My first go at cavity molds

[DawninWA]

I hate cutting soap, so I finally just bought some cavity molds. I think I need to refigure my recipe amounts. .

The first one has lime and orange essential oils, with a little arrowroot powder to hopefully help anchor the scent like cornstarch is supposed to. I hope it works, because it smells awesome!

The second one was supposed to be kinda swirly (half just soap, half with ground up green tea and spearmint leaves), but it started setting up too fast and so I ended up having to glop in in from the 2 halves. That's why it looks so sloppy. I think it will look ok once unmolded.

This recipe (high tallow) takes forever to trace, but doesn't give you much time to work once it does.

 

[lsg]

With your recipe, you might mix the soap just to a good emulsion and then divide and color.

 

[DawninWA]

I might try that, it does tend to stay at the almost-trace stage for quite a while.

 

[DawninWA]

Not quite what I was going for, but not bad

 

[dillsandwitch]

How much tallow do you use? I have up to 70% tallow on my recipie and i have heaps of time to do swirls and things unless i have a picky fo. I usually also soap at 35% lye concentration too. Are you SBing to heavy trace before adding colours?

 

[DawninWA]

My recipe is 70% GV Shortening from walmart (it's 98% tallow and 2% palm), 25% olive and/or HO Safflower oil (interchangeable in soapcalc, I just found out), and 5% castor. I've been pouring at "first evidence of possible trace". By the time it is there, it's been being mixed for a while, so maybe I'm overmixing.

This batch had spearmint essential oil.

 

[dillsandwitch]

Your recipe is very similar to mine. Are you contantly SBing or in burts with hand stiring in between?

 

[Arimara]

I cannot tell you in grams but in ounces, a pound of oils make 6ish bars of soap depending on trace. 500g can yield about 7 bars of soap. I like using those molds better that using a loaf, truth be told. I don't like having to make 750g batches of soap at a time, as weird as it may sound. I like small batches for quality control.

How long did you let the soap set up in your mold? It looks like it was still on the soft side. With those cavity mold, you could have let them sit over night, in or out of the fridge on a cookies sheet or something flat like that.

 

[DawninWA]

I stick blend for a few seconds, stir for a few. If I blend continuously, it takes too long and my blender gets hot.

Arimara - I weighed the mold with water, and it came up at around 600g. I added everything into soap calc until I got that number. It came up at .85 lbs of oil weight. I figured next time I'd do a pound, or maybe a little extra so I can make a small tester bar in a portion cup. The soap sat in the mold for 2 days, so it wasn't soft.

I put this picture on facebook and called it Soaphenge. My family was mildly amused

 

[DawninWA]

Oh wow

Before I used the tea, I read that it could bleed, but tried it anyway. Now I know what happens.

I like these molds, I can only mess up 6 bars at a time. Or 5, if I miscalculate. (and they're not really failures, because they're spearmint, and that's my favorite)

 

[Arimara]

I've only had my soaps peel and break when I tried to unmold before they hardened up enough. That was only during salt bar attempts.

 

[DawninWA]

Oh, no, they didn't break or anything, I just didn't shove the soap batter into the corners well enough.

 

[Arimara]

Thick trace will do that to you. That and HP soap sometimes.

 

[cmzaha]

I like small batches for quality control.

I am curious how making small batches creates quality control. 2474 g batches and do not have any problem with quality control, plus I get 14 bars with the same colors. My customers have a habit of noticing the color differences for one batch to another.

I find putting silicone cavity molds in the freezer and freeze will give you a clean de-mold, and can usually de-mold in 24 hrs this way. Patience is not my strong suit and I want to free up my molds as soon as possible

 

[Arimara]

I am curious how making small batches creates quality control. 2474 g batches and do not have any problem with quality control, plus I get 14 bars with the same colors. My customers have a habit of noticing the color differences for one batch to another.

I find putting silicone cavity molds in the freezer and freeze will give you a clean de-mold, and can usually de-mold in 24 hrs this way. Patience is not my strong suit and I want to free up my molds as soon as possible

Quality control, in this case, is a personal thing for me NOT a general standard everyone should adhere to. I'm better with small batches right now and prefer 1lb batches to higher amounts (I won't go over 750g of oil used). It is less of everything for me to freak out over if I make a mistake somewhere. When I made some attempts at brine bars. I made 3 1lb batches and only one of those batches did I throw out. The other two batches were used up.

 

[dillsandwitch]

Quality control, in this case, is a personal thing for me NOT a general standard everyone should adhere to. I'm better with small batches right now and prefer 1lb batches to higher amounts (I won't go over 750g of oil used). It is less of everything for me to freak out over if I make a mistake somewhere. When I made some attempts at brine bars. I made 3 1lb batches and only one of those batches did I throw out. The other two batches were used up.

I say go with what feels comfortable. My dad and brothers comment on the differences between my batches but I tell them I am just a person and not a machine and cant always get things to go the same way twice. The largest batch I make id 1420 grams of oil and thats for my big log mould that I made. And personally I think that is the biggest I'll ever go. I made a couple of larger log molds at the same time as I made my other ones but I have never used them. Thinking of cutting them down to smaller ones. One day

 

[DawninWA]

I made more using the advice to mix only to emulsion. It worked well. Could have been a tad thicker to get better swirls, but didn't do too bad, and I'll figure out how long to mix it. It was a little too soft to unmold, so we got messy edges. The rest is going to stay in the mold longer.

This one here is Lemongrass, Orange, and Lime with dried and ground up orange peel. It smells like Trix . I also did a Lavender Peppermint.

I'm loving this recipe. I was previously using 70% tallow (the mostly tallow shortening, that is), 30% olive/safflower, and it was nice, but could be bubblier. 5% Castor fixed that problem. I've been using the orange & lime from the previous batch since it was 2 weeks old (it's only 3 weeks old now), and it is already a nice bubbly bar.