fruit.tart

On 4/28/2023 at 2:41 PM, TallTayl said:

As for hardening, what we usually mean is solubility,  additives like sodium lactate make the fresher bars feel “harder”, but do not change the way the soap wears with use because the fatty acid profile of the oils used are what they are.  
 

Solubility means how fast the soap softens or wears away during use.  We can all agree that a cured olive oil soap is “hard” enough to leave a mark if you threw it at someone.  We also all have experienced that the same olive oil soap turns to mush more quickly than other oils when exposed to water.  Sodium lactate can’t make a weak number in the solubility category magically wear longer.  Sodium lactate can just make that soap easier to package sooner without smearing or denting. 
 

oils with more stearic acid, like cocoa butter, palm oil, etc. will naturally wear more slowly than olive oil, canola, etc. regardless of popular additives.  palm and lard are used in soap formulas worldwide for long wearing soap for a reason 😊.

Would you recommend, as another way of getting a harder bar, a strong water discount if I don't want to change my oil blends? Would there be any downsides to doing this besides my mixture coming to trace more quickly?

25 minutes ago, TallTayl said:

That's oxidation, like rust, on soap. It may have been exposed to some metal. Or some of the oils in the formula were shorter shelf life than what that soap required. Oils like canola, almond, soybean, etc "rust" quicker than Palm, coconut ,etc.

 

Orange dots/spots on soap are often called DOS - Dreaded Orange Spots.

Ahh wow I did not know of this! I'd never cured soap for this long without using before, such a good learning experience haha.

I'm fairly certain the oils I used when I made the soap were fresh. Could it possibly be trace metal exposure from the fact that I used tap water instead of distilled?

18 hours ago, NightLight said:

Add sodium lactate, or pure soy wax. You will love sodium lactate! Do a google. A small amount of beeswax is good to 1 percent, this also prevents ash.

Ah yes! Thank you for reminding me that I have a new container of sodium lactate for this very reason. Will try it out!

I have another question though on these one-year old soaps...almost all the bars I created have this yellowish discoloration. What might be the cause of this? Is there any way to avoid it? These bars were left out on a shelf in the garage for a very long cure! 🫣

Hi everyone! After a long hiatus, I'm venturing back into soapmaking. The benefit of my time away has allowed me to really judge some very fully cured bars of soap I created last year, and now I want to improve on them.

I use an olive oil, coconut oil, shea butter, and castor oil blend for my soaps. I like this blend for how easy it to unmold and how it feels in the hand when being used, good lather, hard but not too hard that if I dropped it, an edge would chip off etc. However, while it's perfect consistency for my tastes as a shower bar soap, it fails pretty spectacularly as a hand soap when it's constantly being used all day long. It ends up like a soft mush by the end of the day. Ultimately, I'd like to create a recipe that works as both a hand and body bar.

Does anyone have tips on how to make for a harder bar? Would I need to explore using other oils (like palm) to achieve the consistency I want? Thanks in advance!

4 hours ago, TallTayl said:

So happy to have helped 🤗 once you have your timing and “feel” down with soap water discounting is a huge time saver. And, importantly, no more overly shrunken/distorted bars after a few months! Your cured weight is much closer from the time you cut this way too. 

 

Shea butter is really high in stearic acid. Depending on the source, could be up to 50% stearic.  I would fully melt those oils to perfectly clear, blend well and cool to your normal soaping temperature.  I had similar dots and spots until I ensured all stearic components in my formula were melted.  
 

another thing you can try to figure out if it is stearic is pouring it through a fine sieve.  I picked up plastic material sieve from either Wally World or the dollar store.  Can’t remember which… when all oils are melted I pour through the sieve and learned quite a bit of the spotting was tiny little bits of stearic from the cocoa butter and Shea I use.

 

 

Yes, I'm now thinking it's a combo of air bubbles and stearic spots. For these two batches in the photo, I had melted the solid butters/oils just to the point where it became clear or so I thought, but then I would immediately mix in the room temp oils. Maybe the butters need to be heated for longer (and then cooled to my normal soaping temp, as you suggest?) If these are in fact stearic bubbles, is it still safe to use? Would hate to waste them!

3 hours ago, asr said:

Lately I have been melting my hard oil/butters separately (I was just measuring and heating all together) and it seems to have cut down on the steric spots but I love the fine sieve idea!

I've been melting the hard butters/oils separately too so that may not be it. Also agree the sieve idea is great!

Yes, they look like tiny little air pockets. 

My formula is 45% olive oil, 30% coconut oil, 15% shea butter, and 10% castor oil. It doesn't seem like there's a ton of stearic acid in that recipe, but what do I know? I am now wondering if it's related to your point on the oils not fully melting though. Lately, I've been just melting the solid butters and oils and then lightly mixing the room temp liquid oils into that. Could it be that they are not incorporating well enough before I start blending the lye mixture?

Also, a side note, but I really have to thank you @TallTayl! I think I was requesting help in a candle-related topic last year when you introduced the concept of water discounting to me and it's made a world of a difference in getting back into exploring soaps now that I'm not waiting months for them to cure :) 

Hi there!

I've been a soap hobbyist for the better part of the last year, but am recognizing that it's a never ending learning journey! With that in mind, I'd love to know how I can avoid these tiny little bubbles that appear when I blend my oil/lye mixture (and sets with the soap)? I'm using a stick blender at the lowest setting and only blending for about 5-10 seconds at a time. I also mix a bit with a silicone spatula by hand to avoid the bubbles. It's never happened to me before and my recipe hasn't changed much so not sure what's happening! 

Thanks in advance!

These are all genius. Thanks so much!

Hello! Does anyone have tips/advice for the best way to try blending FOs? I've been concocting mixes in my head and trying them in tiny batches in my container candles, but would love to hear of more efficient ways to even see if a combination of scents is promising before I bring it into the wax. Thank you!

On 7/10/2020 at 11:43 PM, Cindel said:

 

Do you know if Calwax sell directly to consumers?    I know plenty of people looking for the Virgin Coco Soy and WW is always out of stock.  

 

I actually recently reached out to Calwax to see if they offered small quantities since every supplier seemed to be out of stock. The rep told me they do sell directly...with a 500lb minimum!

14 hours ago, TallTayl said:

Soap is pretty easy.... just discount the water. A 40% lye solution makes for a pretty hard bar that takes very little time to cure to size. 

!! I haven't tried that before. This is life changing information haha. 

13 hours ago, bfroberts said:

I haven't done this particular blend, but I've done lots of blends and to be honest with you, in terms of creating a parasoy, I've never blended anything that I thought was any better than what is already available on the market.  At present, I am using CBL130, and IMO it is superior to any other parasoy out there.  I gave up on 6006 a year or so ago because I didn't like the way the current batches were burning, and unless it has changed I feel for anyone dealing with that hot mess. 

 

I don't really have much to offer other than being 110% certain that 6006 needs to cure for a couple of weeks before it even begins to exhibit a decent burn quality (if you have the same crappy 6006 I was dealing with last year).  It has nothing to do with throw, and everything to do with how it burns. It's kind of a monster in tumblers due to the way it burns down.  It's actually much easier to wick in a jar with shoulders.  With the tumblers, in order to get where I think you want to be in terms of appearance and burn, you'll probably have to up the percentage of soy to around 20% so you are working with basically a 50/50 paraffin/soy blend before it starts to really show more soy-like burn characteristics.  At that point, I'd test with Eco, CD and HTP, but my money would be on Eco.

CBL130 sounds like a dream right now, but I have about 40 lbs of 6006 to try to make workable so I'm in it for the long haul.

Thanks to you both for the suggestions. Going to wait another week before retesting the batch I had made above, and also just created another blend with more soy that I'll let cure for a few weeks and see how those perform. 

@TallTayl I think once I get the hang of wicking this blend, I'll be more mentally equipped to return to soap making and endure its painfully long cure times!

@bfroberts This is an 85% 6006 / 15% 464 blend. I had actually tried blending in hopes that it would be easier to wick than standalone 6006, which I've been struggling with because of all the soot. Now I'm finding that I like the way the blend looks with the creaminess the extra soy adds, and I might want to explore adding a tad more 464, like an 80/20 blend. I was not in love with the CDs in the 6006 either, but thought it was more acceptable than ECO even though I personally preferred the way the ECO wicks burned (it just soot far too much, way more than the CDs did). I also tried LX in the standalone 6006, which was underwhelming, so didn't want to try it in this blend. I think I may have read in the archives that you've played around with this blend before — was there a wick you found more successful than others?

These have been curing for a week, which I thought would be enough for wick testing, but I'll let them sit for another week and revisit. And to think, I had turned to candle making from cold process soaps in hopes of finding a hobby with a quicker return on investment

Once cured for two weeks, if I'm still finding soot from the naked wax (having been burned in a room without a draft), is that immediately an indication that I would need to wick down or is some sooting okay given that this wax is in the lower half of the glass jar?

Thanks so much! 

I've been combing through the archives of this form for the last few months and have been learning so much more about candle making than I could've ever imagined (so a giant thank you!) From what I've garnered so far, I began conducting some burn testing on a naked wax blend (no FO) of 6006 / 464 to try to determine my baseline wick. These are 11oz jars with a 3" diameter that I filled halfway for testing's sake.

The photo below is from the end of a second three-hour burn. I think the CD10 is sooting too much, the CD6 is too small, and I've also tried an ECO8 that I loved (no curling wick!) but it burned too hot and discolored the wax.

Questions:

• Should I be concerned about the sooting on the CD8? It's burning well and I'm confident the hangup will melt down, but there's still a streak of dark soot on one side of the jar.
• Once I settle on a good baseline wick, would the next step be to test a fragrance using this wick size and then go up and down from there? I think I'm confused about how to determine if you need to change the FO load as opposed to changing the wick size. 

On 6/27/2020 at 7:06 PM, BusyBee said:

(1)  Size of each wick should be same which ever supplier you get these wicks.  However, wicks from different suppliers can perform differently due to following 2 differences.

a) After wick manufacturers braids these wicks, it will need to go thru chemical treatment to make it fire retardant.  Yes, they actually have to make it fire retardant so it won't burn out easily.

b) Wax coating

Chemical treatment can be done by different places with different methods.  And, they use different types of waxes for coating.  So, same wicks will be different supplier to supplier.  It will depend on which wick assembler was the final producer.

Are these differences in wick performance pretty notable, enough so that I should stick to one supplier for all wick orders? And it also makes me wonder if there would possibly even be variations from batch to batch when ordering from the same supplier? 

I have a silly question about heating the jars before pouring the wax. I’ve wanted to put them in the oven to warm them (because sinkholes), but have been unsure about the best order of operations. Would you typically heat the jars and then continue with the wick assembly? I think that makes the most sense but I’m afraid of the jars being too hot to the touch. How hot should the jars be?

Ahh yes..I just hadn't experienced this with other wax before but that makes a lot of sense.

Would I be able to remedy with using a heat gun or would you recommend a better way to get a level surface? Thank you so much for the help (on this post and throughout the forum!)

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to candle making and recently discovered this amazing forum. I've been trying to comb through previous posts but couldn't find anything on this, so apologies if this is repeated somewhere.

I've been noticing that as the wax dries in my container candles, it's doing this odd thing where it's pulling away from the wick. I'm using IGI 6006, pouring at 170 F, adding FO from Candle Science (White Tea at 10% and Cactus Jade at 8%), and using ECO 2 for the votive and ECO 8 for the larger container. This wax/wick issue has affected mostly the small 2.5oz votives, but it happened for the first time on the larger 8.5oz Libbey jar too. This hasn't happened with any of the other waxes I've tried so not sure what I'm doing wrong here! Thank you in advance for any help.