Crumbly Corners

[MarnieSoapien]

I have been having inconsistent results with the corners of my soaps sticking and crumbling. Recently, I increased the amount of OO I use from 35% to 40% and decreased the amount of Castor Oil from 10% to 5%. I have been using a 12 bar silicon mold and feel like I'm getting sticky corners about half of the time.

Once I waited 48 hours because the tops still felt soft and the corners stuck when I finally unmolded them. I chalked this up to leaving them in the mold too long. The second time I waited less than 24 hours and don't remember a problem with the edges sticking. Today, I unmolded at about the 24 hour mark and only had 2 come out with clean edges.

Suggestions? This is really frustrating me. I don't remember having this issue before I tweaked my recipe and increased my OO.

Recipe:
SF 5%

OO 40%
CO 25%
Shea 20%
SA Oil 10%
Castor 5%

2:1 Water: Lye

 

[Lin19687]

There are a few threads on this in the Recipe section
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/search/5490617/?q=crumbly&o=relevance&c[node]=34

 

[DeeAnna]

My guess is your soap isn't getting sufficiently warm during saponification, if you soap fairly cool or if you are trying to prevent gel by cooling the molds during saponification. Your newer recipe doesn't have a lot of stearic and palmitic acids, and that's another issue that may contribute to this problem. But if you want to stick to this recipe, try keeping the soap warmer during saponification and see if that helps.

Another thing you can try is to freeze the molds after saponification but before trying to remove the soap, so the bars are frozen solid.

 

[Cellador]

Yes, freezing will help.

Have you tried sodium lactate? That may also help if you're not adverse to using it.