Soap Disasater - not sure what to do...

[pleiades]

I've made the following receipe:

500g lard
390g rapeseed
100g coconut
10g castor oil

330g water
134g lye

To this I added 10g vitamin e oil at trace, 30g each of pumice powder and oatmeal

I put in a low oven for 1 hour and then left in the oven to cool overnight.

It has now been 72 hours since the soap was made and I cannot cut it. It crumbles. The texture is worrying.

Tongue test suggests it's not lye heavy. I'm thinking of rebatching but I need to know what is wrong in order to rebatch successfully.

Has anyone any suggestions?

 

[kazmi]

Was your oven on the whole 1 hour or did you heat it up to low, put your soap in then turn the oven off?

 

[Robert]

Have you worked with pumice in soap before? It may be aggregated.

 

[pleiades]

I preheated the oven and left it on for the hour.

No I've not worked with Pumice before and I sourced from the same place I get all my usual soap supplies.

Can I rebatch now or should I wait for it to cure? Also, in rebatching what would I do to correct my problem?

 

[DeeAnna]

The crumbling is from leaving the soap too long before cutting it. Most salt bars need to be cut just hours after they set up or the soap gets too hard to cut cleanly -- or it needs to be poured into individual bar molds. Likewise would also be true for pumice.

You needed to have cut the soap when it was set up but still somewhat plastic. After 3 days, your soap is too firm with the pumice in it to cut smoothly -- the soap is brittle enough now that it is just cracking apart around the grains of pumice.

If you're going to rebatch, I'd sure do it now. It's only going to get harder to rebatch as the soap cures out. And cut the bars when they're just firm enough to hold their shape or pour into individual bar molds.

 

[pleiades]

I tried cutting the soap as soon as it came out of the oven, about 8 hours later, I tried a day later and now 3 days later there is no improvement. The soap is not hard or brittle at all. It's soft and aerated as the picture shows.

 

[Hazel]

Did you mix the oils and lye at a cool temp? I'm not sure what happened but soft and crumbly sounds like it didn't emulsify enough. (I've had this happen several times and successfully rebatched all of the batches.) There are several possible reasons which may have caused it. I like to recommend Kathy Miller's Troubleshooting Help page which I found helpful when I first started learning CP. http://millersoap.com/trouble.html

Click on the link for Botched Batch Symptoms and read the description of "Soap is soft and crumbly". This might be what happened.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...I tried cutting the soap as soon as it came out of the oven, about 8 hours later, I tried a day later and now 3 days later there is no improvement. The soap is not hard or brittle at all. It's soft and aerated as the picture shows. ..."

Oh. This additional information puts a quite different perspective on the matter. I think Hazel is giving you better advice.

 

[pleiades]

I've rebatched so hopefully it will turn out better this time.

I had a good look at the botched batches and I'd be surprised if my temperatures were cool. The Lye solution went straight in, so the oils should have got the full heat from that. Yet, it seems the only explanation. I might try this recipe again but minus the exfoliant, see how it goes and work forward from there.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Hazel]

You're welcome but I don't feel I helped. I just pointed you to another site.

You still could have had some heat loss initially even if the lye was hot. (But I'm just guessing since I don't know the actual temp and your procedure.) Did you stir with a spoon or a stickblender? There are so many variables with soapmaking. What works well for one person can be a failure for someone else. I'm glad you were able to rebatch and I'd like to hear the results. I've had some botched batches which I can only guess at what happened.