questions about slow trace recipe

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AMyers

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Is a slow to trace recipe also a slow to cure recipe?

As in, I wanted to try a swirl, so I chose a recipe that was "slow to trace", ran it through a lye calculator, made it up, and a week later, unmolded it to find it was still so soft I was leaving dents from my fingers. :confused:

I let it sit a few more days, and it got a bit harder, so I cut it (so impatient to see if the swirl was successful!!) and it was still quite soft inside. I'm hoping that additional surface area will help it cure and harden more effectively.
 
I haven't found that to be necessarily true. My recipe is pretty slow to trace but is hard enough to unmold after 18-24 hours. If you post your recipe we may be able to help troubleshoot for you. I use a higher amount of OO in my recipe but I also use palm, CO, PKO, Shea and Castor. If you really like your recipe you could add some salt or Sodium Lactate. It helps to make it a bit firmer.
 
As per Soapcalc, with 5% SF
10.8 ounces *each* Canola, Coconut, Olive and Palm Oil
16.4 ounces water
6.0 ounces lye

I melted the palm oil, and shook it up heartily before measuring it out.

Once it hit light trace, I separated into two containers, one with 1tsp TD in 1TB Sunflower oil and no FO, one with 1tsp pink mica dissolved in 1Tb Sunflower oil plus 12 mL Pomegranate fragrance oil. then I started layering for my swirl. By the time I got to the top layer, it was the consistency of pudding, so it definitely thickened up.

This was the end of my lye, but I just opened it for my first batch of soap at the end of August. I haven't seen anything like this in my previous 5 batches, and I had another one that was even worse from a bag of the BB swirl mix (same day, but different everything else) - I can't even cut that one yet, though it does seem to be slowly hardening as it's exposed to the air.
 
Just a guess, but those extra two TBSP of Sunflower may have something to do with it. They were unaccounted for, so you raised your SF above what it was originally supposed to be (2 TBSP comes out roughly to an extra ounce of oil). I usually pull oils from my pot to mix colors just for this reason.
 
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Thanks for the input! So, do you pull the mixing oils first, or just pull out of the soft oils pot? In other words, does it matter what oil you're mixing your colors in? I often see recipes that state to mix your oils in a "light" oil, and wondered if it matters...
 
i find that canola is a slow tracing oil and has been very helpful when i want do swirls, etc. i usually do 10%, with the rest being palm, coconut, and a tad of olive. unmold in 24 hours max.
 
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