Teach Soap

I've been having trouble with TD, with rivers and crackling. But I love a white soap as the base for swirls etc! I've tried changing the lye concentration to 33% (I read the recent advice on the BB blog) but when I do that I get huge cracks in the top of my soap, even if I put it in the freezer. Is there any other way to get a white soap other than with TD? I have tried kaolin clay but it doesn't get it as white as the TD......

If white is really important, you might want to come up with a recipe using only oils that soap very light, then little or no TD will be needed at all.

I had the same problem, TD didn't do a good job whitening my soap. Then I bought a different olive oil - NOT virgin! It is lighter in color than virgin olive oil and together with beef tallow it made a much whiter soap. I only added a few drops of TD to get the results I was happy with.
So maybe stick to light oils. Then you won't need as much TD, like DaveW mentioned.

The lighter your oils and butters, the lighter the end result.

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

When I started out (a few months ago) I bought a 'bargain' 4lt tin of olive oil because I'd run out of the one in my pantry, and it was a dark green - something I couldn't see before I bought it since it was in a tin. It definitely made the soap darker so I stopped using it and went back to the one I'd previously used. It's marketed as 'light in taste' and is certainly a lighter colour. Other than that I generally use palm, coconut and castor, sometimes adding Shea butter. All of these are pretty light, and I can only get what I can get, if you know what I mean - they come from a supplier. I've just cut a slice of the soap I made yesterday, with TD and activated charcoal (and a really pretty gold mica swirl on the top which has chasm-like cracks all through it!) and it's crumbling. I don't think I can even use it for anything. I won't be messing with the lye concentration again

I get rivers and crackling when I gel and have a high content of TD. The high temps required for gel seem to guarantee it every time. The lighter you can get your oil mixture, the less TD you'll need. I've also found that the batter can look a bit yellowish but will still cure to a nice white, so what you see in the pot isn't necessarily what you'll get when you unmold. Lard and beef tallow are white and make for a very nice bar of soap. (Had to put in a plug for lard and tallow.)

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

Sherwoor, I see you are from Australia too. ) I got my olive oil from Aldi supermarket, it is REMANO brand, they have a few types, I got the one that said "mild flavour", it gives me a pretty white soap. Not snowy white of course but not brown like yellow-greenish oils would produce. Dark green is probably virgin oil.

Thanks for all the helpful advice! I'll try a batch without TD and see if I'm worrying for nothing, it might be white enough without it. Possum, I live in central Queensland with nary an Aldi in sight, just Coles, Woollies and IGA. I'm pretty sure the olive oil I buy is as light as I'm going to find though. I'll keep persevering....