Life lessons learned.

[Sponiebr]

So! I made me a very nice adjustable loaf mold with swing down hinged sides. It'll make anything 3.5" x 2.75" from 18" long to 8" long. (8 is as low as I went, but I could make a smaller brick if I wanted.) I set me mold up to 12" long 3.5x2.75 and did my volume calculations at 115.5 cin.  Here's where it gets fun. I messed up on how much I really needed to fill that space and produced almost 2 times the required amount. My batch ended up being just over 7 lbs. and well... That was too much soap. It was enough to completely fill my regular silicone little loaf to the normal fill height, in other words I got 2 loaves of soap out of this batch.  my constant should have been .43 and not .65. 

 

I also used annatto lye method in this soap. It was a CS Cucumber Mint loaf and I wanted it to be a pale pistachio light green. So I made up the soap with yellow creating lye solution and added ultramarine to get the green. It traced in as a gray tan/ with blue in it... It was wet concrete ugly. The later turned green as the soap cured. 

 

I am just proud of that mold, and I really wanted to just fill it up and have a little left over for some test cups, but I got 2 FULL loaves out of it... I guess this is like so many hard to learn lessons in my life: No matter how proud I am of a thing, it always seems to boil down to it's just not that great. 

 

Cheers, -Sponie

 

The new adjustable soap mold. Note the color? It's kind of gray green? It turned a little more sea foam green later on. 

 

This is the annatto seeds in the hot lye water. They should have been left in there for about 4 hours. I think they only got 3 tops. I strained them out with some pantyhose and a extra fine mesh stainless strainer. 

 

Clockwise from top left: CS Cucumber Mint, OMH, and Himalayan bamboo. 

 

Cheers! Hope you enjoy the picts! 

[Jcandleattic]

It just sounds to me like you calculated for oils only and forgot about the water... (I could be wrong, but this is what happens to me when I calculate for oils only! LOL) 

 

The mold is nice! I have so much wood, I need to make some molds. One of these days. It's on the list. LOL 

Green, when used lightly, does tend to get grey in the wet soap, but will later cure out to a nice green. (most of the time, not always) purples tend to do the same thing. 

Anyway, stay proud! You did a good job making the mold, you just need to adjust your soap amounts, and all will be well.

[bfroberts]

Nice looking mold you've got there.  I'd say all in all it was a complete success!  And now you know exactly how much it takes to do a double batch with both molds. 
 

How'd the Cucumber Mint do in soap?  I've been meaning to soap with it, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

[Sponiebr]

6 hours ago, Jcandleattic said:

It just sounds to me like you calculated for oils only and forgot about the water... (I could be wrong, but this is what happens to me when I calculate for oils only! LOL) 

 

The mold is nice! I have so much wood, I need to make some molds. One of these days. It's on the list. LOL 

Green, when used lightly, does tend to get grey in the wet soap, but will later cure out to a nice green. (most of the time, not always) purples tend to do the same thing. 

Anyway, stay proud! You did a good job making the mold, you just need to adjust your soap amounts, and all will be well.

 

Hum... The last bit of my sentence seems to have gotten cut off...  It should have been "No matter how proud I am of a thing, it always seems to boil down to it's just not that great a volume as I think it is."   

 

It was just the wrong constant. There are 3 that could be used, one is physical vol of mold: weight in oz, another is mold vol:oil weight, and another is batch weight to volumetric oz. I used that last one. Each oil mixture ends up being a different physical weight in the end because 8 oz of OO isn't the same physical size as 8 oz of shortening, and the both of them with the water and all isn't... (you know what I mean...) 

 

 

5 hours ago, bfroberts said:

Nice looking mold you've got there.  I'd say all in all it was a complete success!  And now you know exactly how much it takes to do a double batch with both molds. 
 

How'd the Cucumber Mint do in soap?  I've been meaning to soap with it, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

The CS Cucumber Mint was very well behaved! Just like adding nothing at all, it was really one of the nicest FO's I've worked with. The end scent was something akin to that Avon Bubble bath in the pink ribbed bottle they had back when I was a kid. It's aging nicely though. The little flecks of yellow are from some unfiltered annatto infused olive oil I had to add at the last bit to get the color guesstimated correctly... ( Does anyone else see a problem with that statement? ) 

 

 

My church wants some soaps for their fall bazaar... I'm thinking of giving them 6 or so bars of my OMH... Not sure yet.  

[Chefmom]

To calculate how much oil to start with for any loaf or slab mold I've always used the formula that is all over online

Length of mold x width of mold x depth of mold x .4 = total weight of oils in formula

 

It has always worked for me

[Sponiebr]

30 minutes ago, Chefmom said:

To calculate how much oil to start with for any loaf or slab mold I've always used the formula that is all over online

Length of mold x width of mold x depth of mold x .4 = total weight of oils in formula

 

It has always worked for me

 

Yep, I got .43 from my estimates, but .4 would be a better number to go with. I originally used .65 which is what the ratio from finished batch to volume is... I'm glad to know that I'm on the right path. Thank you!