atiz
Well-Known Member
First off, I was going to make Genny's shampoo bar recipe a bit modified (I've never made it before but wanted to make a nice mild bar). Then realized I was out both of olive oil and mostly of avocado oil as well. I'm also on a quest not to buy too much new stuff nowadays since I'll have to move again in a few months... Long story short, making an attempt to use what I have, I ended up with a new recipe and no idea how it'll work (Sunflower HO 30%, Apricot kernel 26%, Coconut 10%, Kokum butter 10%, Shea butter 10%, Castor oil 8%, avocado oil 5%, beeswax 1%). I guess I'll see in a few weeks if it works at all.
A few months ago I got a little 1 lb. slab mold from NS. So I thought, why not use that, and even planned some nice swirls I could probably do. Nope. I ended up with a thick pudding in less than like 10 seconds.
Maybe I was soaping a bit hotter than usual; maybe because of the hard butters or the beeswax or the part vinegar replacement; or the (also new-t0-me) colloidal oatmeal? No idea. Anyway, I divided it quickly, poured, then realized I forgot to add the FO, okay fine, let's do it now, so glopped it into the mold and mixed it in with the spatula as much as I could. My swirls were completely gone of course I also forgot that my mold was half the size of my usual one, and added way too much rose clay, so ended up with a nice meaty soap...
Unmolded after a few hours. I really like a little beeswax in my soap both because of how it feels and how quickly I can usually unmold it. But this time, there was some soap stuck in the corners so it didn't unmold clean. I probably should have waited an another hour or two.
Well, it's at least soap, and the FO seems to have mixed in enough (no sweeping). It smells nice. It's not pretty, but it's just 4 bars so at least I didn't end up with a ton of them and hope it will still be an okay soap. And maybe I can still use it for the soapcarving challenge
And here is my question. Those of you who use slab molds and end up with a thicker batter than planned, how do you smooth out the surface? My batter was thick and I tried to smooth it as much as I could but my soap is still very rugged on one side, which I don't really like. Is there any technique for that?
Sorry for the long-winded post...
ETA: here are some pictures. Definitely beef-looking, and you can kind of see that 2 and 4 are really not smooth (and the other 2 are not smooth on the other side). Maybe I can clean them up a bit once they harden up properly.
And I'll just blame it on DST, it messes me up
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