Ghost swirl came out backwards!

[luluzapcat]

Yesterday I had a wonderful self-indulgent day of soap...it took me about 3 hours to plan and about 3 more to make Auntie Clara's Ghost Swirl soap. Well, my clunky approximation of it, but I'm still pretty happy about it.

It basically worked, aside from getting thicker trace and hence swirls that are not as fine and graceful as I'd like.

However--ti's BACKWARDS! Somehow the middle of my soap, the high water portion, which would have gelled at a higher temperature, is LIGHTER than the outside.

It behaved as expected at first--when I first poured, the middle strip, where I poured the. high water, was lighter in color than the sides. After about half an hour in the oven for CPOP, that reversed and the center went darker, as expected. But--after an hour the middle wasn't as dar as it had been. I left it for 2 hours total (maybe too much?). From tt he time I pulled it out of the oven until now, about 24 hours later, the center has been lighter than the sides.

Any thoughts?

 

[glendam]

It could be that it’s lighter because of some soda ash forming, have you cut it yet to see what it’s Like inside?

 

[luluzapcat]

Not yet! Can't wait. thanks for the idea, and I'll let you know what I find.But here's the bottom, which presumably has no ash...
Mystery aside, I LOVE the bottom, I have to say.

 

[dibbles]

The reverse effect can happen sometimes. From Auntie Clara's blog post on 9/10/20:

"Mostly the gelled high-water soap will look darker than the ungelled low-water soap. But sometimes the effect is the opposite; the fully saponified high-water soap actually looks lighter. Again, I don’t know why this is but I’m guessing it might be either a case of minute glycerine rivers or a case of ‘frostbite’; crystallization due to cool temperature." Here is the link to the entire post if you want to read it:
https://auntieclaras.com/2020/09/ghost-swirl-soap-revisited/
Soap is endlessly fascinating

 

[DeeAnna]

"...the high water portion, which would have gelled at a higher temperature ..."

FWIW, you've got it backwards. Higher water LOWERS the temperature at which soap will gel. Your observation that the center portion got darker during CPOP bears that out -- "...After about half an hour in the oven for CPOP, that reversed and the center went darker ..." which indicates it went into gel.

I don't have any better explanation about the center being lighter than Auntie Clara. Thanks, @dibbles, for finding that info.

Soap ... just when ya think you've got it figured out ... it throws a curve ball atcha.

 

[luluzapcat]

Thank you @dibbles and @DeeAnna!

 

[glendam]

Not yet! Can't wait. thanks for the idea, and I'll let you know what I find.But here's the bottom, which presumably has no ash...
Mystery aside, I LOVE the bottom, I have to say.

View attachment 52390

That looks cool!

 

[luluzapcat]

I had missed that portion of Auntie Clara's update that @dibbles posted, and it's really interesting to see this.

@DeeAnna, I read and reread about ghost swirls like 6 times because it seemed to counter-intuitive to me, but looks like I STILL garbled it in my head. Here's the paragraph from Auntie C, for anyone else interested:

"Those who have read Kevin Dunn’s book Scientific Soapmaking carefully, will know that (everything else equal) a low water soap goes through saponification faster and enters full gel phase at a higher temperature than a high water soap does. In this case the 60C temperature kept in my oven was not high enough to force the uncovered low water soap to enter full gel phase. The high water soap, however, did go through full gel at that temperature. But, even though the low water soap did not go through full gel phase it probably was fully saponified before the high water soap was."

And then there's also: "The ambient temperature is crucial. 60C seems to be a sweet spot where high water soap gels and low water soap doesn’t."

Definitely makes my head spin...

At this point I think the counter-intuitive part is that the LOWISH end of CPOP temp causes the high water soap alone to gel, even when in other conditions (hotter) low water soap would gel faster.

And it went backwards, in my case!

 

[Chispa]

I do love ghost swirls. I'm too cheap to buy colours, and the ghost swirl always looks nice. You have done a marvelous job!

 

[luluzapcat]

It could be that it’s lighter because of some soda ash forming, have you cut it yet to see what it’s Like inside?

I have--it goes all the way through--not soda ash. I was wondering about that too...

 

[Catscankim]

Can we see the cut please lol

 

[luluzapcat]

@Catscankim, I BUTCHERED the cut, and have rhombuses instead of bars. *sigh*
But I'll post these anyway so you can see the middle layer exposed by the cut (this was cut horizontally--except for the one I accidentally did the wrong way--*sigh* again.)

 

[Catscankim]

Love these. I haven't given the ghost swirl a try yet, but I'm in love.

You can plane them if you want more squared out looking bars. But if these are just for yourself/family, I wouldn't bother. They are so pretty. Great job

 

[luluzapcat]

@Catscankim

thank you! I'm enchanted by the technique too and will definitely do it again.