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Help with soap soup!


SatinDucky

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Oh man, have I got a mess! No idea what went wrong :(

Same recipe as I used before, new FO though. I'm guessing it's the culprit but I don't see how. I put the batch to bed, snug as a bug. Peeked about 1 1/2 hr later, full gel. Cool! Pulled it out and left it wrapped about an hour. Then I decided to take the towels off and start the cooling. Ok, one more little peek under the lid. Umm... strange looking gel, very translucent. Take lid off. NOT gelled... pure melted oil on top! Yeah, leaking out the sides too... grrrr! I've heard of separation but never seen it really, just one batch a long time ago that had a oily film on top. This is soup! I stuck my finger in just to see if maybe it was just a really clear gel. Not a chance! There's over an inch of oil on top. Towards the middle it's probably closer to 2 ".

What the sam hell do I do now??? :confused:

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Hmmm... Orchid from Aztec.

I know it traced but now I'm wondering if it was a false trace. I don't know if that would cause this or not. I don't know nuttin'! :( Well, except that there's still oil leaking out of the mold.

No soap guru's out there who have any advice??? Please???

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They don't carry orchid anymore. I had to go look just to see what the fo description was out of curiousity. Call them and ask if they've heard of this happening before maybe? They have a chat thing on their site. Maybe someone is there now so you can ask what they think? :(

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I don't ever remember seeing on the site. I think it was a limited time thing, but sniffed it when I made the last wax run a few months back. It's a strong floral scent that I just love. They don't mark any of the labels what they're tested for though. :( I just emailed them today to find out if it was skin safe. I'm doing some more reading here first. They're not strong in B&B so I really don't think they're have a definite answer about what went wrong with a CP batch...

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I've had that happen to me recently. I just dumped it all back into a stainless steel pan......and placed it in a 200 degree oven and basically hot processed it.

Chunk up the hard stuff, dump in the oil and stir. Melt in the oven and stir every 1/2 hour or so, until it turns translucent and thick (about 3 hours for my 10# batch). When it's all melted/mixed just repour into your mold. Hope this helps! Good luck!

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I've had that happen to me recently. I just dumped it all back into a stainless steel pan......and placed it in a 200 degree oven and basically hot processed it.

Chunk up the hard stuff, dump in the oil and stir. Melt in the oven and stir every 1/2 hour or so, until it turns translucent and thick (about 3 hours for my 10# batch). When it's all melted/mixed just repour into your mold. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Since I had no idea what to do with it, I grabbed the first thing I could find that I thought would be safe. The crock pot. Umm... nothing to chunk up. I literally poured it in. After stirring it up it looks like translucent oatmeal...lol. Made me question if I was making soap or a marbled candle...LOL.

I'm supposed to be going to bed. Man 4 am is gonna come early! I guess I'll read up on crock pots and see if I can do it that way and still get a little sleep tonight. :rolleyes2

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I don't exactly remember how long. Ok, I don't remember in the least since I never thought to time it.

Yes, I turned the pot on, high heat. It's been on this whole time. I have nice creamy, cheesy looking mashed potatoes in there. From what I've read it should gel and rise, but nothing yet.

Maybe I mis-measured my lye or something... I just dunno :(

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I am wondering about the lye measurement.

Yes, the soap will rise and fall after stirring and so on. It will gel and look like applesauce and then when it is done I notice it start to thicken and it looks waxy and then you know to throw it in the mold. I did a rebatch when I was at my moms in Colorado and it took forever to go through all the stages, I am thinking maybe that it just does that for re-batches. Not sure.

When I stick blend I barely use it, I stir it off a lot and pulse the soap until it looks mixed and then pour it into the mold. Bunny taught us that using the stick blender is like "less is more".

I hope it works out for you.

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OMG! It is the lye! I used less than half! In adding the cup weight to the lye weight (tare doesn't work worth a crap on my scale) I dropped a 1 :shocked2:

It's a 3 lb batch but I measure in grams to be more accurate. It was 187 gr of lye. I added the 32 gram for the cup and wrote 119 on my note board, instead of 219!

I don't know how to add it in since I used up my water the first time :confused:

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Well water will evaporate won't it? I don't know because I'm new but I'd think it would be ok to add more water with the right amount of lye added to make up what should have been in there, but like I said what do I know. It makes sense though, because the lye has to be there and the water winds up going away so you'll probably just have wetter soap taking longer to set up, but the sap should still happen I'd think, to correct what hasn't sapped in there?

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That was my guess too. Since I'd lowered the water to 35%, I figured there would be 1/2c water back to the 38%. I used about 1 c though. Instead of adding back in all 100 gr I only did 80gr. I lost some oils leaking out of the mold, on the towel, in the foam, etc so I don't want it to be lye heavy. I figure a bit extra oil is better than a bit of extra lye. We'll see.

I posted a pic in the gallery :laugh2:

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