Gell in the Freeze

March 18, 2009

Spring is finally here, almost anyway. And I love it. Gone are the huge piles of snow, the slippery streets and a car that has been gulping gas faster than an Irish Leprechaun can down stout. This last month has been a lot of fun. In addition to continuing testing more and more colors, I've been slowly but surely converting to using cavity molds.  
I am still working on micas with an occasional oxide thrown in. And I love them. Mostly I've been working with the "soft" micas from TKB and they are beautiful as you will see from the pictures below. I'm also testing all my favorite molds, from my M&P days. I have heard so many horror stories about soap sticking that I was afraid to try, But almost all of the soaps are coming out just fine and retaining all or most of the detail. And THAT depends on how patient I am. But more about that later. Let's look at the pretty pictures. Oh BTW they are all milk soaps of one sort or another. I got bored with plain cow and goats milk, so I'm branching out a litt;e/

This batch was made with red oxide. As you can see the result a few days after coming out of the molds is a nice soft pink. What you may not be able to see is how well the soaps retained their detail. That seems to depend on how long I leave them in the molds. My modus vivendi is to leave them in the fridge for 24 hours (1 hour in the freezer) then one or 2 more days in the molds. At first I was then putting them back in the freezer for a couple of hours before trying to unmold them. I have since discovered that the freezer step isn't really necessary. I also grease the molds with a very light coating of mineral oil.

These guys were made with amethyst mica. They are an incredibly light blue, way too subtle for me. Next time I'm going to double the amount of colorant. What is cool about this batch is that I unmolded some of them right after they came out of the fridge, and the rest two days later. I can't see any difference in the clarity of the detail. This won't work with every mold, but it seems to be ok with celtic designs and geometic shapes.

These guys have a story of sorts. The cat is named after Skeeter, Anne Watson's cat. He really isn't white, but I didn't have any black or grey colorant, so he is what he is. I unmolded these bars 24 hours after they came out of the fridge. The lighthouse lost a lot of detail, but the cat is about the same as the rest of the batch.

This batch is interesting. All these soaps were made with dusty rose mica. The ones you are looking at were unmolded right out of the fridge. As you can see they are two different shades, same recipe same amount of colorant. Go figure. After a few days the color of the bears moprhed into the same dusty rose as the turkeys and pumpkins. As to mold detail, the bears lost a little detail. The thanksgiving soaps did just as well as bars that weren't unmolded for two more days.

Now in this picture you can see something that I would have said is impossible. This batch, like all my other soaps, is a milk soap so it was made as cool as possible, starting with frozen milk. Then it was in the freezer for at least 1 hour and the fridge for 24 hours. If you look close you can see gell spots in the center of each bar. Quite a few experienced soapers have looked at this and agree that it sure looks like gell. So why did it happen you ask.  
Well I can only think of one thing. I have never seen this before in milk soap. But.... Since I've been in the process of converting to using cavity molds I have been tinkering with batch size. Normally I make batches with 16 oz of oils. However in recent weeks I've made several batches that had 21 oz of oils, including the soaps before you. So I took another look. EVERY ONE of those batches showed signs of gelling, in most if not all of the bars. It's not always in the center and some colors tend to hide it over time, but it definately is there. Needless to say I've gone back to 16 oz batches. In fact there are two batches cooling their heels in the fridge now, and there is no sign of gell. It's hard not to jump to conclusions, but at this point I would have to say batch size is my most likely suspect.

Ok lessons learned from all this. Micas certainly rank among the best of the artificial colorants available to soapers. Getting CP soap out of molds without losing a lot of intricate detail is not as difficult as you might think. And just when you think you know what you are going, the gods of Mt. Sapo are going to throw you a curve. But that's what keeps soaping from getting dull.  
Anyway that's all for now. Next time we are going to talk about cows, overstressed bosses and butter. So stay tuned.  

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