powder feeling soap

[see]

hello everyone! im new to soaping, maybe got couple hundred bars made, and I decided to be creative and make up a recipe. well, i dont think it went to well.

i think maybe my combined percentages of castor oil, cocoa, and shea butters were to high? can someone confirm that this recipe would make a crumbly bar? It has been curing for wk or so and i thought it felt better, but I dropped one last night and the corner kind of was crumbly. Its not so crumbly like powder but more of a oily crumbles.. I was/am hoping that it would cure out to be a hard bar. Is this not going to happen?

this is the recipe all in oz. the spread sheet called for 38.4 water but i have been using a little less than it has been calling for on all my batches w/ no problem. I have read that to much lye/not enough water causes crumbles but i dont think that is the case.. i think its more of the butter/castor percents but im new so if im wrong let me know.

i really want to know about these high percents b/c i made most of my soaps just oo, palm and coconut oil and i want to start making more w/ extra oils b/c its getting cold here.



ev olive oil 34.6
palm 24.2
coconut 27.7
shea butter 3.5
cocoa butter 4.3
castor oil 6.9

water36.2
lye 14.3

 

[rubyslippers]

I ran it through soapcalc and it looks good. Give it a good cure and it should turn out to be a good solid bar.

 

[see]

is that normal for castor/shea/cocoa butter?

 

[xraygrl]

yeah, recipe looks ok. Did it go trhough a full gel? If it didn't gel, that might explain the crumblies.

 

[see]

what is gel?

 

[see]

sorry just saw it online. i have never seen anything that looks like gel. i usually pour and then immediately cover for insulating. sometimes i take a quick look around 15hours but have never seen any difference. i did notice that some of my last batch have been a little crumbly around the edge where i cut but i assumed it was b/c those last batches had castor oil in them (small amounts 4%) but the time frame for these last batches has also been when it has started to get cold here. i just waited a couple more days before cutting the others.

is this gel stage something could be causing all my crumbles, and if so should i not insulate as much? the temp in my place was in the high 70s before but now dropping into the 50s and below (40s).

the crumbles im talking about w/ the other batches is no where near what the amount of the batch the original post was about.

thanks for any help w/ this confusion.