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Was it me, the pomace, or the lye?


dabbledoya

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I made the following recipe Sunday afternoon, and when I unmolded it today, I had to trim about 1/4 inch from the sides because they were still 'creamy'~~a little softer than playdough.

Ran through soapcalc, 2 pound recipe:

65% Olive Pomace

35% Coconut oil

LS 30%

SF 8%

2 oz fo

1/2 tsp pink kaolin clay

Everything went as usual, it took a bit longer to trace, but was definitely at trace when I poured. I also noticed that it was still warm yesterday morning when I checked it, and you could tell it gelled, but not quite all the way to the edges. Plus it ashed quite a bit, but that part doesn't really bother me.

Normally I can unmold after 24 hours, but yesterday it was still really soft, so I waited till today when I got home from work. No zap, but I haven't cut it into bars yet, too soft. The lye I used was from AAA chemicals, it was the cheaper stuff that they sell :( Trying to save a buck. The lye is not pure white like I'm used to, it's an off white color. This is also the first time using the pomace and the clay. What happened? Any ideas? Thanks for any input!

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I don't think the lye was your problem, AAA sells great lye and there's no reason to use food grade lye, the tech. grade is fine. I think the problem is that it's a 65% olive oil recipe (not really a problem). That much olive will take a while to set up. Just give it extra time..I've had to wait a couple of days to unmold batches with higher % of OO. HTH

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Great! I'm glad to hear it isn't the lye :) That was worrying me.

I trimmed it and just set the whole slab back in the mold, and will check it each day. Looking at it, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong other than the softness. I mean, the texture looks to be consistent throughout~~no separation, oily spots, holes, lye crystals, etc. Keeping my fingers crossed it hardens up like it supposed to :cheesy2:

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I think your okay. I actually do like to leave most of my soaps in the mold a couple of days, no matter what recipe I use. Hope to see pics of it once it is cut. Sounds like it will take a while to cure but it will be a nice soap.

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Okay I am going to attempt to add pics of the soap here, one indoors and one outdoors. They were cut day before yesterday and are hardening up slowly but surely, guess I just got paranoid :shocked2: . These are not trimmed or anything, so be kind lol! Woa, these pics ended up being big~sorry to my fellow dial up users:(

100_1086.jpg

100_1078.jpg

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