I know that salt bars can be problematic to cut since they harden so fast. Cavity molds are often recommended for this reason. My question is, at what percentage does this become a problem? I plan to use 10% salt (percentage of oils) which apparently isn't much, so I'm wondering if I still might have problems if using a loaf mold. Thanks for any input.
Salt Bar question
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artemis
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It's not just the salt. It's also the high coconut oil content.
I prefer making brine/soleseife bars to salt bars, and usually use salt at 20% of water, which is about 70% of the amount I would have been using if I'd used 10% of oils. So it's a little less salt than you use, but I have no problem doing/cutting a loaf with that, even when doing designs, eg. using dividers and doing a swirl (see pic below). I used 60% CO and superfatted at 13% (because of the high CO).
So with the soap below, I had time to pour into dividers, do the swirl, CPOP, leave in oven overnight, then cut horizontally and vertically (because a divider soap) without having issues with it getting too hard to cut.
ETA: I went back and looked at the recipe for this bar, although the salt was 20% of water, I totally got the CO and SF numbers wrong, it was 30% CO and 10% SF. Left the post in case you wanted to think about doing soleseife (which you are pretty close to with that salt %) instead of a typical salt bar. You really don't need to use much CO with that little salt, usually you add lots of CO because the salt would otherwise kill lather.
So with the soap below, I had time to pour into dividers, do the swirl, CPOP, leave in oven overnight, then cut horizontally and vertically (because a divider soap) without having issues with it getting too hard to cut.
ETA: I went back and looked at the recipe for this bar, although the salt was 20% of water, I totally got the CO and SF numbers wrong, it was 30% CO and 10% SF. Left the post in case you wanted to think about doing soleseife (which you are pretty close to with that salt %) instead of a typical salt bar. You really don't need to use much CO with that little salt, usually you add lots of CO because the salt would otherwise kill lather.
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This time I'm following a recipe I saw online so will stick to the 10% salt but in the future I'll definitely try the soleseife method. Your soap is absolutely beautiful! Thank you.
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