excess oil on surface help

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happyprince

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Hi all,
Today I made some honey soap,however,after a few hours I noticed to much oil on the surface,actually I am not sure if it is oil or not.I have had that problem before too.I manually picked the oil but today it was much more than usual. Let me give you some more details:I mixed lye with water boiled with turmeric.Actually the turmeric water was a bit hot and when it cooled down a little,I mixed it with oils that was in room temperature.So the lye water was hotter than oils.Can it be the reason?what should I do now to save my batch?Is it ok if I mix it again before it hardens?Or is it ok if I take the excess oil on the surface maually.By the way here is my recipe:
3 kg olive oil
500 grams castor oil
500 grams coconut oil
8 tablespoons of honey
40% water (boiled with turmeric powder).
Thanks a lot in advance;
Best wishes.
 
Usually a layer of oil like that is from overheating and honey soaps like to overheat. Yes, you can mix it back together and see if that works, if not, you will need to rebatch.
 
Wow, that is a LOT of castor. It is going to take quite a while to harden up. And 50% CO...what kind of soap were you going for?

The most probable cause of overheating is that large amount of honey. You really do want to stay down below 1 tablespoon PPO (500 gm).
 
thanks a lot for replies.Well,I took out like one liter of oil.Can I use that soap?I mean will the lye hurt?thanks
 
Wow, that is a LOT of castor. It is going to take quite a while to harden up. And 50% CO...what kind of soap were you going for?

The most probable cause of overheating is that large amount of honey. You really do want to stay down below 1 tablespoon PPO (500 gm).

I think you missed the olive oil was 3 kg. The castor and coconut are each 12.5% of the recipe so not sooo bad.

happyprince, yes, I agree that the honey caused overheating (it got too hot) and some of the oils separated from soap.

You need to zap test the soap on the bottom. However, if it lost 1 L of oil, it will probably be lye heavy and will need to be re-batched with the oil you took off the top. It is best to just re-batch it.
 
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That is a LOT of oil to be separating out, and you say this is not the first time you have gotten separation. I think you should check what you are doing to make this soap.

First, do you use a stick blender? Do you look for "trace" before you pour? What do you do with the soap in the mold -- do you insulate it or ???

The recipe with all ingredients in GRAMS, not percentages, would be helpful! Specifically what is the amount of water you are using? If your "40%" is what I think it is, this is way too much water for the high percentage of olive oil you are using in this recipe. And also what is the weight of NaOH you are using?

Susie -- The OP is using 3000 g olive oil as well as 500 g CO and 500 g castor. That's not so much castor I don't think!
 
I have the same problem today. When I start pouring the batch in mold I noticed that end of the pouring is crumbly and smudged. So I stopped pouring and tried manually to blend it and poured the end of the batch in different mold.
Now the first pour has some oil on the surface but the second pour has a lot of oil on surface.

I noticed in comments above that I can rebatch it through heat. Can any one guide me plz ?
 
I have the same problem today. When I start pouring the batch in mold I noticed that end of the pouring is crumbly and smudged. So I stopped pouring and tried manually to blend it and poured the end of the batch in different mold.
Now the first pour has some oil on the surface but the second pour has a lot of oil on surface.

I noticed in comments above that I can rebatch it through heat. Can any one guide me plz ?
This thread is from 2015. Please start another thread and just ask your question once or everyone will get confused.
 

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