Please help! Homemade M&P is still liquid!

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Feb 26, 2020
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Well, I'm new here and one of the reasons I joined is this.

Guys, I messed up. Like BAD.

I don't know what I did, but I was trying to make homemade melt & pour and it just...never set. It's still watery. The consistency is a dead ringer for pancake syrup.

I'll try to outline what I did, starting with the ingredients list:
  • 50g canola oil
  • 50g coconut oil
  • 25g castor oil
  • 25g distilled water mixed with 30g glycerin
  • 19g lye
  • 250g glycerin
  • 250g sugar syrup (175g sugar melted in 75g distilled water)
  • 83g propylene glycol
So I made the soap using that method (I don't know what it's called) where you basically stick blend it through hot process. So it's not exactly cold process but you also don't cook it the conventional way. But I did that with all the ingredients up until the lye. So far, so good. It looks like soap.

Then, I stir in the glycerin and the propylene glycol. I mix it really well, and it's pretty liquidy at that point. And then I stir in the sugar syrup really well.

I dump it in a mold and stick it in the freezer to set. I check on it an hour later and it's still liquid. So I leave it overnight. Still liquid.

What on earth have I done to this poor glycerin!? I even stuck it in a crockpot for a couple hours to evaporate some water from it, in case it was waterlogged, but all that did was give me brown liquid cause the sugars just burned.

Help! Can I save this soap? Any ideas are greatly appreciated!
 
I noticed this was moved from the lye soap forum to the M&P forum. I feel that's a mistake because it's not the M&P part that I messed up so I think the lye soapers will know more about it, no? Not sure how to bring this up to an admin cause I don't know who moved it! Sorry! :S
 
I‘ve never made my own MP soap before but I've been researching on that.
You probably added too much liquid, as in your glycerin, sugar syrup and propylene glycol. Your recipe (the oil and lye part) will make less than 200g soap, and yet you added almost 600g solvent to dissolve it, 3 times the soap part. It sounds like A LOT.

I used the recipe here for guideline: https://thethingswellmake.com/homemade-glycerin-soap-recipe-from-scratch/
It's not a MP recipe per se but a transluscent glycerin soap, I figured it's similar enough.
In this recipe, the base soap was around 1200g, the solvent part was around 1100g it's approximately equal parts.

Here's some other recipes I saved for reference:
https://www.lovinsoap.com/2016/08/make-clear-transparent-soap-scratch-making-transparent-soap-guide/
This recipe also used equal part soap and solvents.
http://curious-soapmaker.com/how-to-make-transparent-soap.html#Calculating_solvents
This author used solvents at 50-70% of soap weight.

In order to save the batch you canmake more base soap, add into your original batch and try mix them together, or just scrap the batch and cut your loss as it's relatively small.
 
I‘ve never made my own MP soap before but I've been researching on that.
You probably added too much liquid, as in your glycerin, sugar syrup and propylene glycol. Your recipe (the oil and lye part) will make less than 200g soap, and yet you added almost 600g solvent to dissolve it, 3 times the soap part. It sounds like A LOT.

I used the recipe here for guideline: https://thethingswellmake.com/homemade-glycerin-soap-recipe-from-scratch/
It's not a MP recipe per se but a transluscent glycerin soap, I figured it's similar enough.
In this recipe, the base soap was around 1200g, the solvent part was around 1100g it's approximately equal parts.

Here's some other recipes I saved for reference:
https://www.lovinsoap.com/2016/08/make-clear-transparent-soap-scratch-making-transparent-soap-guide/
This recipe also used equal part soap and solvents.
http://curious-soapmaker.com/how-to-make-transparent-soap.html#Calculating_solvents
This author used solvents at 50-70% of soap weight.

In order to save the batch you canmake more base soap, add into your original batch and try mix them together, or just scrap the batch and cut your loss as it's relatively small.
I was really hoping for information from someone with experience. That's partly why I wish this had stayed in the soap-making forum instead of the M&P forum. :(

If you search the forum for "transparent soap" you should find several threads about making it yourself. Maybe you'll find more answers?
Not finding much that's relevant, to be honest. :S
 
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