Soap hardening too fast during saponification

[gatormul]

Everything is perfect when I am mixing the soap, but once it goes into the mold it hardens. Too hard to be cut. I have waited from 24 hrs to 10 hrs down to 4 hrs. The soap was still hot when I tried to cut it last time an it was still too hard. I have made this soap many times before never had this problem. I even reread my beginners soap making book just to take it back to basics, but same result. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? I am restarting my business and can't until I solve this problem.

Thank you!!!!!

 

[shermluge]

What is the recipe? Could be the FO your using or to much stearic acid or temp or combination or something else?

 

[atiz]

Yes -- what is your recipe? And what do you use to cut it with?

My soaps harden pretty fast because of the beeswax and salt I tend to use, but they are not uncuttable.

 

[gatormul]

What is the recipe? Could be the FO your using or to much stearic acid or temp or combination or something else?

I don’t use any FO. My recipient is 4oz Shea 8 oz sweet almond oil, 10oz each coconut and olive oil. 12oz water 9.6 oz lye

 

[gatormul]

And I have a multi-wire Cutting system.

 

[BattleGnome]

where did you get this recipe? Have you run it through a lye calculator recently? Did you recently resize it?

using the forum’s calculator with your oil weights I got 4.5oz of lye not 9oz for a 5% super fat. Even with a 0% SF, you’re using way too much lye.

 

[IslandSoap]

Wow... just seeing that amount of lye in the recipe tells me it’s too much. Run your recipe through the soapmakingfriend on this site.

 

[gatormul]

Wow. Okay. Thanks everyone. I forgot to say I do add caster oil as my superfat. Thank you so much to all of you. I am going to run it on soap friend and fix it.

 

[gatormul]

OMG. My table with the recipe was 1 column off. So was supposed to be putting in 4.8 oz lye. Was making lye mixture for 5lb soap recipe. thank you everyone for saving my sanity!

 

[soapgeek]

Wow. Okay. Thanks everyone. I forgot to say I do add caster oil as my superfat. Thank you so much to all of you. I am going to run it on soap friend and fix it.

Hi, can I ask please - do you add the castor oil after trace for it to be added as your superfat? I've been using a bit of castor oil, but including it in with the other oils... does it make a difference?

 

[DeeAnna]

If you're doing cold process method, adding fat when the soap batter is at trace doesn't mean that fat will be the superfat. People assume the lye is largely gone at trace, but that's not true -- there is still a lot of active lye left in the batter.

Add fat at trace or add fat up front as you wish. The lye will react with whatever fat it wants to react with.

If you're making soap with a hot process method, you can add the superfat after the cook. At that point the lye is pretty much fully reacted. The fat added at that point is likely to remain the superfat for some time, although it is likely to not remain an intact fat forever.