Help! Coconut Oil Vs shea butter mix up

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mbarrett0330

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Help, I made a monumental mistake. I was making a few batches of soap on Saturday - I have ONE recipe that has always worked consistently for me, so I don't deviate from it. So, I guess you could say I'm an experienced novice, so to speak. :) Well, I scraped the bottom of one tub of coconut oil on my second to last batch, and I went looking for that big tub of oil I'd bought from the bulk supply store so I could make one last batch. I popped open the lid, noticed the color was very yellow, but thought to myself, this is a super cheap, bulk variety of coconut oil. So I melted it and went on with life.

Here's what happened: my soap reached heavy trace VERY quickly. Like, I was shocked and a little panicked, but I quickly superfatted it with almond oil and added fragrance, and it went immediately back to a thinner consistency so I blended to trace again and poured it in my mold. When I was checking on my soaps, they were all doing their "gel" thing, but this one had already hardened to a solid block within an hour - it never achieved "gel" stage, though it got very hot like all the others. All very odd things to me, but I didn't know what was happening.

The next day, I took my soaps out of their molds, and among the standard, murky, semi translucent blocks I'm very used to seeing, I had this this one, totally opaque block that looks like a fully cured bar of soap. I literally did not know what had happened until today - I went to my pantry to get my ingredients to make lotion and DUH...that big tub of "cheap coconut oil" was actually the big tub of shea butter I'd bought from the same place in the exact same big white tub! (I know that seems totally illogical, but I had a lot of things going on at once...and I was obviously on a mental holiday.)

Yes, I feel like a total idiot, but now I'm wondering what's going to become of my soap! Is it garbage now, or can I still use it? What's the worst thing that could be wrong with a soap that has 43% shea butter? Is it more lotion than soap? Will it burn my flesh off or spoil on the shelf?

To put it in better context, here's the recipe I SHOULD have used...but as you already know, the "coconut oil" was accidentally substituted for shea butter. Thanks for your help!

6.4 oz sweet almond oil (plus 1.6 for super fatting)
1.6 oz castor oil
16 oz coconut oil (oops, I used shea butter!)
8 oz olive oil
5 oz NaOH
11.5 oz water
1.5 oz FO
4 TBSP almond flour
 
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Please include how much Sodium Hydroxide you have used - this is necessary when you are asking for safety advice.

The SAP values for shea butter and coconut oil are very different, with shea butter requiring much less NaOH to turn into soap.

You would have needed a large additional superfat amount, so your soap will almost certainly be lye heavy.

You could recalculate your recipe and rebatch your lye-heavy shea butter soap with extra oils, so all is not necessarily lost (and could still be turned into something quite lovely - you could think about it as learning a new technique :) ).

Help, I made a monumental mistake.
...
What's the worst thing that could be wrong with a soap that has 43% shea butter? Is it more lotion than soap? Will it burn my flesh off or spoil on the shelf?

To put it in better context, here's the recipe I SHOULD have used...but as you already know, the "coconut oil" was accidentally substituted for shea butter. Thanks for your help!

6.4 oz sweet almond oil (plus 1.6 for super fatting)
1.6 oz castor oil
16 oz coconut oil (oops, I used shea butter!)
8 oz olive oil
 
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Thanks - here's the rest of the recipe that got cut off when I pasted (I'm editing my original to include as well.)

5 oz NaOH
11.5 oz water
1.5 oz FO
4 TBSP almond flour
 
Ok, I've put this in pictures for you. Picture 1 is your original recipe, picture 2 is your recipe with shea butter - the thing to look at is the amount of NaOH used in the first recipe and compare that to the amount of NaOH actually needed, as shown in the second recipe.

Recipe number 3 is the second recipe, with the superfat amount manipulated until the ounces of NaOH equal the original (recipe 1) NaOH.

What this tells you is that by substituting Shea butter for Coconut Oil when you made your recipe, in combination with your original superfat percentage of about 2%, you have made a soap with a more than 18% lye excess.

In other words, your soap is significantly lye heavy.

mbarrett0330_1.png


mbarrett0330_2.png


mbarrett0330_3.png
 
Here's what happened: my soap reached heavy trace VERY quickly. Like, I was shocked and a little panicked, but I quickly superfatted it with almond oil and added fragrance, and it went immediately back to a thinner consistency so I blended to trace again and poured it in my mold.

You are making CP soap aren't you?
If so you can't superfat with oils of your choice. The oils in the mix will all saponify equally.

If you are making HP soap you can add oils in a the last minute and they will not saponify and they will be superfat - extra oil in the soap.

Personally I'd wait and see how the soap turns out. Use it for family only. But I have a huge aversion to HP rebatching.
 
I’m betting it needs to be rebatched to save it. The threads with -40%SF theorize the amount of water plays into how well the lye cured out. More water = water bringing excess lye molecules to the surface to react with the air. Standard water amount might leave some lye zappy
 

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