o.O Um... That's DEFINITELY a pattern...

[Sponiebr]

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. 
 
 

[GoldieMN]

OMG, this is all Greek to me!  Bless anyone who goes through all this to make soap.

Goldie

[Sponiebr]

4 hours ago, GoldieMN said:

OMG, this is all Greek to me!  Bless anyone who goes through all this to make soap.

Goldie

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. 

[Jcandleattic]

Gel phase is just a natural occurrence of soap. Some oils tend to heat up more than others when going through saponification (like coconut oil) and what it's poured in (you said this one was in a wood mold covered with a pine top - that will encourage gel) as well as certain ingredients (aka - milk, honey, and certain fragrances) It's all part of the process. How you soap will play a part in this as well (albeit a somewhat small part - such as full water vs water discount, soaping hot vs RT, etc.,) 

Soap will saponify whether it goes through gel phase or not. It just may take a bit longer to fully saponify vs a soap that has gone through a full gel. Preventing evaporation does not actually make a soap gel, I cover mine with saran wrap all the time, and unless I put on extra insulation, my soap will either not gel, or only partially gel, and leave a noticeable ring in the center of the bars when cut to indicate which parts of the soap has gelled vs which have not. 

 

 

[Sponiebr]

1 hour ago, Jcandleattic said:

Gel phase is just a natural occurrence of soap. Some oils tend to heat up more than others when going through saponification (like coconut oil) and what it's poured in (you said this one was in a wood mold covered with a pine top - that will encourage gel) as well as certain ingredients (aka - milk, honey, and certain fragrances) It's all part of the process. How you soap will play a part in this as well (albeit a somewhat small part - such as full water vs water discount, soaping hot vs RT, etc.,) 

Soap will saponify whether it goes through gel phase or not. It just may take a bit longer to fully saponify vs a soap that has gone through a full gel. Preventing evaporation does not actually make a soap gel, I cover mine with saran wrap all the time, and unless I put on extra insulation, my soap will either not gel, or only partially gel, and leave a noticeable ring in the center of the bars when cut to indicate which parts of the soap has gelled vs which have not. 

 

 

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... 

[Jcandleattic]

18 minutes ago, Sponiebr said:

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... 

I have had soaps double gel like this before. It can and does happen - not often but it does. Sometimes it will do this and not go through a complete gel the second time around so it ends up looking like a partial gel. Soap gels from the inside out, which is why when there is a partial gel, it's a ring from the middle out, not the outer to inner (lol I hope that made sense) 

I had soaps not start gelling for up to 12 hours, and some in as little as 10 minutes. (I've even had soaps start gelling before I'm even finished pouring the soap into the mold) There are so many factors that go into a soap gelling. Temperature outside, temp inside, ambient temp of the room, and everything else I mentioned in my original reply. Gelling can be a tricky phenomenon, which is why I always try to insulate just enough to get full gel, but not so much that it overheats and cracks/volcanoes. 

 

When I put my ED mold inside a pine box I got specially made for it, I don't have to insulate as much (if at all) for my soaps to gel - not like I do when I'm just using the wire basket. Anything that will help keep the heat in will encourage a gel phase. 

 

 

Or maybe your soap really is just haunted.  

[Sponiebr]

21 hours ago, Jcandleattic said:

Or maybe your soap really is just haunted.  

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. 

[Jcandleattic]

How long was it in the mold again? Sometimes softer soaps like that have to stay in the mold longer. I've CPOP'd soap before, and I have to leave those in the mold up to 72 hours vs my regular insulated soaps that I can unmold anywhere from 18-24 hours later. 

 

It probably would have hardened up even with out freezing. But remember, if you freeze it, try to take it out while still frozen, or wait until they are completely room temp, or if they are half thawed you will have problems unmolding. 

[Sponiebr]

3 hours ago, Jcandleattic said:

How long was it in the mold again? Sometimes softer soaps like that have to stay in the mold longer. I've CPOP'd soap before, and I have to leave those in the mold up to 72 hours vs my regular insulated soaps that I can unmold anywhere from 18-24 hours later. 

 

It probably would have hardened up even with out freezing. But remember, if you freeze it, try to take it out while still frozen, or wait until they are completely room temp, or if they are half thawed you will have problems unmolding. 

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.  


 

[TallTayl]

how much castor? less is definitely more IMO.

 

and Aloe contains electrolytes, which could be causing some of the changes. And ambient humidity. And if it was tightly sealed (like I think you wrote.)

 

In a silicone mold, if the soap seems sticky, peeling the edges of the mold away, then letting it sit a bit longer really makes a difference. That, or leave it in a warmed oven over night to evaporate out more of the water. I found by accident that setting the mold on top of my pellet stove really drives out moisture!

 

For slow tracing test soap, Lard is pretty darned slow, and makes a snow white soap that does not interfere with the colorants like a yellow-prone olive might.

[Sponiebr]

3 hours ago, TallTayl said:

how much castor? less is definitely more IMO.

 

and Aloe contains electrolytes, which could be causing some of the changes. And ambient humidity. And if it was tightly sealed (like I think you wrote.)

 

In a silicone mold, if the soap seems sticky, peeling the edges of the mold away, then letting it sit a bit longer really makes a difference. That, or leave it in a warmed oven over night to evaporate out more of the water. I found by accident that setting the mold on top of my pellet stove really drives out moisture!

 

For slow tracing test soap, Lard is pretty darned slow, and makes a snow white soap that does not interfere with the colorants like a yellow-prone olive might.

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! 

[TallTayl]

Canola might yield an ivory colored end result. Not bad, but not stark white either. And keep a close eye on those with canola. It's a super short shelf life oil with pretty high linoleic and linolenic fatty acids.

[Sponiebr]

1 hour ago, TallTayl said:

Canola might yield an ivory colored end result. Not bad, but not stark white either. And keep a close eye on those with canola. It's a super short shelf life oil with pretty high linoleic and linolenic fatty acids.

Yeah... I was not impressed with the numbers when I calc'd it out. Nothing horrifying, but certainly far from ideal. It traced about as fast as a lard soap would have, and yeah, it was a translucent ivory color. It certainly wasn't unpleasant to work with. The smell, meh... just like American Chinese fast food so I put a little peppermint EO in it just for kicks, (and yanno... the "tingle"  o.O )

I had some "clean" batter left over so I'll put one of those into a plastic bag, seal it up, and abuse it to see if I can accelerate DOS formation. I'll put another into a "sock" and treat it well. 

I'll post more about the oxides in another thread but suffice it to say they behaved predictably well. 

[TallTayl]

I predict (just for fun) you will begin to see changes to the color and odor in about 8 weeks. This depends, of course, on your total formula and the % of linoleic and linolenic acids in the total blend. The magic number seems to be keeping the total of those two fatty acids below 15.

[Sponiebr]

1 hour ago, TallTayl said:

I predict (just for fun) you will begin to see changes to the color and odor in about 8 weeks. This depends, of course, on your total formula and the % of linoleic and linolenic acids in the total blend. The magic number seems to be keeping the total of those two fatty acids below 15.

I got it at 10 and 3 so my total is 13. At least it was that in soapcalc. I have no idea what the actual content of the canola that I used is.