Review my recipe please…

[Mimi5355]

I just made my first batch of soap. It smell amazing but hasn’t hardened past a certain point. Can someone review my recipe please?
459 g water
151 g lye
Hard oils:
495 g coconut oil
450g shea butter

1013g olive oil
113g caster oil
180g hemp

113g Fragrance oil lavender
4t kaolin clay
Titanium dioxide was added to a small amount of the hemp oil to add white swirls to the soap
I’m not getting any suds yet and it isn’t hardening. It’s been close to 48 hrs
Thanks in advance for any input

 

[AliOop]

Hi @Mimi5355,

Welcome to soaping! I just ran your recipe through a lye calculator and put in a 5% superfat. The good news is that your amount of fragrance oil and kaolin clay are appropriate for the amount of oils.

The bad news is that the soap calculator says you should have used 308.3g of lye to saponify that combination and amount of oils. You used just under half of that, which is why your loaf isn't firming up.

Assuming you used the cold process method, you also used a whole lot of water for that amount of lye (only 25% lye concentration). A more typical lye concentration for cold process soap is 33%. Too much water also makes a soap take much longer to firm up - although the lack of sufficient lye remains the big problem here.

Unfortunately, you made a huge batch. We recommend starting at 500g to 900g for your first few batches. Otherwise, you can end up with big fails that waste a lot of expensive ingredients.

I don't want to overwhelm you with information, but if you want help to attempt to save this batch, we can walk you through the steps.

PS - I took the chance that maybe you meant to type 113g of olive oil, and not 1013g of olive oil. But even if I use the lower number, and even if I bump it up to 10% super fat, you still didn't use enough lye. If someone gave you this recipe, or you found it on a website, you will want to let them know that it is way off.