Sponiebr

Soap porn! YAY!!!!

TT it was 5% castor, it's my standard formulation. I was just thinking about the color of the OO castile... I don't have any lard but I do have a bottle of Canola that I had wanted to try out. ACTUALLY... This is a PERFECT opportunity to try swapping my OO for Canola in my standard formulation I also have a fresh bottle of castor I could use. Glad you mentioned that TT!

It was in the mold for about 48+ hours. It was my standard formulation with the only swap outs being the aloe and a water discount. This was not a weird or complicated soap by any stretch of the imagination. I did use some old castor in this batch (and all of the other standard batches lately), and I'm wondering if that might be a contributing factor in some of the oddities that I have been seeing. I've looked at the lye, but anything that doesn't have castor in it acts 100% normal. I dunno. That castor will be used up soon enough. I'm going to be doing some oxide tests (new stuff I got from a non soap vendor, but that's another topic) and I'm going to make a 1 lb. Castile batch to test the oxides in. I think that the Castile will have the absolute slowest trace possible and will give me the most time to play with the oxides. I'll pour into those little 2 oz. "Hand Made" silicone cups.

Velcome... Come right eeenside. You vill find zis a veeeery nice place. I make ze zoapz. Lots of good info and very helpful folks around. Slainte, Sponiebr the Executor of Bad ideas and Sundry Services (GmBh. AND llc)

Farkin' soap gremlins! How much of your colorants did you end up using and in about how much fat did you mix them? Wonderful looking soap by the way! -Sponiebr

Oh, I like the owls too! Are they silicon molds or Milky Way molds?

Yanno... I'm gonna go with haunted at this point. The soap didn't look or feel or behave like it had experienced gel phase today when I had to brute force the loaf out of the mold. It was STUCK, and no amount of freezing or anything but tugging and pushing and pinching and pealing was getting it out of that loaf mold. The top of the soap was just beautiful, nice hard, it was just perfect looking soap EVERYTHING below that top 1/8" was stickier than gorilla snot. It reminded me very much of Plasticine clay in all aspects. I was able to trowel it back into shape and cut the bars. As soon as the bars were cut (about 30 min) they started to harden up and lose the stickiness. My ghost swirl is actually hainted.

Aaaaaaand the Gremlins got me too. That batch I made Friday was GLUED into and was NOT letting go of the silicone loaf mold. Not by freezer, I had to brute force the loaf out and all but the top was sticky and about the consistency of Plasticine modeling clay. I was actually able to "trowel" it all back to smooth. As soon as I had cut the bars they started to harden up nicely but they just REALLY needed some air. How do you trap those little mutha fluf'n gremlins? We need to have a gremlin roast. Sponie the P.O.'d

Well, it's a silicone mold down inside a 1/4 thick pine box with the pine board wrapped in saran wrap and sealed against the silicone mold. Normally when I see gel is about 45 minutes after it kicks sometimes sooner, sometimes a little later but always inside of a 2 hr window. Also when I see gel phase, the soap is heating up and it goes into gel phase, then it cools down and we're done... The soap doesn't heat up like it wants to gel and then cool to completely room temperature and then go and start heating up again 3 hours after the fact. I've just never seen this before. I guess the soap could have been hot in the center the whole time and when I put the board on top, it provided just enough insulation to go critical... So J... When you cover your soap in saran wrap are you using freezer paper lined molds or are they silicone lined molds? I used a water discount in this (nothing drastic by any means) and normally that would raise the gel temperature... The water portion was replaced with aloe juice, and there could be some sugar in there... It's just weird with the warm cold cycling. Maybe my soap is haunted... o.O That would be just so, typical. Slainte, Sponie the Executioner of Bad ideas and sundry services...

Wow...

This? Oh this is nuth'n... Go check out KrazyKelly's Valentine's day cakes over in the Old Style B&B gallery... The %#@! Valentine's soaps I can't even imagine HOW a person could possibly have that many hands going that fast with as many eyes and arms as was needed to just decorate ONE of those soap cakes! Just AMAZING stuff! Goldie, for what it's worth, it's not really all that hard to make basic soaps. Sure there could be complications, but they're really not all that common and making soap is a lot of fun! (It's even MORE fun if you have a dishwasher.) Slainte, Sponie the Executor of bad, (well, not really bad per se...) ideas.

So, all y'all remember back oh a couple of months ago I was whining about my Jamaica Me Crazy CP soap that got hot in the mold and I had to throw it into the freezer to keep it from overheating? How it turns out that it was probably the turmeric coloring that heated it up? Remember that? No? Well I do... Here's the link: Random Gel Phase So I made another batch tonight, different FO, but similar citrusy characteristics. Really there isn't anything similar to the batch I made tonight and the Jamaica Me Crazy batch EXCEPT... They were both made in my silicone loaf mold, AND the top had been sealed with plastic wrap. I wouldn't have even thought about it tonight at all because I poured the loaf did my ghost swirls and (blah... blah... blah...) I left the top open to and just sitting in it's little wood box doing it's thing like I always do. I started packing up to leave for the weekend and I put my pine board that is wrapped in plastic food wrap over the top to keep the dust and sun off it until I came back to work and could cut it. When I put the board on it the loaf was cool as a cucumber and just looked like I was going to get a good ashed top on it later. I went to finish up the reports. 45 minutes (max) I just check everything as I was about to walk out the door and I lifted the board to take a look at the top of the soap loaf and to get one last sniff. It was dark, and the office lights were out all I had was the street lights shining in, but the soap looked like it was starting to gel... WHUT!? I turned the lights back on and went back to look at it and SURE AS HELL, it was heating up and going into gel phase! I am actually tickled that this particular loaf is doing a gel phase because it was made with a 30% water to oil and had a 33% water to oil Ghost swirl that was also 1/3 of the batter. A little gel phase in a ghost swirl is a wonderful thing. BUT WHY!? So... To cause the soap to heat up all you have to do is prevent evaporation? Is it just seal that soap up and the lack of evaporation cooling heats the soap up? Or is it that the saponification as it occurs is heating the soap up causing the water to evaporate which cools the soap and also reduces the amount of available water to sustain the saponification reaction thereby reducing the heat? There's DEFINITELY a correlation here... Slainte, Sponie the Executor of bad, and sometimes fairly dangerous (but I'm still alive so it must be okay) ideas.

OH S#!T ! Great the soap gremlins are out in force, and I making a batch tonight.

One of these days someone, I know it's coming, is going to want sandalwood or opium scented soap, and I'm going to puke myself to death. Maybe I can just say I'm allergic to sandalwood? o.O Yeah that'll werk...

Might be a strange question for me to ask, but are you a soap or candle maker already? I wasn't even really thinking about doing any special soaps for St. Valentines day, but now that I think about it a couple of logs with some rebatched embeds or a column heart embed might not be too hard a task... (Chuckles) I must say, now that I ponder this... I rather get a kick outta the concept of women rubbing my soap on their naughty bits. Sorry, I'm just a guy.... LOL. I'll need a heart shaped... (wait for it) column mold. Um... Brambleberry might be the place to find that in silicone. Another neat idea I just had was to make some sort of silicone removable insert(s) for a regular cylinder mold. I HATE having tons of soap _specific_ stuff laying around. I like to use just exactly what I like to use and the rest... Don't want it, don't need it, don't have storage for it (that's a big part of my stashing policy), and I ain't gonna keep it. That and I get 99% of my stuff from the Dollar Tree so these aren't upsetting to give to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. So Cecil, What would YOU like to make for your sweetheart? Those filigreed soaps up there are really pretty and they'll need some Melt and Pour soap to fill them as well as some clam-shelled heart molds. IF they are flat backed and basically you can just mold your cold process soaps in them and fill each one. If you have a smidgen of patience and would mind you could do a slightly off white outside with a just so titchy bit of maybe some rose clay dissolved in just a little water, (VERY LITTLE AMOUNTS HERE.) I'm thinking for a 3.5 pound loaf you''d make up all of your lye water for the target water to oils % (e.g. I normally soap at 38% Oil:Water, but I was also going to make a ghost swirl. First I need a formulation I know is going to work, PERFECTLY. Have your log mold lined and have the dividers put in so you can swirl a little better. Second I need to recalculate lye concentration down to oh... 30% And then just save off enough distilled water to make oh, let's just say 33% O:W. After I have put in my fragrance oils and incorporated them in their entirety (hold on to the rose ) Now moving fast pull the 1/3 of the 30% batter off and then add the water and stick blend. There you now have one batch at 30% water and a smaller batch at 33% water. QUICKLY add your wet clay to that small batch and stick'it good. Pour your Surrounding soap quickly and evenly place in the swirls. Once full, pull out the divider and bang the mold on your work bench. Then grab a CLEAN chopstick and swirl away! I cut mine the next day. G'Luck Cecil! I really hope this will help you out. Slainte, Bern The executor of BAD IDEAS

Don't we all... M&P on the soaps?

Oh... my... Um, It doesn't smell like that to me but then again, I like the smell of durian fruit, ( yum! Vidalia onions...) Sandalwood makes me involuntarily retch. Smell and taste are rather personal things.

Along those same lines as CS Mistletoe is Holly Berry, I can't remember which is which right now, but I think that the Mistletoe has more of a pine scent to it and the Holly Berry has much of the same but with a softer almost honey like warmth to it. Anyway one is more sharp and slightly "greener" than the other, and the softer one is a very warm and almost, I really don't know what the term would be other than honey like or just warm and inviting...

I too like the CS Fraser Fir, it's a very clear Fir smell, and brings a brightness that is frequently lacking in pine scents. So speaking of pine scents, I am really looking for a pine scent that smells like old heartwood pine, like aged lighter fat... Any tips on where I could find something like that Trappeur?

There was a plethora of missteps and inexperience that led to the 7 hour crucible affair. 1. MANY different interpretations on HOW to rebatch soap. The majority seem to like: 1. Grate the soap finely. 2. Only a couple of Tblsps of water or other liquid. 3. Cook to varying degrees of either gel like Vaseline or mashed potatoes. 2. I used a method that called for 1 c of liquid per pound, (That's a bit more than a couple of tblsps), and then let the stuff "soak" overnight to get a very smooth mixture. And it DID do a pretty good job of getting everybody in chopped up soap world involved with each other. 3. Temperature. I followed some suggestions that I just put the cooker on low and leave it be for a couple of hours. Well, it got things moving in the right direction and caused it to smooth together well enough but I was getting that separation when I stirred it. So after about 4 hours of this I cranked up the heat to high. Things changed, but it wasn't doing what I had understood rebatched soap should do, namely turn into mashed potatoes. DAMMIT I'M HUNGRY and I haven't got the time for this! (wait... It's NOT mashed potatoes?) That honey stuff? I tasted it, It was VERY MUCH SOAP. So I'm wondering what the hell am I supposed to do, and out came the stick blender, which caused ALL SORTS of bubbles to form even when there wasn't any air trapped down in the end of the blender. It also eventually snagged the plastic cooking bag I had lined the crock pot with, and well, the bag left the party soon after that. So, I've SB'd the mess and it still reverted back to the honey on the bottom and the mashed potatoes on top. Now I'm analyzing this issue. I'm also waiting to hear back from all y'all on what scorched soap looks like. I'm seeing steam coming off the pot too... Hum... So I left it alone for a few minutes and went back to stir it. The batch had improved with less of the honey stuff. AH HA!!! WATER! THAT'S the problem. So I keep this reduction process going and eventually I'm getting little brown globs here and there of gelatinous brown stuff coming off the sides of the crock in the hot zones (burnt soap? I couldn't tell ya)... I stir more frequently. I try molding a few individual cup molds to see what it does and finally it all seems to be behaving sorta well. So after 7 hours I pull the plug and into the loaf mold it glops. The consistency was like heavy mashed potatoes. I'll probably get to cut that loaf tomorrow after Church. Rebatching is a little problematic for me as I don't have regular access to a crock pot, and I have NO access to a stove. I have a microwave oven, a convection oven, and an electric skillet. I guess I could get a can of sterno to cook the stuff in but that seems kinda nuts. So to answer your question gsmakinsoap, I have NO idea, but I wouldn't try that over night "soak" in tons of liquid again, at least not without fully accepting that what I was endeavoring to do was likely NOT going to work the way that I was looking for it to work. The method worked, but not like I thought it was going to work. Also 200 F for a couple of hours seems a tad light on time to me. But... I didn't put mine in an oven. I dunno... I just don't know...

What do you SF at Kelly?

I tried the plastic bag in the crock pot and well when a stick blender got involved things devolved rapidly. The batch was definitely wet. That honey like fluid eventually disappeared and the batch got to that mashed potatoes stage but not until a lot of the water had cooked off. I followed something that I had seen on SoapQueen where one adds 1 cup of liquid per pound and lets it sit over night. THen you bake it for a few hours at 200F. Yeah. Not happening again. It took me almost 7 hours to rebatch that soap.

Yep! And those signs make really nice dividers for doing sectional pours with swirls and such.

Just a note about pressing aggregated materials, incremental pressing works much better than bulk pressing for consistency, but I can't really see how to do incremental pressing on a sphere. If I had to take a solid guess I would think that the die would have to be a sort of pill shape, and then pressed until the middle of the pill disappeared into the equator... interesting.

So, I've been doing some in depth web poking and I can't seem to find ANYTHING as to what scorched soap looks like. I'm attempting to rebatch those Red Ginger and Saffron ghost swirl batches in a crock pot but I really have no idea what I'm looking at. I keep getting a dark honey colored liquid at the bottom of the crock with very pretty creamy soap looking stuff on top. When I stir it together it looks riced. Thorts? Sponie "We bring bad ideas to life."