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Hello,

I was wondering if someone could give me some advice on soap making. I have made a batch following some instructions online (Channel 4) and used what I think is the cold processing method - dissolving caustic soda and water and adding coconut, sunflower and olive oil adn mixing until it changes in color and texture and then adding essential oils and leaving them to set but they haven't completely set and there is a layer of oil sitting on the top?

I'm not sure what has gone wrong or if I can save the soap? All advice greatly received!!

Many thanks

Two things spring to mind.

Sounds like you've used too much oil. You could just pour that off if the rest of the soap has saponified properly. But that brings me to the second thing.

If it's all still soft it also sounds like it hasn't saponified. I know it's called cold process but you have to mix it at a certain heat to make the chemical process work. It's not necessarily irredeemable though.

You need to test the soap for it's pH - if it's very alkaline it's definitely not cooked enough. My suggestion would be to "hot process" it. Bung it all in something microwaveable and resistant to high temperatures.

I'm not going to tell you the whole process you can google for a tutorial - there are loads.

But before you do that, check the amounts of oils and lye you used and make sure you've got the ratio right. Google "lye calculator" and double check it. Mountain sage (MMS) has an excellent one.

Being that I am procrasinating today I checked the figures for the channel 4 recipe on the lye calculator and they don't seem to add up (if it was the kirstie alsop recipe you used)?

For the oils used it reccomended 554-831 ml water (not as much as the 900 given) and 314.16-304.24 g lye was in the normal range so the 295g given in the recipe might be a bit low?

http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php

Hope you get it sorted