New here and new to soaping. Temp ?

[SMartin]

I made my first batch 1lb of oils OO CO Lard. Mix at about 100 temp. It never traced real thick stayed about very thin gravy and I am hand stirring but I stirred off and on for about six hours. Went ahead and poured into mold. After 2 days in mold was able to take it out of mold. My 2nd batch was just OO and CO still at 1lb of oils and it never even got to the thin gravy stage. Went ahead and put in mold. It has been in the mold for 3 days and looks like I might be able to take it out tonite. I have put these thru the soap cal. I am also hand stirring. I know this takes longer but what am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any help

[mystical_angel1219]

If you post the complete recipes with water:lye ratio we can assist you better. I am not sure if you are talking 1 lb batches or not.

[SMartin]

I used soapcal9.

This was the 2nd batch

OO 10.75 oz.

CO 5.25 oz.

The 1st also ran thru soapcal9.

OO 4 oz.

Lard 3 oz.

CO 3 oz.

I went by what soapcal9 came up with

Thanks,

Sonja

[CareBear]

Both lard and olive oil are slow to trace, so if you were just stirring with a spoon, that and the low temp could be the issue. A stick blender or even a whisk could move things along, as well as soaping a bit warmer.

Another issue could be your very small batch sizes - you need to measure VERY accurately for a one pound batch - so if you were even a little low on the lye you could end up with a problem (as you would if you were even a little high). What is the accuracy of your scale?

[SMartin]

Thanks for the info. I use a salter digital scale that should be accurate to 0.1 0z. Is that good enough? Or is there a better scale?

Thanks

Sonja

[sudsnwicks]

0.1 oz accuracy is good enough. Provided your batches aren't too small. The 2nd recipe you posted only had 10 oz of oil. It would be best if your batches have at least 1 lb of oils to come out more accurately on the lye weight.

[topofmurrayhill]

Your scale isn't good enough for the batch size you're making.

The OO/CO/Lard recipe looks nice; let's use it as an example. SoapCalc says it requires 1.4 oz NaOH. Based on the readability of your scale, you only know that you've weighed out between 1.3 and 1.5 oz. That makes your relative error +/- 7% on the lye measurement alone.

That's much too high. It means you don't have control over whether your soap comes out excessively superfatted or lye heavy, no matter how carefully you weigh everything. You would need a much more accurate scale or a much larger batch size to sufficiently reduce the relative error of your measurements. I don't think that 1 lbs oils is large enough either.

[CareBear]

I have found that for consistent results I'm better off with 2# of oils. Lower that that I"m likely to run into problems. And I have a great scale that reads to 0.01 ounces (tho I use metric, and it's actually to 0.1 grams). Larger batches make the small errors in measurement less significant.