Melting Soap Too Fast
Since there are two ways to understand the title of this article, it is only fair that both issues of ‘melting soap’ be discussed. The first issue has to do with the soap-making process. The second issue has to do with using the soap after it has been made. If you are a soap maker, both are important because they can affect your product.
Let’s tackle the first question: what to do if you’re melting soap too fast during the production process? If you are melting soap, you will probably use the melt-and-pour or rebatching method. The melting process itself is pretty simple. You can use a double boiler or a microwave. You should heat the soap slowly, letting it melt little by little. If at any point you smell something burning or if something smells wrong, you could do this process too fast, in which case you will need to stop and let it cool. Sometimes, you might not salvage the burnt parts, so try to heat them slowly.
The second issue comes after the product is made. Some soap makers find that their products melt faster than store-bought or commercial soaps, which means they end up using more soap bars than if they bought commercial soaps. The first thing about this is to make sure that the soap sits on a slotted soap dish. This will help make sure that it’s not sitting in water or that any excess water from washing evaporates well and doesn’t melt.
If that doesn’t work, the next thing to try is to extend or lengthen the curing time. Whatever is recommended by the recipe, add a couple of days. It will help make sure that saponification is complete. During the process of saponification, excess water evaporates from the soap. The less water there is in your bar, the better because it will prevent your bar from melting.
Assuming neither of these techniques works, then your soap probably has a problem with hardness. There are several things you can do to address this issue. First, you can add beeswax to the soap (check out some of the beeswax recipes we have). Second, you can add coconut oil or use coconut oil as one of your soap-making oils (this will increase hardness, but it may give your soap a drying effect), and finally, you can try adding 1/2 teaspoon of salt for every pound of oils in your recipe. Any of these three techniques should stop you from melting soap too quickly.
