Problems with my soaps

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Annmarie0407

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
120
Reaction score
0
Location
Orange County, CA...but from NY, FL, NJ
I have been making soap for about 2 months now.
Up until now...I thought I had the hang of it...until last night when I unwrapped my mold of GFCF (gluten Free casein free)Lavender Soap.

I took a pic of the soap and placed it to a bar of the same type of soap I made last week. They BOTH have the same exact ingredients
Olive oil, Coconut oil, Palm oil, lavnder essential oils. The white soap is what it is suppose to look like. The ruined soap is the yellow one.

Also, does anyone know how I am suppose to trim and shine my soaps? I heard that soem people do this.

Someone please help. I have no idea what went wrong...

The first pic are the GM soaps I have made so far





my.php
[/url]


[/url]
 
Your soaps look fabulous!!!!

As for the two identical but different ones, did one gel and one not? Did you use the same brand/lot number/supplier of the same ingredients?

Folks use different things to clean up their bars. A vegatable peeler is quite popular.

Digit
 
Thank you Digit

I am a bit confused on te contraption you showed me to shape my soaps. I have never seen one(since I am so new to all of this)....

How is it used? Do I put in 1 soap at a time?

In regards to my soaps...I used the SAME ingredients from the same vendor. Is it possible that my oils and lye were too hot during the tracing? Ahhhh...I know another thing I did difffertly.....

I DOUBLED my recipe(have never done that before)...so I can make 2 batches of the same soap in one shot. I also noticed tha it took a LONG time for the temp of my lye mixture and my oils to cool down....thats when I got a bit impatient and started mixing(I think they were at 125 degrees)....

Could something like that make a difference?

Annmarie
 
Hmmmm.....double and then tripple check your math for the doubling. Run the doubled batch through a lye calcutor. Just to be certain.

Have you checked to see if your scales are accurate? They can be bumped or dropped and get out of whack.

Heat can affect your results, hence the question of whether one gelled and one did not. If you had twice as much oils than before, yes, it would take a bit longer for the mixture to cool down. I generally soap room temp or very cool. Sorry I am not a whole lot of help here.

Digit
 
:lol: Hey now you know like me what happens when you just double everything. I found out soap recipes are not like cooking recipes :oops: So now before I even pull out my pots, I run my recipes thru soapcal.

Sonja
 
Martin said:
:lol: Hey now you know like me what happens when you just double everything. I found out soap recipes are not like cooking recipes :oops: So now before I even pull out my pots, I run my recipes thru soapcal.

Sonja

Even some cooking recipes can't be doubled, specifically baking.
 
Ok, so I went to look at the funky looking soap again last night and saw a white power all over it. Is this because the lye was doubled and there is too much lye in the formula?

Does this mean I should just put this batch in the trash?
 
Don't panic!! :lol: It could just be ash! Tounge testing is putting the tip of your tounge to the bar of soap to see if it zaps you. If the bar is lye heavy, it will feel the kind of zap a 9-volt battery gives.

Your bars look great!
 
Becky

Are you kidding? I am peeing my pants right now thinking about getting zapped by my soap. Hmmm...on second thought...I am gonna ask my husband to do it for me.

So, should I just trash it...or can I do something with it? I am clueless
 
So.........where are you at with this batch? Never trash anything until you are certain it is trashed. :lol:

Digit
 
I am going to guess and say one batch gelled and the other did not. Why? Because you stated that you did not wait for your oils and lye to cool down before soaping, which would definitely make a soap gel a bit faster. There is nothing wrong with the soap as long as everything is done correctly. It should be fine. This is the world of soaping, sometimes batches with identical ingredients do not always come out identical.
 
The tongue test isn't bad! I swear!

I did make my boyfriend tongue test my soaps for a couple months there... But now I can confidently lick my own soap! :lol:

-Karen
 
Back
Top