My soap won't harden

[eucalypta]

Don't get me wrong people, I do love sunflower and RBO in soaps!
Just the better quality and in low amounts.

Experimenting is fun, and doing a recipe outside the box is perfect.
I do it often enough.
What I do take into consideration though, is the behaviour of the single oils in soap.
It served me well.

 

[soapandco]

I have adjusted the recipe to reduce the amount of sunflower oil to 7%, added castor oil, shea butter, red palm fruit oil and coconut oil to it and made one batch of this avocado soaps (I used avocado puree), it turned out great! I am still very unconfident in using any olive oil in my soaps, so I totally omitted that. See how they turn out later after curing.

 

[hmlove1218]

No need to worry about the olive oil. I frequently use 40%-60% in my recipes and I can usually unmold and cut in 24-36 hours. I think that the main reason you had problems with the first batch posted was that there weren't any hard oils.

 

[CaraBou]

More sad news.... Prepare to throw it out anyway. Two of the oils u used are prone to get DOS. (Dreaded Orange Spots) a.o. due to the short shelf life they have; they get rancid quickly. So my prediction is that the spots will appear even before this soap is totally cured. If you like those oils in the soap, consider buying the "high Oleic" type, or don't use more than 10% of the weight of oils in the soap.

I assume you meant sunflower and RBO. But my notes show RBO has a long shelf life - up to 2 years. And I've never heard of HO RBO. Am I missing something?

ETA: Looking around, I see a variety of values listed for shelf life of RBO: 2 years, 1 year, 6 months. What gives with that??

Here are a couple of contrasts:
http://alfaone.ca/rice-bran-oil-faq/
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soapmakingoils/tp/qualitiesofsoapmakingoils.02.htm

 

[jensenconferido]

Hi there

I also facing the same problem here, the soap won't get harden.
I have been making many batches of soap and all came up so well. But what happening right now is i follow all the process and ingredients, the soap is difficult to get trace, even though using hand held blender for about 40 mins to get medium trace. I then pour into the mold, the soap still feels warm and heat up just only few hours and immediately cool down.

I totally making 4 batches, all were failed. Addition note : weather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is Raining Season, 26 - 31 Celsius, for some reason, i do believe the weather would affect the soap ?

My recipe is simple, total of oil weight : 400 gram / 2 teaspoon of Lemongrass EO.

Almond Oil, sweet 4 gram
Canola Oil 50 gram
Soybean Oil 50 gram
Coconut Oil 60 gram
Castor Oil 2 gram
Palm Oil 234 gram

I would happy if someone able to shed me a light!

 

[IrishLass]

Welcome Jensen- You may want to start a new thread seeing as how this one is over a year old, and also introduce yourself in the Introduction forum. For what it's worth, though, the oils/fats part of your recipe looks fine to me. I'm curious, though, as to how much lye and water are you using in your recipe, and more importantly, which type of lye are you using- NaOH (sodium hydroxide) or KOH (potassium hydroxide)?


IrishLass

 

[Susie]

That looks like overheated soap to me. Not that the weather has anything to do with it, more likely other causes.

Could you post your entire recipe(including water, additives, colorants, and NaOH) in weights, and describe the process of what you do with it once your pour it? That will help us figure it out faster.

Mods-could someone possibly consider moving this to start a new thread? This one is a year old, and may get overlooked.

EDIT-Typing same time as IL. Sorry.

 

[jensenconferido]

Welcome Jensen- You may want to start a new thread seeing as how this one is over a year old, and also introduce yourself in the Introduction forum. For what it's worth, though, the oils/fats part of your recipe looks fine to me. I'm curious, though, as to how much lye and water are you using in your recipe, and more importantly, which type of lye are you using- NaOH (sodium hydroxide) or KOH (potassium hydroxide)?


IrishLass

Thank you! Please see the new thread here
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?p=536372#post536372

 

[Tendai]

I am using this recipe for my soap making, but it didn't harden after 24 hours, instead it has become gooey. 300g olive oil, 200g rice bran oil, 200g sunflower oil, i also used chlorophyl as colorant, ground sesame as scrubs, ylangylang and rose geranium EO. I ran the lye calculator and worked out my NaOH to be 89g with 6% superfat, I have been using the same calculator and it has always been reliable. Please help, thanks.

Lye should be 10% by mass, water 20% and oils 70 %. ratio should be 1:2:7 if your oil does not have water. if it has reduce amount of water. in this case just gently heat until is thick like meshed potatoes the leave to dry

 

[amd]

This is an old thread. Please be cautious of dates when replying to threads.

 

[shunt2011]

Lye should be 10% by mass, water 20% and oils 70 %. ratio should be 1:2:7 if your oil does not have water. if it has reduce amount of water. in this case just gently heat until is thick like meshed potatoes the leave to dry

This post is from 2015. The person you quoted hasn't been here in years. Welcome to the forum, please go to the introduction forum and tell us a little about yourself. Also, read the stickies in the forums which will help you out on navigating the forum as well.

 

[DeeAnna]

@Tendai -- The ratio for lye to fat that you provide night be acceptable for the boiled method of soap making, but it is not sufficiently accurate for cold process or hot process soap making. Furthermore, the ratio you suggest is a rough estimate for NaOH only. It is not a even close to a reasonable guesstimate for KOH. We recommend using a soap recipe calculator for more accurate information.