Salt bar troubleshooting

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lisajudy2009

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This is my second time making salt bar soap. It is 80% coconut oil, 10 olive, 5 palm, 5 castor. 100% salt (part sea salt part pink salt) made it 24 hours ago. It is still soft. It is sweating liquid that appears to be high in lye based off of ph strips. I have heard that salt can slow saponification. Should I just let it sit?
 
You didn't by chance you dead sea salt did you? With that recipe, it should have been plenty hard by now. If you did use dead sea, that would be the problem, it doesn't work in salt bars.

How soft is it? It it firm enough to unmold and cut? My salt soap is usually soft when I cut it, not like butter soft but very easy to dent if pushed on.
 
First off soap can easily zap for 72 hrs then it will magically turn off the switch. I would have to ask if you used a sea salt blend, many of those contain dead sea salt. My go to recipe is 90% coconut, 10% castor with a 30% Lye Concentration, and 100-110% salt. I usually cut my bars in 45 minutes, when they are just cool enough to handle. Giving them a long cure of 6-12 months will give you a high quality salt bar. Upon testing several recipes over my yrs of making salt bars I find palm and shea kill lather. I do at times use tallow at 5% to help give them some longevity. 85% CO, 10% Castor, 5% tallow
 
I am interested in this also. My first batches of soap this past July were 100% CO soleseife bars. They have now been curing for three months and they have a tremendous amount of sweat on them. Again, 100% CO with 20% SF, 25% salt, a little mint EO. My other batches, which were standard 4-oil batches and superfatted at 3.5% have had no sweating at all that I can tell.

From what I have read on this forum, sweating can be caused several factors.. one is glycerin content and another is high humidity. But if these were the causes all my soaps would be affected in the same manner, no?

Scooter
 
I am interested in this also. My first batches of soap this past July were 100% CO soleseife bars. They have now been curing for three months and they have a tremendous amount of sweat on them. Again, 100% CO with 20% SF, 25% salt, a little mint EO. My other batches, which were standard 4-oil batches and superfatted at 3.5% have had no sweating at all that I can tell.

From what I have read on this forum, sweating can be caused several factors.. one is glycerin content and another is high humidity. But if these were the causes all my soaps would be affected in the same manner, no?

Scooter
What type of salt did you use? Some pacific sea salt blends to have a percentage of Dead Sea Salt which would give you trouble. Just a little not Soleseif soap does not need to be 100% coconut oil, in fact I have never made a brine soap with such a high CO and superfat so I cannot really troubleshoot the sweating problem.
 
Every salt bar I have ever made sweated for about 6 months on and off. And no, they did not all sweat all at the same time or under the same conditions, even though they were in the same part of the same room of the house (they were next to each other on top of a chest of drawers). I have no "why" answers, so don't ask. But, magically, about 6 months, they get over their sweating issues and everyone loves them. Just keep them in open air, and let them be.
 
What type of salt did you use? Some pacific sea salt blends to have a percentage of Dead Sea Salt which would give you trouble. Just a little not Soleseif soap does not need to be 100% coconut oil, in fact I have never made a brine soap with such a high CO and superfat so I cannot really troubleshoot the sweating problem.

I want to thank all the people who responded to this.

The salt was just a generic-like finely milled Hain brand sea salt evaporated from "Pacific sea water" though it did not give more of a description than this. No iodine was in the salt, I know that.

Scooter
 
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