Coconut Milk Soap Won't Harden!

[unmouton]

This is my 3rd batch of attempted coconut milk soap. None of them will harden. I threw out the first two batches, and this one has been soft for 3 days now. Its unmolded, sweating slightly on top, and has the consistency of very hard fudge. The recipe used is from the recipe section here, I just sized it down with a soap calculator:

Sweet Almond Oil: 3 oz.
Castor Oil: 1.5 oz.
Coconut Oil: 7.5 oz.
Olive Oil: 18 oz.
Lye: 4.20 oz.
My liquids included 8 oz. Water and 3 oz. Canned coconut milk.

I used the full amount of liquids allowed on the Mountain Sage Calc. I also used 1.5 oz of Brambleberry relaxing fragrance oil, and a little bit of mica. I added my coconut milk and fragrance oil to my oils, mixed well, then added my lye solution.

Is something wrong with my recipe, my process, or do I just need to wait this one out? Thanks.
Heather

 

[jbarad]

the majority of your recipe is olive so it should harden up good, but with a lot of time. It'll probably be soft for quite awhile.

I use coconut milk in all my soaps and never have a hardening problem.

 

[topcat]

Yes, I think Rhonda is right IMHO.....olive oil soaps take longer to harden and become rock hard over time - like about 6+ weeks. Any time I have used coconut milk my soap has hardened the same as the ones without - I think it is the base oils that you use. Also I almost always take a 5% water discount with my soaps. That helps with how quickly they firm up. If you like to have a high OO content, perhaps you can add stearic acid or sodium lactate to your batches to encourage them to harden faster?

Tanya

 

[unmouton]

Thank you! I will wait it out before throwing this away. We'll see what happens.

 

[carebear]

plus you used a lot of liquid. if you include all your fluids in your lye solution calculation (easiest way to look at things) your lye solution is only 25%. I'd never go that low, and usually soap at 33% or higher. Beginners should probably be 28 - 30%.