1st Time Liquid Soap Experience

[Carl]

Here's my 1st LS experience. I'm part happy and part not. I decided to start with a 16 oz batch of oils.

I popped the following into a lye calculator:
76.2% Olive
14.4% Coconut
9.4% Sweet Almond Oil
I did a 3:1 water to lye ratio with KOH selected.

To make my lye water, I used the method mentioned by IrashLass in the "Soaping 101" post.

So I took my 3.11 ounces of KOH and then dissolved it in exactly 3.11 ounces of distilled H2O. I then mixed in my 9.32 ounces of Glycerin.

I then added this to the melted oils. I stick blended for at least 10 minutes and never hit trace. It did not thicken at all.

It took about 1.5 hours in a low heat croc pot to get to what Soaping 101 calls the translucent stage in her video.
I then cooked it for another 1.5 hours on low as she suggested and I finally got paste.

I was happy with the paste and it looked just like the paste in all the videos.

Instead of diluting 75/25 (3 parts water for 1 part paste), I did 62/38 (62% water, 38% paste weight). I did this because of the extra 3 ounces of H2O added up front to dissolve the lye.

I let it sit overnight on warm and it took until about lunch time for all the paste to be dissolved.

It seemed like it was very watery. So I let it cool a little bit thinking it would thicken but it didn't.

Finally when I added my fragrance oil, I mixed it with an equal amount of Polysorbate 80. This is when it got nice and thick.

So I'm not sure if I'm happy or not. I feel like the PS80 saved me and helped me get the desired thickness. I feel like I should not have needed the PS80 and should have had thicker soap without it.

Thanks for reading!

 

[DeeAnna]

It's more likely your fragrance oil thickened the soap, not the polysorbate.

 

[Carl]

Thanks, so why do you think I was not able to hit trace in the beginning?

 

[shunt2011]

Handmade LS is generally quite a bit thinner. Unless as DeeAnna said you happened to use an FO that thickens it. IL's recipe is pretty nice though. Sometimes FO will also thin it out.

 

[DeeAnna]

Thanks, so why do you think I was not able to hit trace in the beginning?

IMO, I don't think you were patient enough. Trace was coming ... but the process takes as much time as it needs to take, not as long as you think it should take.

That's an unavoidable problem with tutorials -- what the author shows in a tutorial isn't always what happens when another person attempts to do the process, especially the first time. It's easy to get frustrated and grasp at straws when a person doesn't have any personal experience to fall back on when things don't happen the same as what's shown in the tute.

In my experience, it can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes for a KOH soap batter to reach trace, sometimes even longer. You can stick blend the batter all you want, but that doesn't necessarily make things move along any faster than if you SB'ed less and added a big dollop of patience. It's nice when the batter traces fast, and I've had that happen, but sometimes the stars don't align and it just plain takes longer.

What I do is to SB for, oh, maybe 30 seconds. Let the batter sit for 5-10 minutes with a hand stir every so often. SB another 30 sec. Let the batter sit again with the occasional stir. For some time, the batter will look thin whether or not you're SB'ing. At some point, based on my experience, the batter will next appear to thicken slightly when SB'ing, but this apparent trace disappears shortly after SB'ing stops. I've learned this is a sign that real trace is getting close. Eventually the batter will reach trace and will often (not always, but often) turn into a thick paste not too long afterward.

If you don't have the patience, then you can add some gentle heat to hurry things along. I sometimes do that. But you do not have to cook the soap after it reaches trace regardless of what so many tutorials and bloggers advise. Just cover the pot, set it aside in a safe place at room temperature, and give the paste about an hour to finish up saponifying.

In my experience, KOH soap paste is usually zap-free in 15-30 minutes after it reaches trace, but I recommend waiting at least an hour to be on the safe side before cautiously zap testing. If it's still zappy, wait a day or 2 and retest. You probably will not make soap paste quite the same way as I do, so yours might take longer to fully saponify.