Soap Help Please

[Hegemone's Forest]

I have recently completed my first batch of CP soap. I made peppermint/candycane with crushed peppermint leaves for color. I used Castor coconut and olive and white beeswax.

Molded well, looked well, smelled great. I was able to cut into bars in 20 hours

The bars were slightly soft/slimy at first, but has since gotten less oily and harder ( 40 hours ).

Small cracks have appeared on about 20% of the yield. These are not very significant cracks, very small.

The process did not go through gel phase.

Is the slight slimyness and small fissures on 20% normal?

 

[Hegemone's Forest]

Picture attached

 

[DaleF]

You will probably get more help if you can tell us what your recipe was. I see the list of your ingrediants, but knowing percentages and amounts would be really helpful. It looks pretty in the pictures other than the cracks. That is a lot of mint. i bet it smells amazing!

 

[Hegemone's Forest]

I used about 40% castor 29% olive 24% coconut and about 5-7% Beeswax

5oz peppermint essential oil and crushed peppermint leaves

And I used a lye calculator for this and used about 5-6 on the superfat% scale. And the median of suggested amount of water.

zap test was fine...doesn't seem to be lye heavy.

 

[lsg]

That's a lot of Castor oil. I usually don't go over 8%.

 

[lpstephy85]

How large was the batch? That seems like a large amount of EO and beeswax. It is possible the beeswax contributed to the cracking but I am not sure. It is advised if you do use beeswax in soap (most don't because it is a pain) that you should only use 1-3% max.

 

[Lin]

Why so much castor? That explains the slime.

 

[Hegemone's Forest]

response

The mold was 190 ounces.

The liquid ounces of the soap was probably around 170-180

So I took 190 X .4 to get oil amounts.

Sorry I used canola oil not castor. So 40-42% canola and 29% olive 23-25% coconut and 3-5% beeswax.

 

[lpstephy85]

Wow, that is a lot of soft oils. That amount of canola might lead to DOS quickly. What was your SF and water to lye amount?

 

[pamielynn]

Did you put it in the fridge to avoid gel?

 

[Hegemone's Forest]

update

Water to lye ratio

water = 22 ounces
lye= 9.5 ounces

Bars are extremely hard and have lost all slimyness. They pass the "zap" test and now I am only minorly concerned about if the cracks will get worse but I don't think they will.

I attribute the hardness of the bar to the coconut and beeswax.

 

[Hegemone's Forest]

How to avoid gel phase

If you do not want to go through gel phase, then I suggest using extremely cold water when you mix the lye into it.


First, split the lye in water into two separate containers. This will cause chemical reactions to be less severe. Also, directly after mixing put the lye container directly into ice.

With this, your chemical reaction should only reach about 105-120 degrees. Let your lye solution cool to 80 degrees and then remove ice and fill the container that your lye bottles are sitting in with boiling water. ( don't put boiling water into the lye solution obviously) When lye reaches 100-105 degrees, and your oil is 100-120 degrees, combine the two.

 

[Lin]

Just using ice is not going to be enough to avoid gel in the soap. Heat is going to be generated by the saponification reaction once you combine the lye water with the oils. To avoid gel place the soap in a fridge or freezer overnight. Depending on whats in the soap (things that generate additional heat such as sugars) or type of mold (heavily insulated mold, how much exposed soap batter) the fridge won't be enough and freezer is required. Some still can get a partial gel in the freezer and need to pre-chill the mold to assist with heat dissipation.