# castile doesn't really take a year to cure, does it?



## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

Finally went to check out the dish yesterday, and I keep seeing the year cure for castile soap mentioned. I made some Nov. 15, and it's hard as a rock - has been since the first couple of days. It's easily the hardest soap I've made, maybe next to the salt bars, which are only a week old. It's not going to be mushy inside if I cut it or anything?

In other news, making soap is fun. I got a little box of essential oils the beginning of the week, and have had the counter covered with jars of scent tests since. I want to play, but I'm out of coconut oil. Woe!


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

It gets hard but it is slimy (in my opinion) when wet. I prefer to let it age a LONG time. THen it actually lathers a tad (I also use 10% castor) and does not feel slimy to me. I exchanged a soap with another soaper recently and it did not have ingredients listed but as soon as I got it wet I knew it was an olive oil soap. I actually hate olive oil soaps that are fresh due to the slime factor.


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

I just tried the tiny sample I kept out, and it wasn't super bubbly, but it lathered fine and didn't feel slimier than soap usually does. And now my hands feel all nice - I think I like it better than the other soaps I've made. Maybe cause it was such a tiny piece it cured fast? Or maybe I didn't superfat as much as most people do? Or maybe it's personal preference. Or maybe I should go make some more, cause I was going to give all this away and now I want some for myself. :biggrin


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

It's really moisturizing, I pack mine full of herbs to cut the slime...but no I don't think all oil soaps are a good recipe for long term sales. I think having a castile soap, and most have no idea that means 100% olive oil, so having a 100% olive oil soap helps sales, but I would not want it to be my only recipe. And a year cure...think about the logically, you would have zero scent left if soap was left out to cure for a year. This is the same kind of advice candle makers give you that tell you not to sell candles until you are making candles a year...sure...so they can sell candles instead of you  Nobody has your best interests at heart like our forum does, they see you as competition! You can always tell because they either never give advice, the advice they give is meaningless, or it's so over the top as to make you not succeed! Nothing makes me angrier than those who glean all they need and then take their toys home and don't give back, and worse is when they pretend that they invented what they learned from others!


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

Maybe castile is a good choice for unscented? Wouldn't have to worry about losing fragrance even if you do cure it a year. Seems like the type who want unscented would also be attracted to to the mildness and conditioning qualities of 100% oo soap.

All the soap I've made so far is meant for gifts! I've never been a big soap fan myself, so I'm curious what my friends and family will think of the stuff. I don't have any idea if it's good soap or bad soap. Maybe it will be fantastic and I will start a business that will be fabulously successful! But I think I won't hold my breath for that. Could just as easily suck, for all I know. I hope it doesn't, though, cause I want to be able to justify making more.


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

I only make unscented olive oil soap and it is by far my slowest seller. I have people specifically ask for anything EXCEPT an olive oil soap. 
Strange that your olive oil soap is not slimy since it is fresh. Is that a 100% olive oil soap? No slime and lather??


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Ann Marie, not one of the people I have helped learn to soap, or who came to soap class, who has gotten their soap out there for others to try, have not succeeded. There is so much room for everyone to do this kind of thing, really think about it, how many of your friends or family have even heard about goatmilk soap? With good scent and recipe choices like we give on this forum, your soap can sit in a store next to plain glycerin soap or other peoples CP soap and outsell them everyday.

Most are blown away by how quickly everything they make sells, it can be frieghtening to think that you could soap for a living! Vicki


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

I just cure the olive oil soaps like I do everything else. They are what they are....and if people want a strongly scented olive oil soap, they get a softer soap with a slimier lather. I also put herbs in the soaps, and only use essential oils to scent with. The bars are smaller and cost the same because for me, olive is more expensive. I really like these bars, and they are nice and gentle for winter-weary skin like mine. I guess after a year your soap would be really hard, but I doubt that it would be a better soap. I wrap these soaps in coffee filters, so they can continue to cure until people actually open and use them and so far it's worked well.


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

It's very possible I just don't know what you mean by "slimy". I made my first batch of soap ever about 5 weeks ago, and I've made maybe 20 batches of soap total. Nothing is even cured enough for me to say what it's really like, and I've never used handmade soap before, either, so I don't have any experience to compare it to. It seems all right - soapy - to me. I gather things like mineral content of your water and climate can affect how the soap works to some degree? Though I have well water and would expect it to be pretty hard.

This was 300g olive oil. Put that into soapcalc at 5% sf, used 38g NaOH. Froze 96g whole cow milk from the grocery, added lye to it and stirred until mostly melted, added to oil. I don't think I heated the oil first. Stirred and stickblended until a pretty good trace, then added 75 drops rose geranium essential oil and stickblended some more. Poured into little slab mold and insulated it well. Was hard when I unmolded it the next day, and hard to cut, crumbled a bit. That was Nov. 15th when I poured, so almost a month now.

I should maybe participate in a swap or something so I can get feedback from people who know about soap.



adillenal said:


> I only make unscented olive oil soap and it is by far my slowest seller. I have people specifically ask for anything EXCEPT an olive oil soap.
> Strange that your olive oil soap is not slimy since it is fresh. Is that a 100% olive oil soap? No slime and lather??


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

Vicki, you are so kind and encouraging. 

I read a lot of posts here and then used soapcalc to come up with a vegetarian recipe with easily obtainable ingredients to start. I'm still waiting for my first soaps to cure so I can find out if my recipe is any good and what I might need to change. Almost there! So exciting.

Unfortunately the FOs I've tried make me feel not too good, some of the EOs, too (I'm not surprised given that I have to stay clear of the perfume counter at stores). Given my sensitivity to fragrances, I doubt I'll be able to make a lot of fabulously scented soaps.  I'm near a college town, though, so if I'm lucky there might be a lot of idealistic hippies around to sell EO soaps to. 

Anita, I like the coffee filter idea. Are the soaps round?


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

> Vicki, you are so kind and encouraging.


 :jawdrop You must be thinking of someone else... :rofl


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

Hey! You're gonna get me in trouble with the forum mom. *hides*


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Oh hush Lee, don't go blowin my cover on new folks!!! 

Ann I am also super allergic to perfume, but I have found with me it's the alcohol etc, in it. Only Rose absolute and my really old lady fake rose FO bothers me, so much so I do not cure it in my soap room. I can't wait though to put my cure racks in the 'closet' where I have planned, it will be nice when not EVERYTHING in the room smells like scent  V


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## a4patch (Oct 7, 2009)

slimy = when you lather a regular soap you will have different types and sizes of bubble. small, medium and large. The bubbles group together in large clumps. when you pull your hands apart the clumps will cling to each other for about an inch/depends on how much lather you made/ and then break apart from the clump.

When you lather with olive oil you have mostly small bubbles and some medium sized bubbles. the lather feels more like a lotion than a lather. When you pull your hands apart the lotion/lather will form more of a string of lather and not break as easily. the string of later takes a longer time before it breaks. 

folks refer to this characteristic as slimy. 

After having the show-girl small medium and large bubbles. the lesser bubbles seem a bit too tame for some.


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

I learned a lot from swaps. Learned a lot about what I didn't like and I was able to proceed from there to develop my own line of GM soaps. My local competition is an olive oil soapmaker. That is why people ask me, Do your soaps lather? They have already tried the olive oil soaps and did not like them. I personally hate them. The "slime" factor looks and feels like snot to me. After a year's cure they are not bad at all but "fresh" they are absolutely nasty feeling to me. BUT there are people who think there is no other soap but Olive Oil Soap. BUT they are not my target audience. I use olive oil in my soaps but at a much smaller %.
Find your niche and work from there.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

Also, if your olive oil soap crumbled when you cut it...it sounds like it was lye heavy. My olive oil soaps are round and I leave them in the pvc molds for a couple days, verses 12-24 hours with the regular soaps. They are soft, never crumbly. Squeeze the soap with your fingers, with fresh, just cut soap you should see finger prints and feel the soap give...olive soap will continue to give long after other soaps have lost their give. 

Salt bars will be hard from the start and I've found they don't take a very long time to cure and have to be cut much sooner than other bars or they are too hard or will break. 

If your olive bars are as hard as your salt bars, they did not turn out right....sounds like too much lye, even using a calculator, I've mis-weighed many, many batches of soap and ended up lye heavy or lye light soap. My scale is not the best for sure.


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## Fly to the Moon (Sep 11, 2010)

Ok, thanks for the description!

All the batches I've made were 300g oil. The oo batches took about 4g less lye than the regular recipe - about 38 instead of about 42. I use light or extra light oo. My scale is theoretically accurate to 2 grams. I set SF to 5%, then use whole milk, which must add some fat. I measure carefully. How likely am I to get lye-heavy soap? It doesn't zap, and I don't think it did when I unmolded and cut, either. Would have recorded that. I did use a little liquid discount on that batch, though. Usually use 114g milk and for some reason only used 96 for that one - maybe because I was afraid it would be too soft with the oo. I made another batch of castile with the full 114g milk a few days ago, and it's not as hard. Not super soft, just about like regular soap. 

So, I used one of the full-size castile bars to see if it made a difference, and it did a bit. Was very slick when water first applied, quickly graduated to mucousy - oh! there's the slime! - then with more water, lost the slime and went to fairly bubbly. And my hands love it. I understand why people wouldn't like snotty soap, but since it was actually harder to produce the slime than avoid it, I think I'll continue to make this soap for myself, anyway. I mean, my hands aren't scaly!


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