Teach Soap

Hi everyone,

I did my first batch of soap with cold process and found out that it makes very little foam (if any). I wanted to know if there is some way to improve this, is there a chemical I should add to improve the foaming?

On the other hand, after using the soap a couple of times it turned really really soft, kind of like butter, so it lost its squared shape and it's now a soft ball. How can I correct this? Should I cure the soap for a longer time? (I only cured mine for 3 weeks...)

Thanks for the advice.

Three weeks isn't long enough a cure so it definitely won't last as long. 4-8 weeks is the normal recommendation. I cure 6 weeks, which I decided on after experimenting. Try a piece of your soap at 4 weeks, another at 5 weeks,etc until 8 weeks or longer and from there you can decide how long a cure is long enough. Your soaping conditions will affect the answer (heat, humidity, etc). As for the suds, you'd need to share your recipe in order to figure that out. For instance, a 100% olive oil soap does not lather as abundantly. Waiting for soap to fully cure is the hardest part of CP soaping!

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Linda

I learn so much when I can't leave well enough alone!

What is your recipe and method? Did it gel?

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

Sounds like olive oil only. I find it completely inadequate, I'm afraid.

Many thanks for the comments. As Linda said, the hardest part was having patience during the curing process... I only took one piece of the soaps I made to test it, so I will just wait a couple of weeks longer to try the other ones.

Because it was my first time making soap, I didn't want to use the frangrances and colours yet (because they're the expensive part), so I made a soap using this recipe:

Canola Oil 14oz
Goat Milk 4.7oz
Lye 1.8oz

I know this recipe is really simple, but I just wanted to see how things got mixed before I doing more complex soaps.

Canola is considered a soft soap. How hard is it?

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