unsticky layers

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McBaffie

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Hi all.
I've recently had a wee side project where for every loaf of soap I made I poured a little layer of that mix into another mould.
Over the course of around 6 batches this built up into a layered loaf which I was quite excited about.
This morning I sliced it up and nearly all of the layers just came apart.:(
What has caused this? I've seen tutorials where they give new layers a squirt of alcohol, but I would like to avoid this as I don't want to use alcohol in my soaps. Is there something I could have done to make sure that all the layers stuck together?
Looking forward to hearing any answers you may have for me.
 
The alcohol thing is just for melt & pour type of soap. What you can do is just put your finished molds into the oven and gel them. Once the soap recrystallizes upon cooling it will bind together in one mass. I do this all the time with my "recycled" soap embed experiments, and it works providing the soap isn't fully cured and still contains water.

Let it gel for a couple hours, but keep checking to make sure it doesn't get too hot or you'll have a mess. Use your oven's lowest temperature setting, for me that's 170 degrees and that's too hot so I turn it off after and leave the soap in there with the oven light on and may turn it on again (and then off, etc.) until the soap has gelled.
 
Nice one. That's great info. I have had trouble with loose cubed embeds before so will give this method a try in the future. Thanks very much.
:)
 
Gerry, so are you saying that for the "confetti" soap that you posted, which looked like granite, you didn't wait for the soap to cure before shredding it and adding it to a new batch?

I made a soap recently and truly dislike the scent and would like to use it as confetti in another soap with a more pleasant aroma. I guess it makes sense to add it before it's fully cured to ensure the confetti binds to the new soap.
 
Gerry, so are you saying that for the "confetti" soap that you posted, which looked like granite, you didn't wait for the soap to cure before shredding it and adding it to a new batch?

I made a soap recently and truly dislike the scent and would like to use it as confetti in another soap with a more pleasant aroma. I guess it makes sense to add it before it's fully cured to ensure the confetti binds to the new soap.

The confetti was a crazy mixture from both cured and uncured soaps I think. Some of that confetti might have even come from other confetti soaps! haha

The size of confetti pieces makes it absorb enough water to gel along with the rest of the soap batter. Plus being small they're surrounded by new soap so separation isn't going to happen regardless. I've recently done an experiment with well over 50% old soap (ground up confetti and larger embeds) and it held together perfectly solid.
 
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