# Soap chips and breaks



## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

I used the Walmart recipe except for changing it to 1/2 Sunflower oil and 1/2 Olive Oil. I used 32 ounces of goat milk. I cut it about 26 hours after making it. When cutting the soap - it chipped on the edges some. Did I wait too long? or did adding the Olive Oil make this happen? It was my first OO addition to soap.


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## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

That happens to me also, I think its the lye, but not sure, 
Do you find Sunflower oil cheaper than OO ?


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Did you run it back through the lye calculator when you made those changes?


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

Yes I did use the lye calculator


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

Tim, 
It's not the Olive Oil, I use lots of Olive Oil in my recipe and it doesn't do that. What was the percent of the liquid in your recipe? Maybe you didn't use quite enough liquid, that will make it your soap brittle.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Tim Pruitt said:


> Yes I did use the lye calculator


Then it wouldn't be the lye.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

You can't let soap that contain so many hard butters (lard) and oil set in the mold....it is hard for a reason  Cut them at less than 12 hours. I soap late night and cut in the morning. If I do soap during the day I cut the bars before I go to bed. My worse bar for doing this is actually my Just Soap, unscented uncolored, I have to get it out of the mold as soon as I can, shows how much oil you are actually adding when using fragrance and essential oils. Vicki


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## Guest (Dec 13, 2012)

And it depends on what you cut it with.. never use something super sharp... a pastry cutter works great.. knives don't work so good...


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

Yes you are right. It was my unscented soap - we call ours Plain & Simple. Also I usually cut it earlier, I had circumstances that prevented me and so it was about 26-8 hours after pouring into the molds that I cut it. I use a large tape and float knife to cut the soap.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Tim something I am going to do is add what I normally add in essential or fragrance oil (so 5 or 6 ounces for the Wallmart recipe) in just more oil, to my unscented bar. Vicki


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## [email protected] (Sep 18, 2008)

My unscented does that, too. Nice to know why--thanks Vicki.  Also any soaps with clay. And the weird one--Castile. Everyone talks about how soft castile is, but mine is HARD. I've used pomace from Columbus and from a local store and regular oo. All the same-hard and slivers on the edges when I cut. :/


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

Well I tried this today and had some complications. First, I made the Walmart Recipe and added FO. It traced beautifully. 

Then I made Unscented so I added 5 oz more of Sunflower Seed Oil hoping to prevent the chipping problem I had before. Just as I added the oils together with the lye mixture, the electricity went off - so I hand stirred for 20 minutes. Then my son brought me a battery operated drill with a paint stirrer. I stirred with it for 40 minutes and gave up. I left and came back to the house and by that time the electricity was on so I used the soap calculator and the calc called for 4 more oz of lye and 6 more of water. I went back to the soap kitchen and added the lye to the water, warmed my soap mixture in the microwave -mixed the two together and stick blended for a couple of minutes and bingo - trace. It took me 2 1/2 hours to make that one batch of soap.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Something went wrong with your calculations somewhere along the way there. The regular walmart recipe, 4 lbs lard, 31.5 oz (just shy of 2 lb) of coconut, 16.5 oz of sunflower, calls for 16.179 oz of lye, (at a 5% superfat) according to soapcalc.net . For the purposes of ease of measuring, it's rounded down to 16 in the recipe section. The water amount there is 42.5 oz, obviously, you can use less than that.

Now, adding in 5 oz more of sunflower gets that number up to 21.5 oz. This calls for 16.82 oz of lye...nowhere near 4 more ounces... and 44.46 oz of water, which is essentially 2 more ounces.

You probably should go back and doublecheck EVERYTHING. You mis-measured, typed something in the calculator wrong, something....


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

After reading this I soaped a plain batch myself, back to my old Martha Stewart Molds. I didn't up anything but the 6 ounces of sunflower (now mine was mixed oils, sunflower, olive, safflower). It was slower to trace, but then I pour before trace anyway, I won't be cutting it until tommorrow to see if I can get the edges to crack, right now they are fine. You don't need trace in your bucket to be able to pour and have saponified soap, I never go to trace with my 100% olive oil, once I passed emulsion, I know it won't seperate in my molds, I would never stir for 20 minutes, it would blow up my stick blender 

Even with stirring, before stick blenders, lard recipes don't take 20 minutes. Vicki


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

Yes, I know what happened. I forgot to enter in the superfatting at 5%. 

The soap came out ok - again I didn't get to cut it for 24 hours. The first log chipped pretty bad - on the second one, it helped a lot that I nuked it in the microwave for a minute and 1/2 and it cut better.


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