Soda ash inside the soap?

[Tara_H]

Good news, I managed to get a recipe which stays fluid for swirls, bad news, with new success comes new problems... Oh wait, wrong thread!

Basically, I unmoulded this soap this morning (24 hour wait, which is massive for me!) after CPOP covered in cling film and cooling all night. It was quite solid and came out of the mould super easily, although the corners are a little bit crumbly, maybe gel didn't quite reach the edges?

The weird thing was that as soon as it came out there was something that looked like soda ash on the bottom, but embedded in the soap rather than on the surface:


Is this normal? Is it actually something else? My understanding was that it was caused by a reaction of lye with carbon dioxide, so why would it be forming in a part of the soap definitely not exposed to air?

 

[JuliaNegusuk]

Tara, I have experienced something similar. I use single cell moulds.(8 cells to a mould). On some of my soaps I used to get white, bleached looking, crumbly corners on the bottom, the bit NOT exposed to the sir. Always the same soaps, and not all of the varieties despite the base recipe being the same. Always the Lemongrass and poppyseed, mint and tea tree and sandalwood ( commercial oil mixture). But the soap would unmould fine but this would develop over a few days. Cpoping got rid of it but natural colours in soap don't always come out well being cpoped. So I have tried increasing ng my lye, water ratio to 40%.(from 33%). This seems to work on the whole, on soda ash on top too, but my mint and tea tree soap is still very slightly bleached on the corners, top and bottom. Not a lot, I probably am being a bit obsessive to notice it but it still annoys me. I really don' t know why it happens, why only certain soaps and would love to know.

 

[CpnDouchette]

Absolutely nothing helpful to add other than this happened to me with an activated charcoal bar (which made it really obvious). I honestly just assumed ash (because i do have issues with ashing) so I'll be watching this thread with interest.