method.

 

[penelopejane]

The streaking/mottling being worse with heat isn't exactly accurate. Streaking and mottling is caused by a combination of factors -- variations in the water content throughout the soap, the soap getting warm enough so the higher-water portions go into the gel state, and fairly slow cooling. Streaking and mottling are more obvious in high water soap that someone insulates well or CPOP's, but it can happen in any soap that gets sufficiently warm enough and then cools under just the right conditions -- it's my opinion that streaking and mottling are pretty common, but it's not always visible to the human eye.

Sorry, DeeAnna, that isn't really clear to me.
Are you saying that one factor causing streaking and mottling might be inadequate mixing?
Another might be lye concentration to low (28% rather than 40% lye conc)?
Another might be the soap cooling too quickly or are you saying it happens if the batter is cooling too slowly?

 

[sevenebulas]

I put reheat my masterbatch lye in the microwave just for a few seconds. Or I make the lye mix on the day. I wait for it to get to at least below 100*F. I did this while it was winter here and this may not be necessary in summer. I don't heat my oils (olive etc) but I do heat my coconut and shea butter if used. By the time I mix everything it's about 85*C but it warms up as it starts to saponify. I use 31% lye concentration. I tend to get grainy soap with higher concentrations.

I think you will find your problem is that you are soaping too cold for a high lard and coconut oil soap. I don't use lard but I think you have to soap at about 100*F to keep it liquid.

If I am using coconut oil or shea butter I heat it until it is clear. If the coconut oil isn't warm enough and it hits a cold oil in the pot that might make it cool too quickly and create swirls or unmixed globules. I find SBing the oils before adding the lye solves a lot of problems.

I do the crazy things I do because they work for me and I like to end up with a pretty close to perfect looking soap.
Other people seem to be able to be much more slap dash, breeze through soapmaking and they still produce perfect soap. :cry:

My method is try everything until your soap works. Then start tweeking so you don't have to be so particular about certain parts of your method.

That is all terrific advice. Thank you. I'm definitely going to SB my oils next time! I need do better at testing 1 lb batches and controlling variables. I hardly have free time so I hate doing it and always end up just crossing fingers with bigger batches. Did you mean 85F (instead of C)? Do you pre-blend oils with accelerating fragrances also? I've read that will cause extra acceleration. It seems that nearly all my favorite scents accelerate.

 

[SunRiseArts]

I agree with DeAnna, definitively stearic spots. The only time I soaped too cool, same effect on my soap.

 

[DeeAnna]

Sorry, DeeAnna, that isn't really clear to me.
Are you saying that one factor causing streaking and mottling might be inadequate mixing?
Another might be lye concentration to low (28% rather than 40% lye conc)?
Another might be the soap cooling too quickly or are you saying it happens if the batter is cooling too slowly?

1. Yes, in the sense that soap batter at the sides of the bowl can be different than soap batter in the middle of the bowl if you don't thoroughly scrape and mix that film of batter into the main part before pouring.

Have you ever poured cake batter into a pan and had the last little bit of the batter look different than the main part of the batter? And when it bakes, that odd little bit can be more gooey or otherwise different than the rest? That's what I'm talking about.

2. Lye concentration at 28% is going to increase the chance of streaking/mottling compared to lye concentration of 33% or more, because more water in the soap batter means the soap is more likely to gel. If the soap gels, it is then more likely to streak/mottle if the soap then cools relatively slowly.

3. No, not cooling too quickly. That will reduce the chance of streaking/mottling. It's cooling too slowly from a gel (liquidy) state that causes streaking/mottling in the soap.

 

[SaltedFig]

Penelope, I used points 2 & 3 to get the mottled effect on my October challenge soap (high water, slow cool)

 

[penelopejane]

Did you mean 85F (instead of C)? Do you pre-blend oils with accelerating fragrances also? I've read that will cause extra acceleration. It seems that nearly all my favorite scents accelerate.

Yes 85*F. I don't use accelerating FOs. I vet my fragrances before I buy using the SMF FO review chart and supplier site reviews. This method hasn't accelerated any FOs I use.
I have had a bit of acceleration with bentonite clay!

PJ

 

[penelopejane]

1. Yes.

Thank you!

Penelope, I used points 2 & 3 to get the mottled effect on my October challenge soap (high water, slow cool)

I thought that was just the salt mixing with the (oxide?) colour.

Slow cool I can do.
Fast cool is more difficult for me. I would worry that it wouldn't get to gel before I tried to cool it and I'd get partial gel. How do you do fast cool and still get gel?

PJ

 

[sevenebulas]

Yes 85*F. I don't use accelerating FOs. I vet my fragrances before I buy using the SMF FO review chart and supplier site reviews. This method hasn't accelerated any FOs I use.
I have had a bit of acceleration with bentonite clay!

PJ

That's so smart. I just found the review chart and it's pretty neat. Thank you very much PJ!

 

[penelopejane]

On the SMF chart you have to find a reviewer whose "nose" is similar to yours. Everybody has a different sense of smell.

So if you hate a certain FO cross off the people who say it was lovely.
Once you find someone who likes the FOs you do and dislikes the ones you do you will get personalised reliable reviews.

PJ

 

[SaltedFig]

Thank you!

I thought that was just the salt mixing with the (oxide?) colour.

Slow cool I can do.

No oxide colours .

The only colouring in this soap was the (really finely ground) activated charcoal - the grind size makes it easier for the soap to move the charcoal around as it cools.

And then the slow cool (which was fiddly for the salt bars).

Fast cool is more difficult for me. I would worry that it wouldn't get to gel before I tried to cool it and I'd get partial gel. How do you do fast cool and still get gel?

PJ

It would have to fully gel first (I peek a lot if I have to cool it quickly).

To cool the soap after gel, having the soap on a cooling rack and running a fan over it strips the heat pretty well.