Suspiciously Well Behaved Salt Bars?

[Noodge]

Hey all,

So recently I've taken to making salt bars - just before lockdown I found a lot of very, very cheap coconut oil on sale locally so it seemed like the right thing to do

Now, I made a salt loaf for the first time around a year ago (80% CO, 15% OO, 5% Castor, with 50% of oil weight as salt) and followed all the advice - make sure to babysit the loaf, slice it as soon as it's firm enough to unmould, etc etc

But 9 hours later it was still too soft to cut without making a squishy mess (which it did, as I needed to go to bed and I wasn't convinced I would be able to cut it at all in the morning lol)

I thought I'd done something desperately wrong, but after curing they were lovely bars (especially when I found one a year later - gorgeous lather!)

So I tried again last week. Same recipe. Same result. Batter behaves almost exactly the same as my usual non-salt bars with 35% coconut.

I CPOPed them just so I can cut them sooner! A salt loaf! Sacrilege!

I had a little of the overpour in a small mold that I didn't CPOP just to compare - 24 hours after pouring it was hard enough to come out!

...I can't be the only one that this happens to right? At some point I'm going to do a 100% CO with 100% salt just to compare results with cause this is bananas!

Anyone else with suspiciously well-behaving salt bars?

 

[artemis]

I make a batch about once or twice a year for my husband and my experience is somewhat similar. I check on it every hour or so. It will get to the point that I think it's never going to firm up or cool down. Then, it seems to happen quickly! Suddenly, I have this (seemingly) small window of opportunity to cut it.

With a well behaving fragrance, I have never run out of time to get my colors all in and make a simple swirl.

 

[shunt2011]

My recipe is similar to yours only I use avocado oil and I can cut mine at between 3-4 hours. I don’t CPOP them I just let them do their thing. If I wait too much longer they are too hard to use my wire cutter. I watch them closely at the 3 hour mark. They are still really warm when I cut them. I’m able to do swirls without any issue.

 

[Obsidian]

I've had many batches of salt bars that took many hours to firm up enough to cut. The longest one was 12 hours and I'm sure it was 80% coconut with 50% salt.

Most of the time they are firm enough within 4-6 hours. I also never have issues with quick trace, even after adding the salt.
More then once I had to keep stick blending after adding the salt just to get it thick enough so the salt won't sink.

 

[atiz]

I've only made salt bars 3x so far. The first was a 100% CO one with 40% salt (13% SF), and I could cut it in a couple hours.
The second one was like your recipe, with 15% avocado oil and 5% castor. I had a hard time with that, similar to yours, and I totally thought there was something wrong. But they turned out to be very nice bars.
The third one was 85% CO, I think I could cut that relatively soon, but not as soon as no. 1.

So -- no idea what made the difference, but perhaps the percentage of CO has something to do with it?

 

[shunt2011]

Soap does funny things. Sometimes there’s no obvious answer. I also think sometimes FO’s affect the soap either seizing, moving fast or slowing things down.

 

[amd]

The few times I've made salt bars in a loaf mold, I was barely able to cut at 4 hours. Cavity mold salt bars unmold at 12 hours. I have had salt batter that refused to trace, and I had to walk away for 20 minutes and come back (this correlates with the FO's that slow trace in my regular soap, so not surprising). My salt bars have been pretty consistently behaved though. Soleseife (brine soaps) are a different story for me though - sometimes i have to cut in 8 hours, sometimes I have to cut in 36 hours.