This has been on my mind quite a bit - mostly because I recently became a huge fan of Ophelia's Soapery videos. She uses a 1.6:1 water to lye ratio and is able to cut in 6 hours and still has gorgeous swirls. Another
soapmaking friend of mine also uses less water, she uses % which makes ZERO sense to me, so I'm not entirely sure how much water she is using. I'm having beers with her later this month and fully intend to ask her questions about it. It's on my to do list to play more with water ratios this winter while I am on a break from the soap biz.
Ok so... here's how I understand it in relation to your questions. Yes and no... No is that some soaps can be unmolded/cut quickly depending on what they are made of. For example, salt bars that are typically 70-100% coconut oil can be unmolded/cut within hours. However whenever I use sweet almond oil at 20% I can tack on 2-3 days waiting for it to be hard enough to unmold. [caveat: this may be how it plays with my recipe as a whole, your results may vary.] Yes is that being able to unmold/cut is because of water amount used.
It does not change how much time a soap needs to cure. Part of the curing process is evaporation, but the other part of it is molecular crystal formation. Depending on what oils you use will determine how the crystal formation and how fast that occurs. *This is a pretty basic over view of it in very generalized terms, forgive me for not being very sciency*
Advantages: you can make more soap!
With 50/50 lye solution, you are already using 1:1 water ratio. If you wanted to use, for example a 1.6:1 ratio as Ophelia's Soapery does, in soap calc you would change the Water setting to Water:Lye Ratio and enter 1.6.
View attachment 31950
To use the 1:1 solution you would double the amount of lye in the calculated recipe - example 100g x 2 = 200g of 50/50 solution and add the remainder of liquid needed. 60g = (100*1.6)-100. In words: water to add = (water in solution * water ratio) - water in solution. Soap calc doesn't do the calculation for pre-mixed lye, but if you take a deep breath and put your mind to it, even math challenged walruses (walrusi?) such as myself can do it.