The way the clay soap crumbles...

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

TF3000

Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2022
Messages
13
Reaction score
20
Location
Colorado
I made a 5lb batch yesterday with my regular masterbatched oils, and 18 hours later, it was a brittle crumbly mess. My FO was fresh mint and eucalyptus from MWFC, and it both accelerated and riced. I stick blended the heck out of it and was able to get it into the mold. The only difference to my recipe was that I upped my lye percentage to 35% and added 3 tsp of french green clay. I superfatted at 5% and am not getting any zaps when I zap test it.

My batches always contain half water, half white vinegar for my liquid, 1 tsp sodium lactate PPO, and they always unmold within 18-24 hours. I realize using both vinegar and sodium lactate might be overkill, but I am impatient and don't have issues with it; plus, I like how my bars feel.

I'm posting a picture from soap-making friend. SMF incorrectly increases both lye and water when adjusting to vinegar as an additive. Hence, I use the original liquid amount (422 g) when calculating the amount of water and vinegar I need.

Is my batch crumbly because of the green clay? The fragrance oil? The combination of vinegar, clay, and sodium lactate?

Can I rebatch it? What would I need to add? Thank you. It smells incredible and was a big batch so I'd like to save it if I can.
 

Attachments

  • snip.png
    snip.png
    114.4 KB · Views: 28
  • IMG_2670_jpg.JPG
    IMG_2670_jpg.JPG
    215.8 KB · Views: 27
I believe smf increases lye to compensate for the vinegar. At least, it used to. I haven't tried since the launch of the new version.
It does! But then it increases the water to compensate for the increase in lye, which defeats the purpose. I was hoping with the update it would be fixed but it doesn't appear to have been corrected.
 
It does! But then it increases the water to compensate for the increase in lye, which defeats the purpose. I was hoping with the update it would be fixed but it doesn't appear to have been corrected.
Oh, no, that's not good. Now that I think about it, when I was adding vinegar to my soap, there were issues with both vinegar and CA. I thought it had been resolved though.
 
It does! But then it increases the water to compensate for the increase in lye, which defeats the purpose. I was hoping with the update it would be fixed but it doesn't appear to have been corrected.
I've never had a problem with that feature unless I used master-batched lye. If you aren't using master-batched lye, the vinegar calculations do work, but you have to mark YES in the box that says Liquid Discount? - it's right below where the vinegar is listed in the additives section). I notice that it's automatically marked YES for vinegar in the new version.

EDIT: I forgot to say that you do have to fiddle with the amount of vinegar if you are wanting to remove ALL additional water. Otherwise, if you put in 211g of vinegar, it's going to base the calculations off that exact amount. In other words, start with a guess as to how much total liquid you need, but then adjust the vinegar once you see the actual liquid number. As you increase the amount of vinegar, the water will decrease.
 
Aside from the water/vinegar debacle - I think the clay might have cause the brittleness.It soaks up a bit of water and would make the mixture 'drier'. However you can't rule out the contribution of the naughty FO unless you make a further batch identical but with an FO you know causes no problems.
 
I've never had a problem with that feature unless I used master-batched lye. If you aren't using master-batched lye, the vinegar calculations do work, but you have to mark YES in the box that says Liquid Discount? - it's right below where the vinegar is listed in the additives section). I notice that it's automatically marked YES for vinegar in the new version.

EDIT: I forgot to say that you do have to fiddle with the amount of vinegar if you are wanting to remove ALL additional water. Otherwise, if you put in 211g of vinegar, it's going to base the calculations off that exact amount. In other words, start with a guess as to how much total liquid you need, but then adjust the vinegar once you see the actual liquid number. As you increase the amount of vinegar, the water will decrease.
One of the reasons I have in the past and again today requested instructions be included.

I looked today to find any discussion of this vinegar problem on the SoapBuilder Forum and cannot find any mention of the vinegar issue. I thought for sure it would be there, but the search function there doesn't work as I expect it to either, so maybe I just cannot find it because search doesn't work the way I think it should.
 
Back
Top