How to avoid cracking/overheating?

[AshleyR]

If it's not one thing, it's another!

I made my cucumber soap tonight (with frozen cucumber puree!) All went well. It was a nice creamy green colour with little darker green specks, and I caught it at just the right time to make a nice swooshy top. It looked awesome!

Since my lye/cucumber water was pretty much room temp. when I soaped, I made sure to wrap my mold in an extra blanket to ensure gel. I have had soaps only partially gel even in my wooden mold if I don't soap at high enough temps, so I wanted to be extra sure!

Anyway, I just checked on it and my lovely swooshy top has a big crack down the center of the whole log. Overheated??? Thing is, the top is not yet gelled.... which leads me to wonder if it did in fact overheat... or not?

The top was still a bit soft so I took a spoon and tried to fill in the crack, but now it looks nowhere near as nice as before.

How do I stop this from happening again? I have had the same thing happen with other soaps that I made at room temp or very low temps and insulated.

 

[IrishLass]

I have this happen quite regularly with my batches made with a really high % of coconut oil, even if I put them in the fridge to prevent overheating. I use to have to baby-sit these kind of soaps throughout the cracking stage by continually smoothing the cracks over as they appeared, but now I just place a fitted piece of bubblewrap over the top of my freshly poured soap, gently pressing the 'bubbles' into the surface of my soap, cover with my mold cover and then a heavy book to weight the cover down. I found out by 'happy accident' when making my first ever 'honeycomb' soap with bubblewrap as my liner in a 100% CO soap that this prevents my tops in these soaps from developing cracks. All my high coconut soaps have a decorative honeycomb top to them now, but it's much better than having cracks or having to diligently sit close by and babysit my soap to smooth cracks over for an hour or more. Maybe this will work with your soap, too.

IrishLass

 

[AshleyR]

Thanks IrishLass!

I could always cut the tops off the bars if the cracks are really ugly... (which I have done to many) but I'd rather keep my soaps looking all the same size with textured tops. Maybe I'll try the bubble wrap thing. Problem is, I can't narrow down which ones it keeps happening to. I use pretty much the same recipe for most of my soaps, but only some crack. I don't always pay close attention to what temps. I'm soaping at though, so maybe I'll have to start doing that.

Thanks again!

 

[Etelka]

Cracking is usually from overheating, so are lye pockets/tunnels. I do CPRTOP (cold process room temperature oven process) finishing it in the oven at 60C (140F) which forces gelling right to the edges without overheating
Etelka