Soap keeps coming out lye heavy, I think

[Kleine Teufel]

I've made several batches of soap so far, and all except one have come out lye heavy. I use a scale with gram measurements and I superfat to 8% using the soapcalc. I do a 3:1 water:lye concentration. I've made small batches, usually about a pound or a tad over. My latest one I did as a hot process. 1 part tallow, 1p soybean oil, 1p coconut oil. I did one part as 161 grams, and added 68g of lye, as per the soapcalc. I hot processed it, then when gel stage came, I added eucalyptus oil. I washed my hands with it and ended up with a crazy feeling (the lye I'm assuming) and then SUPER dry hands with tight skin after finally getting it all off of my hands. It was noticable even as I was washing it off, I could feel my skin tightening. I've done this several times, with different recipes, but this is the one that I remember off the top of my head. Is this the lye doing this? Why? What should I do from here?

 

[Absinthe]

Could you post your actual recipe with weights as an example? The dry feeling on your hands may have more to do with the excessive cleansing of the particular fat you are saponifying or the FO or EO included. You can definitely tell if it is truly lye heavy by touching it to the tip of your tongue. Don't eat it, or treat it like a lollipop just barely touch it. It it sting like a well charged 9 volt battery if it still has active lye in it. You can also drop by the hobby shop and buy some litmus paper and test it that way.

Freshly demolded and cut soap should still be a little lye heavy depending on how thoroughly the reaction has completed. Let the soap sit for let's say 2 or 3 weeks and then examine it again. See if it shriveled up or perhaps there are visible pockets or different colored areas or lots of ash. It is possible that your soap is working as designed.

 

[artisan soaps]

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[Kleine Teufel]

The recipe is listed above. 161g deer tallow (sorry, I didn't specify), 161g soybean oil and 161g coconut oil. It's listed as 23% cleansing. Is that really too high? I thought it was alright, especially with a 47% condition. I'll hold off on testing it again, though I had read that hot process soap was ready to use in a few days. :/ Thanks guys!

 

[Deda]

Soap calcs numbers aren't the bible of soapmaking.

Test test test.
Watch the Soybean, in high amounts it can lead to DOS.
Make sure you calibrate your scale.

 

[honor435]

try some oo, that will make it a nicer cond number and lower cleansing, i never go above the 22 for cleansing, unless i add shea or cocoa. I have lots of nice tried recipes, just tell me what oils you have.

 

[Bubbles Galore]

I'd be suspicious of your scales. Weigh 500ml of water and see if it weighs 500g. :wink:

 

[ChrissyB]

A high cleansing number on soap calc is irrelevant if you have a nice superfat number.

 

[artisan soaps]

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[Absinthe]

I like empirical data, better to learn from someone else's troubles than my own...

I thought the issue with coconut was the resulting soap, not the coconut itself. If you put straight coconut oil on someone that is sensitive to coconut it will cause issue. If you superfat a coconut soap, you are essentially doing just that, putting straight coconut (just a smaller amount) on them. If they are sensitive to coconut they will react.

However, on the other hand, the soap (alkaline salt produced from the reaction of lye and oil) made with coconut has qualities based on the fatty acids it contains. I believe the lauric acid, just like in palm kernel and babasu might be the culprit. The thing that makes it "cleansing" probably has to do with how well it dissolves your natural protective skin oils, and that may make some people feel dry or itchy etc...

In addition to all that, someone may be in the situation where they are both sensitive to the drying aspect of the "cleansingness" as well as the coconut oil itself, in which case, superfatting it will not help, but rather make matters worse.

 

[Absinthe]

Superfatting is a funny thing. Depending on how you make the recipe you don't really control which fats get saponified and which are left unsap as superfats. In addition to that, isn't superfatting with oils that are likely to go rancid one of the main caused of diminished shelf life and things like DOS and such?

In reality, we don't just make one soap, we make like 9 different soaps in combination. Each fatty acid combined with lye makes a soap salt and depending on which fatty acids we have in the batch determine with soap salts get created and combined. It is the soap salt that has the qualities in those "design your own recipe" lists. And along with those qualities listed, each one has its own negatives and potential sensitivities for a person.

So if you design your recipes with soap salts that have the actual qualities you want, then superfatting it excessively should be unnecessary or so it would seem. Then again, perhaps I am getting too analytical...

 

[carebear]

And while I strongly advocate letting bars, even HP, cure - I find they get milder, I wouldn't expect a big difference unless they were not fully saponified when unmolded.

I didn't notice any posting about zap testing - but I could have missed it - did you tongue test your soap? that'll tell you right off the bat if it's lye heavy (or not fully saponified) with no guesswork!

 

[carebear]

If someone has a sensitivity to an ingredient then yes - they could have problems regardless of the superfat level.

If someone has issues with soap being drying simply due to the surfactant properties of soap, though, then upping the superfat will mitigate that.

No vege oil cannot replace sebum, nor can animal fats. But superfatting essentially ties up some of the soap so it's not available to strip the sebum from the skin. Simply put, superfatting makes a soap less effective.

 

[artisan soaps]

..

 

[carebear]

The oils in the superfat don't replace the oils on your skin, they keep them from being stripped away in the first place.

 

[Deda]

OK, forgive me for being up at 4:15AM.

I don't use soapcalc (Because Soapmaker3 is the best **** program in the world) but I ran an ultra lux, super creamy, my personal favorite 75/25 with CO and OO.

The numbers come out at cleansing 50 and conditioning only 28.

Change the OO to CB and the conditioning drops to 19.

Experienced soapers know that this recipe makes an amazing soap that leaves you with the skin of a 2 year old.

My point is that you can't rely on the numbers. Soaping is as much of an art as it a science. You can read and read until your eyes pop, but the only way to really learn is by trail and error. Testing.

It's not a race to see who knows the most, there's no shame in being a newbie. Slow yourselves down a titch and see what happened with your soap at six month mark. You might be surprised at how much you can learn.

 

[Kleine Teufel]

The soaps were cured for a few days before use, but I cannot give a more specific answer than that, because, well, I have a terrible memory! The one soap that worked beautifully was CP and cured the same length as the others. Why was that one such a dream and the others so crummy? The scale was calibrated, so I'm going to say with a fair bit of confidence that this is not the issue. Thanks to those who are helping me, I really appreciate it!

 

[12345smf]

I have removed all posts that were incorrect, inflammatory, not related to the original question or were in response to a post(s) that was removed.

 

[ycartf]

OK, forgive me for being up at 4:15AM.

I don't use soapcalc (Because Soapmaker3 is the best **** program in the world) but I ran an ultra lux, super creamy, my personal favorite 75/25 with CO and OO.

The numbers come out at cleansing 50 and conditioning only 28.

Change the OO to CB and the conditioning drops to 19.

Experienced soapers know that this recipe makes an amazing soap that leaves you with the skin of a 2 year old.

My point is that you can't rely on the numbers. Soaping is as much of an art as it a science. You can read and read until your eyes pop, but the only way to really learn is by trail and error. Testing.

It's not a race to see who knows the most, there's no shame in being a newbie. Slow yourselves down a titch and see what happened with your soap at six month mark. You might be surprised at how much you can learn.

The 75/25 CO/OO or the 75/25 CO/CB (cocoa butter?) leaves your skin like a two year old?

 

[Tabitha]

She posted she would change it from OO to CB so I think she means CB.