Teach Soap

Hi guys,

Today I made two identical batches of soap. One has gelled and hardened already (three hours later) and the other is still going through gel and spongey soft.

The only difference between the batches was the fragrance oil (but the soft batch is the one which accelerated), and iron oxide for colour. The one with oxide is hard, and ready to slip out of the PVC pipe on its own already. It seems fast for a recipe with a high amount of soft oils!

Both 500g batches.

150g water
65.9g Lye

200g Olive Oil 40%
175g Rice Bran Oil 35%
100g Coconut 20%
25g Castor 5%

1Tb Kaolin in 30g of water

- The one with iron oxide had 1/4 tspn oxide added to the kaolin

Has anyone else found iron oxide hardens soap? The last batch of soap I made using red colouring hardened up faster than normal too, and at just over 2 weeks old is harder than my other bars.

It's not a problem, I'm just curious to know if it's happened anywhere else.

My bet is on the fragrance oil and not the oxide. I use oxides on a regular basis and they don't harden the soap any faster then any other additive except sodium lactate. It could also be because you added kaolin, which soaked up some of your water. The higher the water discount, the faster the soap get hard.

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

Both batches had kaolin too though.

I'll have to make another batch of the same recipe and FO without the red oxide just to see. It was a "Dragon's Breath" FO, which I'm not sure means anything. I got it from an Australian supplier and everyone calls things different names.

I would make a smaller version of your recipe but no fragrance.

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

Good idea, thank you. I'll do that tomorrow.

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

Me too. I hate not being able to recreate results accurately!