Teach Soap

Two of the batches of soap I made tonight did some strange things.
The first was a recipe that I've not had any prior problems with, so I'm thinking maybe it was the FO (Peak's Tuscan Nights), or my oils may have been a bit warmer than my lye. Or maybe it was because I accidentally dumped the entire amount of FO in at trace, instead of dribbling it in. Anyway, when I added the FO at light trace, blending with my spatula, I had a bunch of lumps/blobs appear. The rest of the mixture looked normal, so I grabbed the SB and beat the crap out of it. It smoothed out pretty good, at least no lumps that I could see, and the texture was a normal medium trace.
The other batch was a new salt bar recipe I was trying.

80% Coconut Oil
20% Castor Oil
Peak's Ocean FO at light trace
Salt at 50% of oils after blending in FO

Well, I didn't get to add the salt!! As soon as I added the FO, the whole batch looked like cream of wheat...medium/thick trace with tiny little granules all through it (wayyy smaller that a grain of rice). Grabbed the SB again (stop laughing) and beat it into soap pudding STILL with teeny little granules. I glopped it into the mold and smoothed it out with a spatula.
SOOO...do either of these problems sound like ricing? Or just acceleration and finicky FO's??
And any ideas on how this salt bar recipe minus the salt will turn out assuming it doesn't have little pockets of lye??

Yep, that sounds like ricing to me, and it probably was the FO. Good news is that the 1st one will be just fine and the 2nd one, well that will have to be seen. SInce you were doing a salt batch I assume the sf was low? It may be too drying for you without the salt. In fact, I would think that it would be, but some people don't have issues with high coconut oil products, so it will depend on your skin. For selling I would probably cut it up and use it in another soap, if there are no lye pockets. Usually if you get the rice pretty well Beat up upon, you dont have that issue, but it is always a possibility, so use extreme caution.

Now you have had a new learning experience and you know what ricing is. So don't take it to be all bad. Besides, tonight the gremlins were really working hard, cuz I had some different than usual issues too. But at least they werent all your house, or all at my house either!

Much luck!

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Surprisingly enough, I think both batches are gonna be OK! I cut them last night and the first offender had a couple of pinpoint-size yellow dots on the top of the log...maybe unblended FO? The rest of the log looked fine when cut.
When I uncovered the second misbehaving batch, I was a little concerned that the top of the log had some extra moisture on it and I could see little grains, so I grabbed some gloves to cut this bad boy up. What I found was a very smooth uniform bar of soap when cut, but with an ugly, shiny top! No sign of any type of crust or lye pockets, however. It took me until tonight to get up the nerve to do a zap test on these, but NO ZAP!!! I even licked the shiny, grainy top and all I got was soap...YAY!!! Only time will tell how that second batch (salt bar sans salt) will turn out, but I did SF at 15%, so maybe it will be OK...
I'm kind of glad to meet the soap gremlins...had to happen sometime...live, soap and learn!

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!