Quick Question Salt Bar

[Countryside]

My first attempt at a Salt Bar. I incorporated 50% of regular salt into the batch.(50% weight of oils) I cut within maybe 2 hours. 70% was coconut and the remainder Olive, Castor, and Shea. I SF at 20%. Below is a picture of what I am seeing when testing the soap lather. It lathers well but I feel a little excess coming off. I can’t quite explain it. I did use 5% KOH. I usually do high oleic soaps and did not think to disregard the KOH and use all NaOH. My questions are:

Will time correct this? It is about 2 days old. Also, if not time, can this be corrected through rebatching? Could the KOH substitution be the possible culprit? SF too much? The formula is correct, but I do not like the excess that comes off if that makes sense. Sorry for such a long post.

 

[Misschief]

Two days is too soon to test and know what it will be like in 3 months, or 6 months, or a year. Put it away and forget about it for a while. I just tested a batch I made on Aug. 1 and it's already nice but I don't even think about selling or using it until it's a minimum of 3 months old, preferably 6 months (except I keep selling out).

 

[AliOop]

I agree with @Misschief - your salt bars need a good long cure. Everything will probably bind together much better after that.

If not, and bits are still coming off when you use it, I'd get rid of the OO and CaO first and put those % into the CO. There is a reason that most salt bars are 100% CO - it's tried and true. Somehow the salt + the long cure really makes the CO more gentle, even without any OO. Plus, all that CO bubbles so much that you don't need castor once you remove the OO.

 

[Countryside]

Ok. Thanks so much. I will put these away for a while and see what becomes of them after the cure.

 

[cmzaha]

My first attempt at a Salt Bar. I incorporated 50% of regular salt into the batch.(50% weight of oils) I cut within maybe 2 hours. 70% was coconut and the remainder Olive, Castor, and Shea. I SF at 20%. Below is a picture of what I am seeing when testing the soap lather. It lathers well but I feel a little excess coming off. I can’t quite explain it. I did use 5% KOH. I usually do high oleic soaps and did not think to disregard the KOH and use all NaOH. My questions are:

Will time correct this? It is about 2 days old. Also, if not time, can this be corrected through rebatching? Could the KOH substitution be the possible culprit? SF too much? The formula is correct, but I do not like the excess that comes off if that makes sense. Sorry for such a long post. View attachment 48846

Many times that can be the nature of a salt bar lather if you are talking about the way the lather looks on your hands. I use 100-110% salt in my bars and the lather can easily look like that until I add more water then the lather kicks up. I do not use OO or butters in my salt bars. Mine are 85% CO or a CO/PKO split 5% liquid oils such as Avo and 10% Castor. After 6 months the lather will looker better than yours but without enough water can still look crumbly or scarce for lack of a better description.

 

[Countryside]

Ok. Thanks. I was thinking maybe there was something I did during the process to cause that. I’ll give an update...let’s say in 3 months

 

[atiz]

I'm not sure what this really is, but I have noticed that I only get it with my 80% CO recipe (15% AvO, 5% Castor), and never with the 100% CO one. I use 40% salt and 13% SF in both. It does get better with time though. The first time it happened I thought I completely lost that batch, but it became quite nice a few months later. So, patience!

 

[Obsidian]

I can't tell if its crumbly bits of soap or chunky lather.

If its just chunky lathers, that's what I call curdling and all my salt bars do it. With a bit more water, it will turn into thick lather.

 

[Countryside]

I can't tell if its crumbly bits of soap or chunky lather.

If I had to describe it, I would say curdling is what it looks like to me.

 

[DeeAnna]

It's soap. The curdled bits are the result of a process that soap makers call "salting out". This salting-out will happen when a salt bar contains a higher proportion of soap molecules that aren't very soluble in salty water.

In other words, when you make a salt bar batch that includes fat with higher % of oleic, stearic, and palmitic acids, the more you're going to see this salting-out effect when you wash with said salt bar. The myristic and lauric acid soaps that you get when you make soap with all or mostly coconut oil are a lot more soluble in salty water, so you don't see as much or any of this curdling effect.

People are saying here that when you add more water to the lather from a salt bar, the curdled bits go away and the lather comes up. That's reasonable.

The curdling goes away partly because adding more water dilutes the salt concentration, so the less soluble soaps can begin to dissolve.

The other reason the curdling goes away is because you're probably continuing to agitate the soap and water mixture as more water is added, and mixing helps soap to dissolve.

Last, but not least, if you're also washing in hard water, the hard-water minerals could also be reacting with the soap to form insoluble soap scum, and that can look a little curdled like this if the water is very hard. But I'd say it's more likely salted-out soap as I've explained in the previous paragraphs.

 

[Countryside]

Thanks for all the input.