Soap--room temps?

[tootie04]

I am not one to temp fate....I dont feed the fairies either...I LOVE my crock pot and tend to CPHP anything I am not sure about....never had a sieze....YET!!

Now watch the next batch will be a complete and total disaster!!:undecided

[jpeters77]

Hi all -

I am new at this forum and this may be late in this thread, but I do RTCP. I learned it from a great guy, his name is Paul and idk if he is on this forum, but this is what I know.

I mix my Lye with Water (I actually use Aloe Juice (Sam's Club or Wal-Mart)). I mix 50% Water to 50% Lye by weight and store it in a bleach bottle so I know it can handle the mix. I label it and keep it locked up since I have kids. When I soap all I do is measure out 2X the Lye amount and the difference in water. I use milk and this works great! I just grab some Goats milk out of the refrigerator and add it carefully to the lye mix and it does NOT burn!!! No need to freeze!

Ok, this took me a while to really understand, so here is an exp.

Say you need 4.2 oz Lye and 10.5 oz of Water.

Take 4.2 X 2 = 8.4oz of your 50/50 premix into a mixing container (I use stainless steel)

Ok 8.4 oz has your 4.2 of ly and 4.2 of water, so now you need to take your needed water 10.5 oz and subtract the 4.2 oz that is in your premix. You need to add 6.3 oz of water and you have the correct amount!

I use goat’s milk as my extra water, so I would add 6.3 oz of goats milk to that recipe instead of water.

I have heard that some soapers that have set recipes premix their oils too!

Talk about quick soaping!

Once again I love this method and I do not take credit for it! I learned it from Paul aka "Soapmakerman"

Jeff

Sorry if this is has already been posted here before!

[CareBear]

We know Paul...

Thanks for the good description.

[CBE]

The first time I soaped, I checked temps. Not any more. I soap RT like the majority here. Like it was said... it gives me time to be able to play when I wanna play. And when you keep your temps cool, you can play with certain FO that are known to accelerate. But, with the florals like Vio asked about, you have to take in consideration your water discount. If I know I'm soaping a mover, I do not discount my water, and I soap really cool. It seems to help things move more gracefully. If you soap a mover with a water discount... be prepared to move your tush!!

But take your recipe into account too. If you have a majority of hard oils, it's best you maybe not soap cool at RT... because your oils will eventually turn into a semi solid again at room temp. Had that happen to me before and thought... "Eh... the lye water will get everything fluid and moving." WRONG. LOL I should have warmed my oils before proceeding to add the lye water. Because this batch felt like soaping at heavy trace througout the whole ordeal! But with a good brisk stirring of a spoon, and stirring, and stirring and stirring, because there was no way a SB was going in there... it was way too thick. But I eventually got everything mixed in right and felt it getting thicker than what it was. Turned out fine. So... if you soap RT... think about your recipe too. If you use alot of hard oils/butters... re-melt them a bit before starting. Then of course, you'll have to let them slightly cool again, paying attention to get moving before it re-solidifies.

As for soap seizing... oh... lol You'll know when it happens. Like someone has said... it's almost like slamming concrete in the mold. LOL You'll either have to toss it or re-batch it (I prefer to rebatch because I can't stand tossing a whole batch of soap that's savable). The last batch to seize on me was Sweet Oblivion from Daystar. INSTANT soap seize. Then that's when the cussing starts. lmao

[sharyl55]

Thanks for the good explanation Jeff. It is very helpful to a soaping noob like me. Off to rescue my bleach bottle from the recycle bag.

[jpeters77]

sharyl55 -

I also am a newbie!

The RTCP is so great!