Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mounia

Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2018
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Location
morocco
hi everyone !
i want to cure my recipe faster (50%OO, 28%CO, 12%Beef Tallow, 10%Castor, 5%Super Fat)
right now i use 38% water as a % of oils , and i read that the discount of water help to cure soap quickly.
so how much discount i need to make ?
Or do you suggest me to add any other ingredients ?
i really love to use my soap sooner (maybe in 3 weeks or less), so if you have any ideas PLEASE HELP ME!
 
Not sure where you read that, but a water discount will only help harden the soap and evaporate the liquids faster, not help it cure faster.
You can use your soap as soon as it is safe to do so. Soap is safe to use as soon as saponification is complete (usually within 72 hours for CP depending on recipe) but it will not be fully cured for 4-6 weeks, as the chemical reaction is taking place to take it from a harsh soap to a mild soap.
Saponification and cure are not interchangeable words, and are not the same thing.
There is nothing to shorten the actual cure of a soap, unfortunately.
 
To piggyback (add to) what Jcandleattic is saying: Some soapers define "cure" as the point where their soap stops losing water weight. This isn't the full picture of what is going during a soap cure. There is also a molecular change that is happening where the soap is forming a crystal and lattice structure. The time needed for the soap to form this structure varies depending on oils used, if I remember correctly soaps with high oleic are slower to form, just as an example. Water weight happens to be something a soaper can measure, which is why (I think) the water discount = faster cure persists.

As stated above, if you want to use your soaps at 3 weeks you sure can. You will likely find that they use up slightly faster compared to a 6 week soap. If you are making them only for yourself (not selling), I don't see a problem with using them earlier. Saponification is finished at 3 days (if not the first 24 hours) so a 3 week old soap is completely safe to use.
 
I used to give away my soap after 3 weeks. For the last few months I wait for the 4 week time.
 
Like the others have said, you can use your soap at any time once saponification is complete and there is no sign (via a zap test) of the presence of still-active lye. For the majority of my own CP soaps, that's as soon as one day after I've poured and molded my soap, but my soap is only just an infant at that point. Although it looks like a normal soap should look, and it lathers when water and friction is applied, time and experience have shown that it doesn't feel as gentle or lather anywhere near as copiously as it does after a four to six week cure. It also doesn't last as long as a 4-6 week cured soap.

You can certainly use less water if you wish. I myself prefer using less water than what is known as a 'full water' amount. Using less water enables me to unmold and cut and bevel my soap quicker than a full-water soap, but even though I use a water discount, my soap has shown that it still needs a cure of at least 4 weeks for it to perform at a more satisfactory level in terms of lather and gentleness, and not melt away so fast in the shower. That's because the crystalline lattice structure that Amd mentioned above is still being built inside, and it needs those weeks of cure to reach full maturity.

For my soaps, the difference in weeks of cure between a full-water soap and a water-discounted soap (in terms of when my soap has reached its earliest best according to my own satisfaction), is a difference of 2 weeks. In other words, my full-water soaps don't reach what I consider to be their "earliest best" until at least six weeks of cure have gone by, and my water-discounted soaps don't reach what I consider to be their "earliest best" until at least 4 weeks have gone by. "Earliest best" is when my soaps have reached the minimum satisfactory level of maturity and performance to where I'm happy using it myself and also would not be ashamed of presenting it to a loved one as a gift.


IrishLass :)
 
Back
Top