Teach Soap

Hi everyone, I am new here and have been soaping for a few months now. I am trying to find a recipe that will allow me to swirl and can set up and be cut the next day, or even 2 days. I have a recipe that is 30% Palm, 25% coconut oil, 35% olive and 10% avacado to super fat. I use a little kaolin clay, a tiny bit of silk fiber and I swap out 1/3 of my water with goat milk or coconut milk, and lastly 1 tsp per pound sodium lactate. My problem is, I can't get a good solid loaf that I can cut witching 24 to 48 hours. I have tried everything to modify to get a more solid loaf while being able to keep the fluid batter for swirling.
Any advice you can provide will be much appreciated as I am just stumped. I really want a batter like yellow cottage Soapery because it is so virsitle, but I am just no doing it right. Please help!
Melannie

Avocado is a soft oil. At 10% it can make the soap soft. Do you have any butters like cocoa, shea or mango? That would help with the hardness.
If you go to this soap calculator, it will tell you what the soap might be on a scale of hardness.
http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

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

Thank yo so much for taking the time to help me with my soap problem. I have all three butters..should I replace all 10% of the avacado with one of the butters or just part of it? I still need to have the fluidity in the batter to swirl and work with the tear drop swirl?% I am thinking maybe use 5% Shea. Idk....

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

Hi RoandBee

I'm pretty new here too. It's great that the experienced folk are so willing to share knowledge and advice. Anyway, I thought I'd jump in with my 2¢ worth.

I use a recipe that is basically 20% coconut, 20% Palm and either Canola or Olive oil for the rest. I vary the canola/olive oil amount to allow a little of the special oils or butters sometimes but usually I have my fun with the colours and fragrances I use. I used to find that I had very quick progression from light trace to having to spoon the soap into the mould because it was too thick to pour and so had very little time to play.

I found a tutorial on that really helped. I started mixing my oil and lye at a lower temp (I was doing it at 40ºC/104F) I started using a little more water and I used my stick blender less.

I now have plenty of time to split my batter, colour each and recombine as required. I try to avoid fragrance oils that I know will accelerate trace but Bramble Berry are good at giving advice on that type of thing. My soaps are still ready to cut after 24 hours and are not too soft.

I hope this helps.

Cheers, Grant

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Cheers,

Grant

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose. [Jim Elliott]

Here is another idea. If you are using a stick blender, try using a stainless steel whisk instead, or use the stick blender off and on and not the whole time.

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