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SpectroGreg

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Hey guys, I made my fist batch of cold process soap about 24 hours ago and it went off without a hitch! But now I'm having trouble cutting my soap. When I try to slice it the soap just flakes apart and won't cut evenly. Did I wait too long to cut it? What's going on?

Thanks for the advise, I'm hooked on making soap now, it's so much fun!
 
it would sound like you waited too long to cut . you did not mention what type of soap it is . mostly salt soaps crumble when cutting.
 
100% olive oil should still be soft. How are you trying to cut it? Are you using a wire or a knife or a pastry cutter? How thick are you cutting and is it a loaf or a slab?
 
Hi, and welcome to the addiction!

If you read through the forum, or watch any YouTube videos, you will probably notice that we all use weights for our recipes. This is because weights are much more precise when dealing with caustic chemicals.

We also use lye calculators. Here is the one I use: soapcalc.net. If you click on each colored number, it will explain how to use each section.

To figure out if your recipe is safe or not, simply place your measuring cup on a digital scale, hit the tare button, and then add 3 cups of olive oil to see what the weight is. Enter this number into soapcalc.net. Click the calculate recipe icon, then click view or print recipe. This will open a new window that says the amount of NaOH(sodium hydroxide) you should have. Then weigh out 3/4 cup to see if you have the proper amount. Repeat for the water amount.

I strongly suspect that your lye amount is too high, but I could be wrong.
 
I find that my 100% olive oil soaps are tricky to cut if they don't gel - if I don't gel them, I use individual moulds. I haven't found the trick to cutting an ungelled loaf
 
Your soap is VERY lye heavy and is NOT SAFE to use!

You used at least twice as much lye as that amount of oil needed. You can either try to rebatch it or throw it away. As you used volume measurements instead of weights, I would throw it away.

The first thing you need to do is purchase a decent scale that weighs in grams. It doesn't have to be expensive. You should always weigh all of your ingredients in soapmaking. It is much more accurate and safer.

Then you need to find and familiarize yourself with a lye calculator and USE it. ALWAYS. There are a lot of bad recipes out there, in books, on the internet, and let's be honest even with the best of intentions typos happen. You must always run any recipe through a lye calculator.

p.s. use gloves when handling that soap, and dispose of it carefully. at best you could rebatch it for laundry soap.
 
Ditto everything new12soap said x 100.

The behavior of your soap when cutting brings back unpleasant memories for me because that is just like how my very own first soap batch behaved when cutting. It turns out mine was very lye heavy. I ended up tossing the whole 3 pound lot of it out, but it's really not necessary to toss it.

I wish I would have known then what I know now, but lye-heavy soap can be saved either by making laundry soap out of it, or you can do Bunny's method of rebatching it and adding oil back into bit by bit as it's cooking until the soap no longer zaps when you apply the tongue test to it. I have tried Bunny's method before and it works great. Although you won't know the final superfat % of your soap, it doesn't really matter. What really matters is that it is not lye heavy anymore and is safe to use, and you won't have let any of your efforts (or soap) go to waste.

I've never made laundry soap, but I can talk you through Bunny's method if you need me to do so.

IrishLass :)
 
OK, to rebatch that soap, the first thing you need to figure out how much of each ingredient you actually used. That means you need a digital scale. You put your measuring cup on the scale and hit tare(power) button long enough to get 0 grams. Then you add 3 cups of the same type of oil. Write down this amount exactly. Pour the oil back into the bottle, but don't wash the cup just yet. Place a dry cup on the scale, and hit tare again. Add 3/4 c of the lye that you used. Write this amount down exactly also. Return that to the bottle.

Go to soapcalc.net, or the reputable lye calculator of your choice. Click on the grams button at the top. Select your oil, and click the grams button. Type in the amount of oil you used. Hit calculate recipe.(Leave the 5% superfat and the 38% lye ratio alone for now.) Click view or print recipe. That will show you the amount of NaOH you should have used at the top. Olive oil has a NaOH SAP value of 0.134, which means that for every gram of olive oil, it takes 0.134 grams of NaOH to saponify it. So, take the amount of grams of NaOH that is in excess of that amount, divide by 0.134, and that resulting number is the amount in grams of olive oil you need to add back to the pot. (Someone with actual math ability and far more experience than me PLEASE check this process??)

Now, put a pair of gloves on, and get a stainless steel grater, and grate all the soap into either a crock pot, or a stainless steel pot of some sort. Weigh out the missing olive oil(into the already dirty cup). Cook on slow until you get a melted sort of transluscentish paste. This will be irregular in texture and color. It theoretically should not zap you when tested. Mash and smash the soap(use caution, this is HOT.) back into the mold and allow to cool. Should be ready to cut as soon as you consider it cool, but press on it first, and if not firm enough, give it a bit more time.
 
I got digital scale in Canadian Tire for 9.99, in Us the same scale would probably for 8.99 . Of course the one for lotions was not that cheap. :)
Every video on youtube shows how to check the proportion on some kind of lye calculator. My fist soap was awesome, and we used it all, I used soap calc:)
Even for newbie like me, the soap seems lye heavy as said above:(
 
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