My soap isn't going hard!! Help...

[sweet]

Hi,

I made some a soap with almond oil and some lavender eo on tuesday, it traced, i poured it and it still hasn't gone hard yet, its been 5 days, hmmm, is this ok, i thought it should have gone hard after 24 hrs, maybe a little longer.

I know that different base oils and eo can speed up / slow down trace etc, but i was under the impression that it shouldn't take this long. Advice very much appreciated. Did i do something wrong?

S.

[just_mai]

if you post or pm me your recipe I will have a look at it for you, could be a case of to much soft oils?

[Comforts & Candles]

Mai would probably be able to tell you immediately if you send her your recipe...

If you're making cold process as opposed to hot process though - to be honest, five days isn't really that long... And kinda depends on your definition of hard... At five days with mine using CP I'd expect to be able to have a bit of squidge factor and be able to easily mark or gouge the slices with a finger nail... I demould at 24hrs, cut at two days and then just leave the stuff alone except for turning the slices over one edge every other day then I bevel the edges at two weeks...

It'll need at least two weeks really to dry out and lose some of the moisture to harden up... It'll get milder and harder as the time goes by and at four weeks or so be safe to use... By then there's no squidge factor and it's quite hard to mark...

Or at least that's how it works with my usual recipe... Everyone else might have a different experience...

VERY rough rule of thumb for starting off might be 50% hard oils and 50% soft oils with a 5%-6% superfat or lye discount... If your recipe is along those lines and you followed the water/lye combination correctly from the calculator you used it should just be a matter of time...

Or send your recipe to Mai as she offered to check it out for you...

Welcome to the slow paced world of cold process... Tis the main reason I fell in love with hot process soap...

Ann-Marie x

[sweet]

well, I have to say these things are all new to my soapie ears, soft / hard oils, superfatting...hmmm, more research needed i feel!

ty for your suggestions..x

[sweet]

Also, The soap was cut today. First time cutting my own soap. i was very excited...lol

[Comforts & Candles]

lol... Sorry... I didn't mean to sound too technical...

The hard oils = oils that are literally solid at room temperature... Coconut Oil (not the fractionated version), Palm Oil, Palm Kernel Oil...

The soft oils = oils that are literally liquid at room temperature... Sweet Almond, Olive etc

Superfat = the 'extra' oil that goes into your recipe that doesn't get matched with lye and go through the saponification process...

I don't know which lye calculator you use but if there is an option for superfat or lye discount - that's where I put the 6%... So out of the 100% of oils that make up the recipe - the lye calculation only works out the right amount of lye for 94% of the oils leaving 6% of them intact... So this 'extra' oil will remain as oil and be conditioning and moisturising to the skin... In Cold Process you throw them all into the pot before trace and the 6% is left over during the saponification process - in Hot Process you keep some oil back (the 6%) and add it after the cooking process so the superfat oil maintains its original state...

I personally choose a superfat/lye discount of 6% because it suits my base recipe - many others will go slightly higher or slightly lower... Too much 'extra' oil will result in soft soap and too little oil to match to the lye will result in a lye heavy soap and the only place for that is the bin...

Anyway - I hope that makes sense and doesn't sound like I'm parked on some soap box somewhere... ;-)

Good news on cutting your soap - one thing I'm absolutely hopeless at... My slices always end up like door wedges so I caved in and bought a cutter... ;-)

AM x

[just_mai]

CP soaps I usually am able to unmold and cut in 8-12 hours, even my castile, rarely ever leave for 24 hours am to impatient for that lol, edited to add if you want to read more go to millersoap.com, excellent site.