Teach Soap

hello, im new here and my husband and i have actually been making soap for 2 years now, him doing the cold process, i the melt and pour with my daughter (she is 4) and shampoos and body gels.. just recently i decided to actually jump myself into the cold process, and i have gotten so decent bars but i have an issue with a couple batches i just made that i can figure out... i did the colored swirl soap, and when after 36 hours i took them out of the mold they had water residue that stung my hands ( so i am figuring it was lye water) and it was all stuck at the bottom of the mold.. it left some of the soap in the mold and made a little 3d road map it seems like on the bottom side of my soap.. i mixed it pretty good, but am i missing something? i askedmy husband but he has never seen anything like this.. can someone help??????????? thanks!

Danielle

If it stung your hands, that means there's lye over/in your bars that did not saponify. Did you run your recipe through a lye calculator? Did you use a stick blender? How hot did you soap? What was your recipe? All these will help for us to help you troubleshoot.

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

It could still be lye heavy. Try this: dampen your finger with a little bit of water. Touch your finger to your soap where the wet spot was. Lightly touch that finger to your tongue. If it zaps, it will be like licking a 9 volt battery. You would know if you got zapped or not. You could try rebatching, but if it still zaps, it means your soap is lye heavy. Then I would trash it, since you don't know how much more oil to add, so it's not lye heavy. I would remake your recipe to make 1 lb. If you convert the 1 lb. amount to grams, your recipe will be more accurate. Let me know if you need help.

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

thank you! i did the wet finger test and got no zap now what so ever... does this mean it is ok? how can i prevent this in the future for swirl soap next time? any tips? lol thanks!

Danielle

You're welcome. if you tried for zap in a couple of different places and none zap, you are probably ok.
Try soaping at around 110 degrees. Make sure that you color or fragrance is made specifically for cold process soap.

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

the color i used was mica coloring the powder stuff... thanks again i amgoing to see how the swirl works in the next batch!

Not all mica is soap safe.

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

how can you tell if it isnt? this one i got said it was good for soap, the color turned out gorgeous..

It depends where you got the mica from. Some micas work better in MP, some work better in CP. Same thing for fragrance oils.

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

did you say 15 oz of water and nearly 11 oz of oils? you might not have had completely dissolved lye - that's not much water. Try more like 22 oz of water, or roughly twice your lye amount.

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thanks i will give it a whirl.. and thats what the lye calc said LOL