Advice please

[GreenHollow]

Hey folks,

I’m attaching pics of a soap I made this Saturday and unmolded Sunday. I’ve made it numerous times as smaller batches and it turned out great. I resized this batch to sell and it turned out weird.

My observations:
- my lye would not dissolve completely. This has never happened. I filtered it and had a teaspoon or so of residue in the filter.
- I used 8 tbs of rose clay for a 5 lb batch. Too much? I think I should have only used 5 tbs. I dispersed it in water first.
-soda ash? I sprayed it with iso. alcohol 3 times.
-what is that residue on the side? Glycerine? I’ve not tongue tested it.

I soaped at 129 (oils) and 140 (lye).

Recipe was resized using BrambleBerry’s lye calculator.
16.8 oz lard
16.8 oz olive oil
16.8 oz coconut oil
2.8 oz shea butter
2.8 oz castor oil
7.97 oz lye
17.9 oz water (I think. I used exaclty how much the calculator called for with no discount.)
5% super fat.
Activated charcoal between the layers of soap.

Wooden mold. Covered on heating pad on medium for 30 mins then uncovered on heating pad for 3 hours.

I made the exact same recipe the same day with exfoliants and had no problem.
Thank you!

 

[MelissaG]

Whoa, it looks like chocolate cake. The "clear" spaces are glycerin rivers. The white might be soda ash. No matter what I do, I can't get rid of soda ash, so I'm not much help there.

Maybe not mixed very well? But the trace seems to be fairly high.

I'm not sure what happened here. Looks like a spoon soap (one where you had to spoon it into the mold) but the glycerin rivers would seem to say not.

I hope someone else can help better than I can. Now want chocolate cake.

 

[GreenHollow]

Whoa, it looks like chocolate cake. The "clear" spaces are glycerin rivers. The white might be soda ash. No matter what I do, I can't get rid of soda ash, so I'm not much help there.

Maybe not mixed very well? But the trace seems to be fairly high.

I'm not sure what happened here. Looks like a spoon soap (one where you had to spoon it into the mold) but the glycerin rivers would seem to say not.

I hope someone else can help better than I can. Now want chocolate cake.

Thanks MelissaG. It was spooned and it traced faster than the smaller batch I made.

I think you are right on about the soda ash. I’ve had it happen sporadically. I think I’m going to focus on pouring soap from now on. The spooning thing was crazy messy and I honestly don’t like the look.

Glycerin rivers have never happened to me before. I’m going to cut into bars and see what it looks like inside.

Thank you very much!