"I am not a wild soaper, making every variation and using every oil in as little time as possible, gorging myself on soaping like some kind of SoapyRoman at a BubbleOrgy"
You say it like its a bad thing...
I found the best thing for me personally is to soap in the afternoon or evening, put my mold into a preheated (170 F) oven, turn the oven off, and try to forget it. I usually get busy doing chores or getting kids to bed so it's not hard. By the time I get up in the morning, 99% of the time I can unmold.
I am at 6+ yrs and still cannot wait to cut. I also have some recipes I can cut in approx 8 hrs. As soon as my feet hit the floor early in the morning I hurry to get my soaps unmolded and hopefully get to cutYou really are not the only one. I have to soap later at night due to work and young kids, but have developed a recipe which can usually be unmoulded (if that's a word!) and cut within 8 hours. I can't wait to see what's inside. It's like Christmas and birthday all rolled into one. I wake really early, sneek downstairs and cut it before doing anything else. The excitement has never gone for me, even after 2 years!
cmzaha;545236[B said:]For me cutting a soap is like opening up a Christmas Present[/B] or cutting a Geode in half, you just do not know what is inside.
I cut the ends off and use them for testers, then I cut those in quarters...the pic below shows the ends on the bottom...I do understand that they both need to cure, but if I may ask, what are you testing them for/with? I have so much to learn! I guess I'm just impatient to see what my CP soap looks like once I can unmold it.. You'd think that I would have more patience seeing as how I have 4 kids, but there you have it..
"I am not a wild soaper, making every variation and using every oil in as little time as possible, gorging myself on soaping like some kind of SoapyRoman at a BubbleOrgy"
You say it like its a bad thing....
I see. I am very new to soap making so I appreciate your time in explaining that to me. There are lots of websites out there on soap making that it gets very confusing! I think I have found a recipe that I'm going to stick with. My hubby is very particular about soap products and he seems to like the one we're using now. Got a good supply from my first couple of HP batches (the ones that turned out decent) which are continuing to cure, so I figured I could experiment and have fun now. I'm only doing small batches for comparison purposes so I am learning that way too.
Thanks for the tip. I'll have to try that tactic. I've been doing my soaping in the morning, since I typically have my ideas at night when I'm too tired to safely handle lye
In many cases it can be. Some people go totally wild and end up wasting a great deal of money only to then turn around and say that they have to sell as their hobby is costing them too much money.
Or they just simply make one batch with a fundamentally bad recipe and make variations of it before the first one is cured and then they have 5 or 6 batches of a fundamentally bad soap.
Or for a very beginner there is something wrong that they are doing which gives them a large number of totally unusable batches.
I'm not saying that experimenting is a bad thing, but it can be in certain conditions.
Plus, I was actually just saying that I am not one of those people who HAS to make soap for the sake of it - is that a bad thing?
Yes, one piece I use each week to see where the soap is and learn how it develops...kinda like starting with a baby and watching it grow up...That is some beautiful soap! I'll have to do that with my ends too! I have found that with my (5) batches so far that I want to try them all to compare. Do you cut those ends into quarters to test at different stages of cure?
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