What did I do wrong?

[Stacey]

What did I do wrong?

Here's my recipe:
Cocoabutter: 6ozs.
Lard: 8 ozs.
Coconut oil:6 ozs.
Castor oil: 6 ozs.
Avocado oil: 2 ozs.
Olive Oil: 8 ozs.

Water: 12.1 ozs.
Lye: 4.4 ozs.

I had Masterbatched lye (equal lye amount to equal water amount) so I calculated it out to be the lye amount subtracted from the water amount which equaled 7.7 oz.
12.1-4.4=7.7 additional water.

Since the lye was at room temp, I warmed the oils and left them warm for mixing. Stick blended to what appearred to be trace. Added 2 ozs. of Pineapple/Coconut FO and 3 tsp. Vit. E and hand mixed that in.

Seperated the soap into two containers for adding color. 1 tsp. of Lemon Drop Pop Mica in one, added 1 tsp. of Pearle White Mica in the other. (I wanted the white part to be whiter. Thought I'd try the mica since I had it. Mica doesn't do it....Note to self: buy some TD.)

I wanted to do Agriffins' two color soap with the divider down the middle and to try the coat hanger thingy. (Sorry Agriffin...I don't remember the name of it!) Had the DH hold the divider down while I poured. Mostly went ok. Tried to do the decorative squiggle down the middle with some soap colored with charcoal. That part looked pretty crappy.

Put the loaf mold in the oven at 170 degrees. Sprayed with alcohol to prevent ash. Let it sit for 1/2 hour, sprayed again. Shut off oven.

Thinking back on it now...when I looked at it to spray with alcohol the second time, it maybe looked a little...funny... like it was starting to seperate a tiny bit on the top, not much, just a little tiny bit....But I just left it alone. (hind sight is 20/20, aint't it) I usually leave it in the oven overnight and take it out for cutting the next day.

The results the next morning when I took it out of the oven?:
A rubbery, oily puddly mess. Yellow-ish oils on the top and leaking through the freezer paper liner. I decided to let it sit in the mold while I went to work. Come home to the same thing. Used a papertowel to sop up some of the oils so I could take it out of the mold to cut it. I only cut it once down the middle.

It was rubbery and weird. That was Monday. It's Wednesday night. No different. Still oily, still rubbery, although not as much, but still nasty.

Any huge red flags? Any tiny red flags?

The only thing I can think of was that my oils were too hot compared to the room temp lye. Some people swear by using accurate temps to soap, others just dump it together. I've been a dumper. Never worried much about temps. Should I change my process?

Is there anything I can do with my gelatinous mess? I'm thinking if I hadn't sopped up the oils with a paper towel, I probably could do something with it. Now, since I've skewed the ratios, I should just chuck it? But I'd really like to know what I did wrong first.

*sigh... Soaping is fun. Soaping is fun. Soaping is fun. I keep telling myself this. I know this to be true...

But soaping can be **** frustrating too! :wink:

Any advice? And please don't tell me to get a new hobby!

 

[Stacey]

Bump!

Or is what I did so horribly wrong and stupid that no one wants to answer me?

 

[carebear]

My guess:

either it wasn't fully emulsified (I doubt that) or the FO caused some ricing, which didn't really get going until it was in the mold.

What FO exactly (and from what supplier), and why the vitamin E?

 

[Stacey]

The Vit E. is for extra moisturizing. I've read that it's good to add it. Uh-oh. Is that another one of those things that is just an extra and not really a good thing? Another noob mistake?

The FO is from a lady who soaped for years and years. Made her living on it. I was her customer...that's how I got interested in soaping. She was retiring and gave me all of her stuff really cheap.

It was in a brown, glass bottle and she said that it was less than a year old. I had no reason to think that wasn't true. She said that she bought all her stuff from here:
http://www.ozarkherbals.com

I bought it from her about 2 months ago.

I was pretty sure the soap was fully traced...so it must be the FO??!?! Rats. Now I'm gonna wonder about all the other FO's. Crap-Crapity-Crap.

Well, one of those cases of let the buyer beware I guess. I'd contact her and ask but I know she retired because she was having medical issues and recently had surgery.

Ok, so the FO rices. Is there anything I can do to work through ricing? Or are all the FO's destined to be in candles now?

 

[KnowWhat]

How much of the lye water did you use, 4.4 or 8.8 oz?

 

[rubyslippers]

I ran your recipe through soap calc and it appears that it is at 15% superfat which is high. I only go that high if it is a recipe really high in coconut oil. Plus the addition of the 3 tsp of Vitamin E would bump the superfatting up even higher. (I love to add Vitamin E - I think it looks good on the label ) but I only squirt a few capsules into the batch.

It may have had nothing to do with the FO....I think it was just short on lye. Run your recipe through soapcalc and change the superfat to somewhere between 6 to 8%. Even with the additional Vitamin E, you should still be safe. If you still have some of the same FO, try it again.

And yes, Stace, soaping is fun!

 

[ToniD]

Just because one FO may have caused ricing is no indication that another would just because it is from the same supplier.

Depending on the health of the woman who sold you the stuff, she might be willing to help you with some of your questions. She would obviously know how some of the different scents would act in cp soap. Could probably give you all sorts of specific tips for how to incorporate the different ones.

 

[SudsyKat]

I'm with rubyslippers on this one, though I'm no expert. Since it's a 50% lye solution (equal parts lye and water), then you'd have to pour 8.8 ounces of the solution and add an extra 3.3 ounces of water. Your soap had not enough lye and too much water, it seems :-( Masterbatching is something I've been wanting to try, but it does get a little tricky!

 

[agriffin]

Yikes! I don't masterbatch lye! I think your lye was off.

 

[Guest]

OMG, I think I have been persuaded that masterbatching is beyond my kin at this point. all that math has my mind spinning.
Good luck next time. Sorry this one didin't work for you.

 

[rubyslippers]

Stacey, I think you should have taken 8.8 oz of your masterbatch (1/2 lye & 1/2 water) to equal the 4.4 oz of lye. So you would have subtracted 8.8 from the 12.1 oz water to need only an additional 3.3 oz water.

Whoops...my bad. What I should have said is you should have taken 8.8 oz of your masterbatch (which would be 4.4 oz lye & 4.4 oz water). Then reduce the 12.1 oz of water by 4.4 oz which would leave you with 7.7 oz water you need to use (not the 3.3 oz). When I re-read this morning I thought "Yikes!" So sorry for the misinformation.

 

[Stacey]

Well, crapola. So it was the masterbatched lye! Dang it! I thought I had that figured out correctly!

You know what's funny? I even questioned myself and posted it as a question on here and got an answer back. I double checked that posting and that person told me how to do it the right way, but apparently I didn't understand what she meant! Sheesh...do I feel stoopid!

Good grief! I just have to laugh at myself! I have got to be one of the most mathematically challenged people I know...I don't know what made me think I could calculate this! *face/palm. LOL!

Ok, I might be mathematically challenged but I'm not a quitter.
So can we look at it like this?

Lye amount in recipe=L
Water amount in recipe=W
L x 2 = B
W - B = Additional water

So using my recipe posted it should read like this:
4.4 X 2 = 8.8
12.1 - 8.8 = 3.3 Additional water

Yes?
Is this right? Can I write this formula on my lye bottle? In permanent ink?

No?
Then I need to go back to mixing up lye for each recipe.

:?: Couple of questions for Rubyslippers:
Regarding the superfat thing... I'm totally confused. I ran my recipe through Soapcalc. In fact, I have the print out in front of me and it says 5% superfat. I ran it again just to make sure and it still says 5%. How did you get 15%? I don't get it? Am I doing/seeing something different than you?

Vitamin E: Somewhere in my vast amount of research I was sure that I read that using a 1 tsp. of Vit. E/ppo was a good measurement. Probably too much then, huh? Are you saying you only use 3 caplets of Vit. E/PPO?

I think I'm just gonna chuck out my gelantinous batch. Chalk it up to one of those teachable moments in my soaping education. :wink:

Hey, sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone who answered me! In this post and all my others. You guys are wonderful. Muchos appreciated.

 

[calico21]

I think she meant by not having enough lye thats what your superfat % came out to.
I take that back, I just ran it too and it is 15 % to begin with. At 5% you would have needed 4.9 lye.

 

[KnowWhat]

You need 8.8 ounces of lye water, and 7.7 ounces of water

 

[rubyslippers]

You need 8.8 ounces of lye water, and 7.7 ounces of water

Yep that's right! (see my corrected post)

 

[rubyslippers]

Lye amount in recipe=L
Water amount in recipe=W
L x 2 = B
W - B = Additional water

So using my recipe posted it should read like this:
4.4 X 2 = 8.8
12.1 - 8.8 = 3.3 Additional water

:?: Couple of questions for Rubyslippers:
Regarding the superfat thing... I'm totally confused. I ran my recipe through Soapcalc. In fact, I have the print out in front of me and it says 5% superfat. I ran it again just to make sure and it still says 5%. How did you get 15%? I don't get it? Am I doing/seeing something different than you?

Vitamin E: Somewhere in my vast amount of research I was sure that I read that using a 1 tsp. of Vit. E/ppo was a good measurement. Probably too much then, huh? Are you saying you only use 3 caplets of Vit. E/PPO?

When computing your water, remember of the 8.8 lye/water - one half of that IS water. So you subtract that water amount (4.4 oz) from your total (12.1) to get 7.7 oz of additional water needed in your current recipe.

Stacey, you said you used soapcalc and your paper says 5%. I'm confused: so when you ran your recipe through soapcalc & you go to the 2nd page after you hit the "calculate and print" button - what amount of lye is suggested?


I don't have the soapcalc amounts in front of me but I do remember for the amount of lye you were using it was superfatting at 15% and that did not include the additional amount of Vit E you were adding. And, yep, I only squirt in 3 little caplets of Vit E into 2 lbs of oil. That's probably not enough to make it worthwhile, but I do it anyway.

 

[Stacey]

Ok, first off, sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this. Been busy for the last week.

All righty then, back to the subject at hand.

One of the first things: I realized after thinking about the superfatting issue/question that maybe there was something obviously/seriously wrong somewhere. But where? I read and re-read the thread.

Indeed, that was the case... As I mentioned, I re-ran MY numbers through SoapCalc and I still came up with 5%. The numbers of my print-out from SoapCalc.

What I didn't do was re-run the numbers that I had originally posted in my recipe here on my thread. 'Doh! My stoopid boneheaded mistake. I typed the numbers wrong. I'm sorry. That explains why everyone thought my superfat was too high.

Then as I was typing a response, then Rubyslippers was typing her response about the masterbatch lye calculations mistake and the thread crossed in cyberspace. *sigh....

Good grief! Isn't that crazy? LOL! Hopefully anyone reading this thread will read it all the way through so they don't get too confused.

So then we fast forward to a week later and I'm still trying to get this figured out.

I'm still confused. Can I just start over? :wink:

Here's my recipe:
THE CORRECT VERSION (what I actually mixed up and used)
Cocoa Butter 6 ozs.
Lard 8 ozs.
Coconut Oil 6 ozs.
Castor Oil 2 ozs.
Avocado Oil 2 ozs.
Olive Oil 8 ozs.
(32 oz PPO)

12.1 Water
4.4 Lye

Masterbatched lye: 12.16-4.1=7.7 (which we now know to be the crux of the problem)
I added 2 ozs. of FO Coconut/pineapple
3 tsp. Vit. E (Seeing another mistake here...should've only really added 2 tsp. Vit. E if I were going with the 1 tsp./ppo ratio )

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Just to make sure I've got it figured out now....

You're saying with using Masterbatched Lye I must double the recipe's lye amount to get the full lye amount indicated in the recipe. And then subtract the water portion of the masterbatch lye from the recipe's water amount.
Yes?

So using my corrected recipe as an example: (12.1 Water and 4.4 Lye)

L=Lye amount according to recipe
W=Water amount according to recipe
MBL=Masterbatched Lye

Lx2= Masterbatched Lye needed for recipe (half of this weight is water)
W-L = additional water

4.4 x 2= 8.8
12.1-4.4= 7.7

For total weights of Lye and Water ratio to come out...can you double check the math like this?:

Mixing up per recipe:
12.1+4.4=16.5 total weight

OR

Masterbatched Lye
4.4 x 2 = 8.8
12.1 - 4.4 = 7.7
So then
8.8 + 7.7 =16.5 total weight

Do I get it now? :roll:

I'm still not a quitter....but I'm also smart enough to know when to cut my loses and move on. If I don't understand it correctly this time, I'll set it aside for now. :?

Thanks for all the help everyone!