How long soap cure

Remember me Log in. Lost your password? Subscribe to updates and product specials. Your personal data will be used to support your experience throughout this website, to manage access to your account, and for other purposes described in our privacy policy. Treat Yourself to a Bar of Handmade Soap. Add to cart. Rated 5. Select options. Rated 4. Shopping Cart. You should be able to remove it in a few more days! I was still able to leave finger indents in the top when I checked it yesterday.

It sounds like it is just because it is in a ramekin that it is still so soft. It should definitely still be safe to use and should slowly continue to harden up throughout the cure. I am not sure if this is the right section, but on some other posts that were more related, I was not able to post a comment. Anyway, some of my soaps CP where opaque with no gel phase after curing period.

But after using some soaps for some days, they started becoming translucent and softer in the translucent area. Is there an explanation for this? How did you store your soap, and how long did it cure? The center may have gelled a bit, causing that partial gel.

It helps to keep it in a dry area on a draining soap dish. Is there a way to test the soap before curing process? Since the curing process is long is there a way to check if the soap will be good after it gets cured.

After about 5 days the soap is safe to use on the skin so you can give it a try. However, soap performs best when it cures, so we recommend waiting the full weeks. I want to try to turn it into liquid soap and use in the shower. My question is, do I still have to let it cure before trying to turn into liquid? Thanks, Cindy.

What was in the recipe, and how long has it been curing? After then it will get harder and will have more lather. If after then you still want to rebatch it, you can mix it with a hard soap made with hard oils like coconut and palm.

But I am not sure on what type of bar that it will produce. Would it have a lot of lather or not much? Will it be soft or hard? On bramble berry. Thank you for your time and any and all help would be greatly appreciated! That recipe looks good! It should be balanced and have some nice lather. I cannot find how much lye to add to the batch of soap. I have missed that measurement somewhere. Can you give me the amount in the coconut milk recipe.

I made 3 recipes before but after using I had the same problem in all of them ,which is the bar of soap start to be soft and sticky after 2 or 3 days using where is the mistake? I used mixed of coconut oil,olive oil and palm oil with the lye only. How long did you let that soap cure? There are a few tricks to making your bars last longer in the shower. Because the bars have a high amount of soft oil, they will be on the softer side.

It also helps to add 1 tsp. Are there any concerns or risks about adding the remaining lye dissolved in a bit of water and mixing it really really well in the rebatch? Instead, I would recommend rebatching the soap with equal or double the amount of a hard soap.

That will make the bar more balanced. Another thing that can cause a soft bar is old lye. So fresh lye is a must! When I made my pumpkin spice soap, I forgot to discount the extra liquid from the pureed pumpkin. Result: soft soap that took weeks to harden. It was supposed to be ready for Halloween, but ended up being a Christmas soap. And that was despite using sodium lactate. The extra liquid from that pumpkin will definitely soften the soap! The good news is it will make amazing Christmas gifts.

That way you can see how the wax works. Great info! The only fragrance oil I have ever had this problem with is lavender. I rarely am able to get it clean out of the mold without leaving the corners behind or making dents in it, I leave it for up to 5 days and have tried putting it in the freezer.

Also when mixing my colorants, I just use a tablespoon of my soap batch oils, so I never am adding any extra oil. The next soap piece piece 5 was tested on the 5 th day of cure. The third soap piece piece 10 was tested on the 10 th day of cure, and the 4 th soap piece piece 15 was tested on the 15 th day of cure.

Seven soap pieces in total were numbered in increments of 5, then tested every 5 days until the 7 th soap piece was reached. Certain observations were made about each piece of soap on their correspondingly numbered day. This would help to determine the rate at which each piece of soap was decreasing in excess water weight as time passed.

Cure is extremely susceptible to weather conditions and geographical location, so keep in mind that I live in hot, ridiculously humid Florida, where the rate of water loss, or cure, may be faster or slower than where you live.

This was tested by applying pressure with my fingers to each soap piece on its respective testing day, then documenting how much effort or pressure was needed to cause the soap to smoosh or dent. This included observing how difficult or easy it was to build up any type of substantial lather during use.

After 30 seconds of use timed with my cell phone , other observations included what the quality and consistency of the lather was like. Notes were taken on how abundant the lather was, and what type of bubbles were produced i.

At the end of 30 seconds, notes on how well the soap rinsed off the skin were taken, which included observing if any noticeable residue was left behind after rinsing. Final observations, and my overall experience with each soap piece were recorded.

All notes and observations listed above were carefully documented for each soap piece, on its specific testing day, to determine how, and in what ways, the properties and qualities of cold process soap change over time with cure.

At the end of the day test period, all recorded notes were compiled and compared in an effort to answer questions I had asked myself, and written down, prior to beginning the experiment. I tried choosing questions which I hoped the reader would also have as well, or at the very least, be interested in knowing the answer to. Despite this, and because it is only 24 hours after pour, the bar squishes easily between my fingers with minimal effort.

Took quite a bit of effort to work up any kind of substantial lather. The best lather achieved after 30 seconds was low-lying, with small, compact bubbles.

Despite this, the lather is surprisingly more abundant than I thought it would be. Lather rinsed away easily with no noticeable residue. This bar is not moisturizing at all. I was surprised at what a difference 5 days made; this piece is hard! Fluffier lather is noted, although still pretty low-lying and compact.

Still small in size, this bar has slightly bigger, fluffier bubbles sporadically present. Rinsed off easily with no residue. Although this piece is less drying than the previous bar, I still have to apply hand lotion after use. This test soap actually gained weight 0. This soap piece exhibits the environmental challenges of soap making perfectly! Geographically, where you make soap greatly affects how your soaps cure. Three straight days of rain and excessive humidity has really affected this soap piece.

I still have to exert moderate pressure, but this piece succumbs to the pressure of my fingers a lot easier and much more noticeably. In areas where excessive humidity is a year-round factor, it may take considerably longer for soaps to fully cure. Floridian soap makers know that winter is prime soap making season for this precise reason!

I have dehumidifier programmed to turn on for 10 minutes, 4 times a day in my curing room during the summer, but I firmly believe that if you can successfully make soap in a tropical climate, you can make soap anywhere! Oh, how I miss Arizona soap making! Despite hardness setbacks, the lather of this soap piece is easy to work up.

In the first few seconds of working up the lather, the bubbles are large, airy and copious. At around the second mark the lather is noticeably more abundant, I accidentally drop some of it in the sink.

Lather is comprised of mainly small, tight bubbles with the presence of bigger bubbles sporadically throughout. Lather rinses away easily, with no remining residue. It is neither moisturizing or drying, and my skin feels normal. What a difference dryer weather makes! This piece is super hard! The difference between test bar 3, just 5 days prior is night and day! No indents. Lather builds up easily and quickly. Lather begins with large, airy, copious bubbles, but as it continues to build in abundance, the bubbles become denser and more compact, with fluffy, foam-like bubbles forming around the 8-second mark.

The increase of bigger bubbles sporadically present throughout are more noticeable as well. This is especially true if you plan on gifting or selling your soap. First, liquid soaps are pretty much always made by hot-processing.

The finished soap paste will normally have already completed the saponification process. Unlike bar soaps that need drying time, liquid soap paste needs to be diluted to be used properly. Rather than form a layered lamellar micelle structure like in bar soaps, the surfactants are more likely to come together into sphere-shaped micelles.

Micelles are spheres that form when the hydrophobic tails of the surfactants come together in the center and the water-soluble ionic heads stay on the outside of the sphere where they contact the water. I talk more about micelles in my post about how to make micellar water. So, soap needs to be altered for easy, smooth melting. Other melt-and-pour soaps are true soaps that have been made with lye , but that have propylene glycol, glycerin, or other substances added to make them meltable.

Some people ask me about my homemade glycerin soap. I also have a vegan glycerin soap recipe. They want to know if it can be used as a melt-and-pour soap. Both use a combination of solvents like alcohol, glycerin, and sugar water to dissolve away part of the crystalline structure, making the soap more translucent.

With the use of these solvents, the soap becomes much more smooth when you remelt it. So, yes, in a way, it can be used as a melt-and-pour soap. For example, the excess glycerin in the soap is a humectant that can attract water. That can cause water and glycerin to bead up on the outside of the soap. I still choose to cure my homemade glycerin soaps, just in case, but I have found that sometimes I do get either a beading up of glycerin or a pool of glycerin underneath the soap.

Rinsing and wiping down the glycerin beads solves the problem, though. I also have had that happen with some other types of soap. Some release more glycerin during the saponification process than others. Whether or not the crystalline structure would change with time is debatable. There is the possibility that they could improve slightly with time, I guess, if the crystalline structure does, indeed, change with time.

Milling consists of grinding up the soaps by running them through machines with rollers that basically make a paste of the soap. The soap paste is then pressed through fine meshes that filter out impurities and larger pieces of soap. During the milling process, other ingredients, like fragrances, are often added. The soap paste is then pressed into molds with lots of pressure. Milled soaps tend to last longer because the high pressure presses out excess air and moisture, resulting in hard bars of soap.

Some people grind down soap and either melt it or dissolve it and pour it into molds. That said, some soaps benefit from a longer cure time.