&!@##*!!! What happened to my soap?

[beau's mama]

I made 2 batches of CP. One came out with a pretty decent swirl (finally). But my other batch...an experiment...the bars feels almost gritty-...like there's some clay in it.

I didn't get bitten when I sampled it, so I'm thinking it's not lye heavy. My oxide was mixed thoroughly. The only thing I used that I had never used before was some no-stir Palm Oil. Could that be it? Do I need some special powers to work w/ Palm Oil.

Here's the recipe if that'll help.

Don't ask ...it was an experiment...I'm still a CP newborn:D

25% coconut

20% palm oil

30% castor

25% shea

7% superfat

[topofmurrayhill]

Wow, lotta castor there.

There's no special trick to using the no-stir palm oil. Did you notice the mixture getting cloudy as it cooled? I don't know about this particular recipe, but sometimes if you use a lot of hard oils and the soap gets real cool in the pot or in the mold, it can do weird things to the texture.

[Scented]

25% coconut (hard oil)

20% palm oil (hard oil)

30% castor

25% shea (hard oil)

7% superfat

If you're a CP newbie, perhaps look at the 50-50 mix or go with someone else's recipe that's already tried? The 50-50 would be starting out with 50% hard oils and 50% soft oils till you understand what the oils are doing. In your recipe you have 70 percent hard, so the grittiness, IMO, is too many hard oils.

As for the castor, there are others on here who use a lot of it and for whatever reason, it doesn't feel good in my recipe unless under 10% Perhaps take a look at breaking up your soft oils to include more than one or two oils.

[CBE]

Ok, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Some people may think I'm crazy, but hey... that's just me.

Did you do these two batches on the same day? Did you use tap water or distilled water (or spring water)?

I can tell you what has happened (and still happens) in my experience.

I use tap water for my soaps. I don't go buy distilled or spring water (only for drinking purposes, lol).

I've had this "grittiness" happen to me a couple of times already. My soap actually felt like it had a super fine pumice to it! lol It wasn't "scratchy"... just.... "gritty". A very fine grittiness.

It wasn't lye heavy, it was my regular old recipe. The soap looked fine (lovely actually), smelled fine, and lathered fine. It just felt.... weird.

The only crazy conclusion I could come up with is this....

Maybe there's a POSSIBILITY that the day I made that batch, using tap water... that there was a high mineral content in the city's water that day. lmao And it affected my soap!! I've had this happen to two batches already.

Yep. That's my conclusion. Call me crazy. But that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. lmao

If anyone else has a hypothesis... please elaborate! LOL

[8-GRAN-ONES]

Join the newbie crowd...I'm in it to..

Did you use Vanilla Stabilizer?

I get that feel if I use VS..

[beau's mama]

Wow, lotta castor there.

There's no special trick to using the no-stir palm oil. Did you notice the mixture getting cloudy as it cooled? I don't know about this particular recipe, but sometimes if you use a lot of hard oils and the soap gets real cool in the pot or in the mold, it can do weird things to the texture.

I know LOL. I wanted to see how it would work or not work. Strangely, the bars aren't as soft as I thought they would be w/ such a high % of castor.

It wasn't cloudy at all and the other batch has even more castor than this freaky batch...and it's pretty hard already & no gritty feeling :undecided

If you're a CP newbie, perhaps look at the 50-50 mix or go with someone else's recipe that's already tried? The 50-50 would be starting out with 50% hard oils and 50% soft oils till you understand what the oils are doing. In your recipe you have 70 percent hard, so the grittiness, IMO, is too many hard oils....Perhaps take a look at breaking up your soft oils to include more than one or two oils.

I saw that. It's in my brand new CP Soaping book. Why do you think too many hard oils can cause grittiness? School me girl!

Join the newbie crowd...I'm in it to..

Did you use Vanilla Stabilizer. I get that feel if I use VS..

Nope, no stabilizer. You are waaaay ahead of me on that one!

[beau's mama]

...

Did you do these two batches on the same day? Did you use tap water or distilled water (or spring water)?

Yep, same day and I used distilled water.

My soap actually felt like it had a super fine pumice to it! lol It wasn't "scratchy"... just.... "gritty". A very fine grittiness.

It wasn't lye heavy, it was my regular old recipe. The soap looked fine (lovely actually), smelled fine, and lathered fine. It just felt.... weird.

That is the perfect description of this soap! The lather is so close to perfect it's scary. But the gritty feeling makes it freaky. I can't say much about that funky FO though. Imagine that...a floral fo from OT that I don't like.

Soooo, what else ya got? LOL

[Scented]

Why do I think too many hard oils can ...

Well I can only go on what I had based on a 65 hard oil recipe when I was playing around. I just found an inconsistency trying it. Even at 60, but different oils than you had.

My thought is that it becomes a consistency problem and that the lye may dry out or give the appearance of drying out, possibly scorching or chalking a lot of highs. I wasn't going to go into finding out why my batches did what they did, because they felt bad too. Give what I do with my batch now, I wonder (sort of) how my method would be affected now ... only thing is I love what I have now, which is still a 50/50 blend. I think too high the amount of hard oils tends to unbalance something. This is my speculation. I didn't really go in search of how come, because Mama Bunny and Kim just happened to educate me along with Sherie when I was going through formulas finding what I wanted, which was a hard bar, but not one that would make your skin so tight it pinched off so to speak. When I dropped to the 50/50 tinkering, stopping at the 55/45, I just found it easier and my consistency is great. I do use distilled water, but there are times where I've had what CBE describe, happen.

[topofmurrayhill]

The 50/50 rule isn't the answer to anthing. That's pretty much the outside of the envelope for designing a soap with balanced qualities and good skin feel. If you're using soapcalc and see a "conditioning" number much above 50, that's generally out of whack.

You could say that castile-style bars are the exception, but those are overrated in my book.

[CBE]

Soooo' date=' what else ya got? LOL[/quote']

Nothing else. lmao I haven't a clue then. Chalk it up to the soap fairies/gremlins/trolls.... whateva you wanna call them. lol

I also wanted to ask you... with all that castor, your bar isn't drying?

I'm one of the other ones that experiments with alot of castor

(the highest I went though was 18%). I found it to be somewhat drying at a high %. (Castor is a drawing oil) What's your take on it? Have you tried this bar yet? How's the conditioning level?

[Meridith]

Well than if it is too many hard oils, then this could happen with any bar that has a high % of hard oils. I wonder if those that make 100% CO bars have experienced this? I only have one batch under my belt and I don't recall that it was gritty. But that was just one batch and I could have got lucky.

I do question whether or not that is the culprit and wonder more if its the high amount of shea butter since shea can be gritty in butters so why not in soap? But this is just a guess on my part.

[beau's mama]

The 50/50 rule isn't the answer to anthing. That's pretty much the outside of the envelope for designing a soap with balanced qualities and good skin feel. If you're using soapcalc and see a "conditioning" number much above 50, that's generally out of whack.

You could say that castile-style bars are the exception, but those are overrated in my book.

OK Top, help me out here. I've made 12 batches of CP so far and all of them (except the 100% coconut) were over 50 in conditioning...the highest being 60 which is actually my fave.

As I experiment & learn, I'm starting to take the "qualities" in the soap calc w/ a grain of salt, and mainly rely on it for measurements (lye, water, oils).

Why do you say above 50 is out of whack?

[beau's mama]

Nothing else. lmao I haven't a clue then. Chalk it up to the soap fairies/gremlins/trolls.... whateva you wanna call them. lol

I also wanted to ask you... with all that castor, your bar isn't drying?

I'm one of the other ones that experiments with alot of castor

(the highest I went though was 18%). I found it to be somewhat drying at a high %. (Castor is a drawing oil) What's your take on it? Have you tried this bar yet? How's the conditioning level?

You know, that's were I was leaning...just one of those things that happens.

I haven't taken the bar in the shower...just been using a bit it on my hands. I figured I was safe b/c there's no zap :undecided . With the grittiness aside, it's actually feeling pretty nice already, and the lather is pretty darn good for this early in the game. Anytime I can wash my hands and not have them crack afterward is a good thing.

I use a LOT of castor...in everything...b/c I keep a lot of it on hand. It doesn't dry me out at all. I have (had) dry skin, and my skin seems to love castor. DH has "thick" skin, and castor is one of the few oils that actually do anything for him.

[beau's mama]

Well than if it is too many hard oils, then this could happen with any bar that has a high % of hard oils. I wonder if those that make 100% CO bars have experienced this? I only have one batch under my belt and I don't recall that it was gritty. But that was just one batch and I could have got lucky.

I do question whether or not that is the culprit and wonder more if its the high amount of shea butter since shea can be gritty in butters so why not in soap? But this is just a guess on my part.

Meridith, I was thinking about that last night...about shea & coconut oil. I've made a couple of 100% coconut batches w/ no problems. Maybe the 20% superfat took care of possible graininess :undecided But what do I know LOL

I've also read that shea can become grainy/gritty. I've never had that happen (yet) but it did cross my mind that the shea could be the culprit.

[thecandlespastore]

Ok, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Some people may think I'm crazy, but hey... that's just me.

Did you do these two batches on the same day? Did you use tap water or distilled water (or spring water)?

I can tell you what has happened (and still happens) in my experience.

I use tap water for my soaps. I don't go buy distilled or spring water (only for drinking purposes, lol).

I've had this "grittiness" happen to me a couple of times already. My soap actually felt like it had a super fine pumice to it! lol It wasn't "scratchy"... just.... "gritty". A very fine grittiness.

It wasn't lye heavy, it was my regular old recipe. The soap looked fine (lovely actually), smelled fine, and lathered fine. It just felt.... weird.

The only crazy conclusion I could come up with is this....

Maybe there's a POSSIBILITY that the day I made that batch, using tap water... that there was a high mineral content in the city's water that day. lmao And it affected my soap!! I've had this happen to two batches already.

Yep. That's my conclusion. Call me crazy. But that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. lmao

If anyone else has a hypothesis... please elaborate! LOL

I only use Distilled water. Last time I used tap water my soap never set up (and it was a 5 batch night with a tried and true recipe.) Ran out of distilled water and said, what the heck, everyone else uses tap. Soaps were semi-liqud in the morning (usually rock hard within 10 hours.) Since that episode I will never use tap again.

I don't think its the castor. I use 20-25% in each batch, makes one mean silky bar! My conditioning score for my fave recipe is 56. My base recipe's conditioning score is 53. I cringe when I see recipes with conditioning scores of 50 and under, makes my skin itch just thinking about it. My recipes also contain 10% shea butter, and if it melted all the way when you melted your oils, then it can't be the shea, or the coconut oil, since soap during gelling gets much hotter than the melting points of both.

Castor is a drawing oil that helps draw blood circulation, etc. But it does not draw moisture out of the skin in a soap IMO, it is a moisturizing oil, and perfect for increasing the conditioning properties in your soap.

[topofmurrayhill]

The only thing the conditioning number measures is how much soft oil is in the recipe. It's a myth that good skin feel comes from soft oils, so the usefulness of the conditioning number in soapcalc is imaginary. In a balanced recipe, every type of oil contributes to the good skin feel of the soap and any type of oil can throw it off. Overloading a recipe with soft oils can produce a lot of bad qualities. I think the handcrafting community has convinced itself that such soaps are better than they really are.

[CBE]

I only use Distilled water. Last time I used tap water my soap never set up (and it was a 5 batch night with a tried and true recipe.) Ran out of distilled water and said, what the heck, everyone else uses tap. Soaps were semi-liqud in the morning (usually rock hard within 10 hours.) Since that episode I will never use tap again.

I don't think its the castor. I use 20-25% in each batch, makes one mean silky bar! My conditioning score for my fave recipe is 56. My base recipe's conditioning score is 53. I cringe when I see recipes with conditioning scores of 50 and under, makes my skin itch just thinking about it. My recipes also contain 10% shea butter, and if it melted all the way when you melted your oils, then it can't be the shea, or the coconut oil, since soap during gelling gets much hotter than the melting points of both.

Castor is a drawing oil that helps draw blood circulation, etc. But it does not draw moisture out of the skin in a soap IMO, it is a moisturizing oil, and perfect for increasing the conditioning properties in your soap.

I love castor. I use castor in all my soap recipes. But I only go 10%. I've only went as high as 18% one time, just playing around. But for my skin, if I use ANYTHING with a high % of castor (scrubs, lotions, soap, etc) it makes me feel like everything has been sucked up outta me. I feel like a dried up old prune. lol

Wow! And you think the tap water had something to do with your soap staying semi-liquid? All five batches???!!! oooh I wouldn't have been happy either.

I think everyone's water is different... that's why I had the hypothesis with the high mineral content of the tap water.

Sigh... but Beau's Mama burst my bubble when she said she used distilled water. lmao