Can I make a good handmade soap without coconut & palm oils?
I am trying my hand at making cold process soap. I am using Soybean and Olive oils. The bars are not really getting as hard as I wanted and they still feel a little greasy. What am I doing wrong?
It's probably not the type of oil you are using at all. You need to double check your soap recipe again and make sure that you used the exact amounts of lye and oil and water called for (check a lye calculator also to make sure the amount listed in the recipe seems right.)
Recheck your scales too. Did you make sure to set them back to zero when you put the your containers holding your lye, etc.? This is an easy mistake to make--and I have!
Did you let your lye solution cool down to 100 F before you added your oils which should have been at the same temperature? Two thermometers is helpful.
Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat and they take a lot longer to reach trace than other oils. Are you sure that your mix actually reached trace? You can remelt it and try again if it just doesn't harden, although the texture might be a little different. Just grate it and melt it in a crockpot. If you realized that your lye calculation was a bit short at this time, dissolve it into a little bit of cold water first. Of course, allow it to cool down before adding. Make sure to stir the batch once in a while during the remelting.
Lastly, the soap will continue to harden as it cures, Give it at least two weeks before you call the batch a failure. Keep trying and you'll get the hang of it!
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