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- May 13, 2023
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Being in my early 60s, you'd think by now I'd have learned all the lessons in patience a person would need to learn, but you'd be incorrect. Today's lesson: my first clay-and-pumice soap experiment.
At the end of May I decided to try making a simple recipe that I found in the book Pure Soapmaking by Anne-Marie Faiola, but of course I couldn't leave it simple. I decided to try adding clay and pumice I'd recently purchased. The original recipe really is a straightforward one, with olive oil at 50%, palm at 24%, and coconut oil at 25%. The total oil was 850 grams, and I added ~18 grams of salt and 21 grams each of the clay and pumice.
Everything went well enough during the mixing, and I poured it into individual molds, including some fun 'sugar skull' candy molds I found at the thrift store. This is where my impatience kicked in. Although I told myself these would have to cure for at least 6 weeks, based on my reading, I couldn't help squeezing and poking at the bars daily. They wouldn't seem to harden! I thought I'd be shredding these and using them in a rebatch, and I was very disappointed, giving myself little internal lectures on the folly of winging it with additives. Finally I just ignored the soap. Last night, right at the 6-week mark, I noticed them on the drying rack, grabbed one, and discovered that I can barely dent the bar with my fingertip. Tapping it gives a great hardwood sound, and slicing off the rough surface reveals a sleek bar. My first test hand-washing shows a smooth, low lather. My hands felt a bit sticky at first, but as soon as they finished air drying the stickiness has entirely left and my skin feels smooth and not dried out. Very nice results for a bar I thought I'd be recycling three weeks ago!
As @The_Phoenix told me in another thread, you really can't tell much about a soap before the three-month point, so I'm looking forward to revisiting this batch after August 20.
Maybe someday I'll learn patience, but more likely I'll be dead before that happens...
At the end of May I decided to try making a simple recipe that I found in the book Pure Soapmaking by Anne-Marie Faiola, but of course I couldn't leave it simple. I decided to try adding clay and pumice I'd recently purchased. The original recipe really is a straightforward one, with olive oil at 50%, palm at 24%, and coconut oil at 25%. The total oil was 850 grams, and I added ~18 grams of salt and 21 grams each of the clay and pumice.
Everything went well enough during the mixing, and I poured it into individual molds, including some fun 'sugar skull' candy molds I found at the thrift store. This is where my impatience kicked in. Although I told myself these would have to cure for at least 6 weeks, based on my reading, I couldn't help squeezing and poking at the bars daily. They wouldn't seem to harden! I thought I'd be shredding these and using them in a rebatch, and I was very disappointed, giving myself little internal lectures on the folly of winging it with additives. Finally I just ignored the soap. Last night, right at the 6-week mark, I noticed them on the drying rack, grabbed one, and discovered that I can barely dent the bar with my fingertip. Tapping it gives a great hardwood sound, and slicing off the rough surface reveals a sleek bar. My first test hand-washing shows a smooth, low lather. My hands felt a bit sticky at first, but as soon as they finished air drying the stickiness has entirely left and my skin feels smooth and not dried out. Very nice results for a bar I thought I'd be recycling three weeks ago!
As @The_Phoenix told me in another thread, you really can't tell much about a soap before the three-month point, so I'm looking forward to revisiting this batch after August 20.
Maybe someday I'll learn patience, but more likely I'll be dead before that happens...
