Teach Soap

I am very new to soaping as a hobby- made lots of soap in chem lab but that's a whole different animal!

I purchased a kit from Brambleberry.com (), so I was using all BB products. I read and re-read the tutorial- I had the recipe and directions printed out in front of me and I read through those at least five times prior to starting.
I followed Anne-Marie's directions to the 'T'. BUT.... after I added the lye water to the melted oils (both were just under 130 and within 10 degrees of each other) I slowly stirred them together and then stick blended for maybe 5 seconds- I did this twice. After the second time, there was good light trace. As soon as I started to separate the batch into 2 other containers, it started thickening up- about medium trace- and started looking grainy. I added my color and FO- a slow moving oil- and it thickened even more. I probably should have just put it in the mold at this point - but I was determined to try this technique- and I'm really stubborn! So I put the 3 batters into the squeeze bottles. I had whole lot of 1 color left over- so I spooned that into the mold and tapped the mold on the counter a few times to settle it all in. Then I proceeded with the longitudinal zig-zags of altering colors. By the end- the batter was pretty thick and sputtering out of the bottles. I wasn't very hopeful. But I spritzed the top with RA and insulated it and set it aside for about 3 days. I took it out of the mold last night- it popped right out and actually looked really good- but the cutting was an issue. The top half of the soap cut beautifully- just like you'd expect- but when I got to the solid color in the bottom- it got really crumbly. Did I wait too long to cut? How do you judge when you should un-mold and cut your soap?

Thanks!

Welcome!
I normally soap right around 110 degrees. At 130 everything goes faster including trace. If a part of the soap did not gel that could account for a part of it being crumbly. For gelled soaps, you can normally cut as soon as the soap cools off.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thanks! I'll try it at a lower temp next time.

You're welcome. You can buy a laser thermometer at a reasonable price. I got mine at Harbour Freight for around $10.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Be sure to check for zap too! Lye heavy soap can be super crumbly. I once left out 1/3 of my oils by accident, I was able to crumble the soap by hand into my crock pot for rebatching LOL Oops!

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist