blue_soda025
Member
I live in Vancouver and the weather is cooling down drastically, so that makes it difficult to gel my soaps properly. Even if I use the loaf molds and insulate with a towel it's still seemingly not enough to create enough heat to gel my soaps.
I also tried doing the CPOP, but I think my oven runs hotter than what the temperature dials say. I'm going to buy an oven thermometer soon so I can calibrate it better, but one thing that's bugging me about the oven process is that most resources I've read say to turn then oven up to 160-170 F and from my understanding a lot of fragrance oils have a low flashpoint of ~140 F. Wouldn't putting the soap in the oven at such high temps make the scents disappear?
That happened to one of my recent batches of soap, I think, but it had mostly EOs in it. The EOs faded dramatically but the FO seemed to stick slightly better (but still faded I think). There was also a lot of sweating on the top surface. I assume it overheated but at least it gelled. Yet I've tried putting in other batches in the oven at similar temperatures without them looking like they gelled so I'm getting confused. I just want my soaps to gel without sweating the fragrances out and losing scents. Anyone have any good tips for how to gel soaps in colder climates?
I also tried doing the CPOP, but I think my oven runs hotter than what the temperature dials say. I'm going to buy an oven thermometer soon so I can calibrate it better, but one thing that's bugging me about the oven process is that most resources I've read say to turn then oven up to 160-170 F and from my understanding a lot of fragrance oils have a low flashpoint of ~140 F. Wouldn't putting the soap in the oven at such high temps make the scents disappear?
That happened to one of my recent batches of soap, I think, but it had mostly EOs in it. The EOs faded dramatically but the FO seemed to stick slightly better (but still faded I think). There was also a lot of sweating on the top surface. I assume it overheated but at least it gelled. Yet I've tried putting in other batches in the oven at similar temperatures without them looking like they gelled so I'm getting confused. I just want my soaps to gel without sweating the fragrances out and losing scents. Anyone have any good tips for how to gel soaps in colder climates?