Teach Soap

I experienced as well in one of my batch... that my soap was not able to get into hard as expected hardness in 24 hours and i found more fat above... in this case, what would be the possible reasons... is it more fat that the suppose ratio? What can you advice guys...

Sometimes it takes longer than 24 hours for a soap to harden, so don't worry too much about that. A lot depends on the recipe.

If your oils separate out it could be from a number of things:
the oils & lye weren't fully emulsified and you had a false trace when you poured
too much superfat
oils and/or lye weren't measured correctly (do you have an accurate scale?)
the soap overheated and separated
did you run your recipe through a lye calculator?

If there are little beads of oil on the surface, it may get absorbed back into the soap, but if there is a layer of oil, it sounds like something went wrong and your soap could be lye-heavy.

_________________
Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

What was your recipe and your method? At what temp did you combine oils and lye?

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

@ljm1180: o i see. i thought the soap will harden within 24 hours. Yes i found a thin layered fat/oil on surface of the soap. Its only thin but i know that it is not normal right?

With regard to my ingredients, yes all ingredients were measured. I used the lye-saponification table in identifying the lye requirement base on the weight of my base oil. Maybe false trace, it is because i poured the ingredients, the honey and oatmeal at a very light trace..maybe about 5 minutes after combining lye solution and oil.

---> You mean ljm1180 that there would be a possibility that your batch would be like that if your batch is lye-heavy. Is it not oil-heavy?

@soapbuddy: my recipe is honey and oatmeal soap.. Again i will relay to you the details so that you can share your assessment on my batch. See details below including the procedures.

First...i did some experimentation. i tried to reduce some measurement of the oil. the same weight of oil i used in my previous batch (500g in total) but this instance, i reduce the weight of palm oil. During my previous batch which is the papaya soap, my coconut oil is 400g and palm oil is 100g. But in this batch i tried to give higher percentage on the coconut oil (see measurement below), for the reasons 1) i just want to see what kind of soap would be if more coconut oil used as the base and 2) i just want to really test how to make perfect on lye computation by changing the weight of base oil. So here are the details:

Palm Oil - 70g;
Coconut Oil - 430g;
Oatmeal (ground) - 40g;
Water - 205g;
Honey - 50g; and
Lye - 85g

During my calculation of lye requirement - i used 0.141 value for Palm Oil while 0.191 for coconut oil. With this computation Palm oil has SAP value of 9.87 while coconut oil is 81.7. Combining the two values is equal to 91.57. I tried to discount it to 7%, so i multiplied 91.57 to 93% to get 7% discounted lye. So this resulted to 85.16 or i rounded it off to 85g

Second, in my mind, i thought that it would be easier to mix the oatmeal to the mixture when it is pre-mix with water..So what i did was, i got a little amount of water (from the 205g) and dissolve the ground oatmeal there.. and further i also pour there the 50g honey... so in short, i have that pre-mix the oatmeal and honey already. I dont know if it is right in doing all of this things.

During mixing, i combined lye solution and the oil at 46 degree centigrade or 115 degree Fahrenheit. However, i poured the pre-mix honey and oatmeal to the mixture at a very light trace. According to ljm1180 its a false trace. Anyway, I continued stirring the mixture until it became thick or sticky then i poured it into the mold.

With regard to its hardness, i understood the comment of ljm1180 that it depends on the recipe and the hour would vary... MY PROBLEM HERE IS THE THIN LAYERED FAT FOUND ON THE SURFACE OF THE SOAP... I DONT KNOW WHERE MY PROCEDURE WENT WRONG... HOPE YOU CAN SHARE YOUR COMMENTS GUYS.. THANKS AGAIN ljm1180 AND soapbuddy for a very facilitative, constructive and supportive comments...

JOSEPH RICO.

So you have 86% coconut and 14% palm oil. So for a 7% superfat, you would need 82.8 grams of lye. The calc gives me 125 to 188 milliliters of liquid. 85 grams of lye is only about 4.5%. I would go higher on your superfat. See above. Yes, dissolve your honey in some of your water. Same for the oatmeal, unless it's ground very fine. Regular oatmeal will drink up some of your water if you add it to soap without hydrating it first.

If you only stirred with a spoon, you most likely got a false trace. You need a stick blender. Is that what you used? 50 grams of honey sounds like too much to me. So it's also possible that your soap overheated with that much honey and separated with an oily layer.

I find a soap with more than 20% coconut drying unless I make a 100% coconut with 20% superfat.

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

@soapbuddy: i dont have stick blender.. i only used a wooden stick or ladle in stirring my batch...maybe if i would be at the level of let say, almost expert, i have to look for that gadget so i could easily produce a bigger batch of soap

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

@soapbuddy: I will. thank u so much for your kind advice soapbuddy... you're such wonderful person...thanks to you and others guys here...

I saw a stick blender on amazon for $11. I got mine for $12 at wally world. Not sure what your budget would be but its definetly worth it!! I bet your underarms dont wave hello before your hand from all that mixing like mine does! Good luck!