Sodium Lactate

[topcat]

Hi all. Does anyone know if Sodium Lactate accelerates trace in CP at all? I have used it once before to harden up an RBO soap and love how easy it was to use. I have a tricky floral fo which accelerates trace and I now find I have to use no water discount at all to get it to behave so I can swirl my colours. Unfortunately now it takes days to set up enough to unmould and even then a lot of soap sticks to my liner! I am hoping SL will harden the batch without accelerating trace :roll:

I have perfected my recipe with the oils/butter I want and it is gorgeous with a 33% lye solution.....not so good with the full amount of water though.

Any suggestions will be very much appreciated! TIA.

Tanya

 

[ChrissyB]

Hi Tanya!
Did you have acceleration issues when you made the batch with stearic acid?
I have some beeswax if that is of any help to you?

 

[topcat]

Hi Chrissy - I haven't used stearic acid as yet.....and I do have beeswax (thank you anyway); for some reason i didn't think of that to add :roll: I may do some small test batches with SL and beeswax and see which I like best.

Tanya

 

[xraygrl]

Stearic and beeswax with both accelerate trace, and since that is what you are trying to prevent, then I not suggest using them.

From what I remember when I was playing with SL a few years back it does not accelerate trace.

 

[reallyrita]

I use sodium lactate to make a firmer bar when I am using the little Milky
Way molds. I have not noticed that it caused acceleration though. There are a few things you can do to slow down a fast trace because of a naughty FO. Lard and Olive Oil in your recipe are slow tracers (but not pomace). In addition you can put the FO in your oils before you add the lye water. Soap at room temperature. There is one other really good trick you can use but it is a bother. You can add one teaspoon of liquid lecithin to the oils while the oils are still quite warm . Stir really well to dissolve and then add lye water and go from there. Liquid lecithin is really cheap. I got mine at a health food store. I will probably never use up the bottle! I keep it in the fridge. This stuff is thick and sticky so you have to dissolve it well in the warm oils. With just one teaspoon you will not affect the color of your soap nor the scent. But caution, this will really slow trace down and it could be hard to go past light trace. Don't use more than one tsp per lb of oils or you might never get trace.

 

[reallyrita]

Geez...I just reread my post and I think I did not make this clear. The liquid lecithin is used at the rate of one teaspoon for each one pound of oils. It is not an oil itself but you add it to the oils and you don't need to calculate for it in such a small amount. It is a major inhibitor of acceleration so don't use it unless your FO goes like a house on fire. By the way, I don't know if it helps with ricing or not. That is altogether another problem :wink:

 

[Lindy]

Tanya, one of the things that I have started doing with naughty FO's is hand blend with a whisk once I had the FO, this allows you to acctually slow it right down, long enough to do the swirls etc. Plus I go totally room temperature on everything when using those FO's.....

 

[IrishLass]

I use SL all the time and it never gives me a problem with acceleration issues.

Re: liquid lecithin- I've tried it twice with Mineral Waters Spa from Daystar ( a notoriously naughty, nasty, bad accelerator :evil: ) and it didn't help me one bit. :cry: I used 1 tsp of the liquid lecithin ppo, too. I wonder if the lecithin works better in different recipes?

I HP all my naughty F/Os now, except for (as it turns out) Mineral Waters Spa.....I found it behaves itself just fine in CP when soaped at a lower %. And the scent is super strong enough to hold up very well in my soap at a lower %, too.

IrishLass

 

[topcat]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I have lots to think about now and know so much more about soaping from asking just this one question! I love this forum

Tanya