Quickset Soaping....LOL

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MrWalker1750

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I've tried this recipe a couple different ways with the same results.

Its basically 50% olive oil with 20% coconut oil 10% shea 10% Cocoa butter 10% castor.

This recipe sets up like quickset!

I'm still quite new to soaping. So my first couple of tries at any soaping recipe, was basically a bastille soap prepared at room temp oils. 99% of them turned out well. However, the amount of coconut oil for some (25%) seemed a little drying. Plus my wife loves shea and cocoa butter. So I plugged in a recipe(the one posted above) and decided to make a soap using this recipe. I used bay rum fragrance.

The first time I made it with oils and lye around 80-90 degrees. It started to get hard quickly so I got it in the mold. Everyone loved the soap.

The next time I made it, I had read that sometimes the hard oils can speed up trace at lower temps. So I made it at higher temp 100-110. Same quick set.

The next time I made it with a different fragrance. Same quick set.

The next time I made it with goats milk & lye, instead of water & lye. Same quick set.

Folk love the soap and how it feels on their skin. I'd just like to do more design with it, swirls and such.

Oh the other things I tried was mixing just to emulsion of oils, not to light trace or anything. Still quick set.

Any suggestions or help is gladly appreciated. You all have helped me so much!!!
 
With these hard butters, you're going to get "quick set" - I assume that means a fast, thick trace? How much water are you using? You may want to try bumping it up a bit - I've used as much as 40% water. I think that castor can also speed trace at higher amounts. I'm not sure of that, I've never gone as high as 10%.
 
Hi Mr.Walker!

With that much cocoa and shea, you're going to have to go even higher on the temp. I often soap with hard butters and PKO, and if the temp of my batter goes much lower than 110F, the stearic/palmitic from the hard butters will start re-solidifying and precipitating out of solution. We have a name for that....pseudo-trace. Basically, the soap is thickening up not because it has come to a true trace, but because the stearic /palmitic are resolidifying because things are too cool for them to remain in liquid suspension.

Anyway, when I keep my temps at least 110F, things go quite smoothly for me (unless I'm using a naughty FO that won't behave).


IrishLass :)
 
For what it's worth, I use 10.5% castor in my tallow/lard/butter/veggie formula (one of the formulas I have to soap at 110F or above or else I get pseudo-trace), and true trace can actually be a long time coming for me, depending.

A good example is when I make my version of Soaping 101's two-tiered pencil-line soap using the above stated formula, which takes me forever to accomplish. With a 33% lye concentration, a well-behaved FO and a soaping temp of 110F-115F, it stays nicely workable for me for a whole 45 minutes.


IrishLass :)
 

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