Most people make soap in their homes, or if they are lucky enough, in their workshops. I keep the windows closed to keep the dust at a minimum, but the humidity still gets in. So I built a curing chamber. I have a shelf unit that I put the soap on, then I drape a shower curtain over the whole thing and put my dehumidifier in with the soap. I run it for a week or so to get most of the moisture out of the area.
This is usually enough to cut a week or so off of the cure time. Alternatively, you could use a spare closet as your curing chamber. Zeolites are rocks that pull moisture out of the air. These are often used in closets to keep the damp out. They can be used for the same purpose as the dehumidifier. Even just keeping them in the same area helps some. You can find zeolite rocks here.
Charcoal in pans could help too, but they could also absorb the scent you have used in your soap. If you use it, keep it a good distance from the soap itself. Fans help keep moisture from settling on soaps, allowing them to dry faster. As water evaporates from the soap, fans help whisk that moisture away. Using a water reduction will help as well. The amount of lye and oils stays the same, so there is no danger of the soap becoming lye heavy and being too harsh.
I use a water reduction in almost all of my recipes now and my cure time is about 3 weeks for most of my soaps. Heat may help too. I have a small heater fan that I use if the weather is cooler. The heat seems to help evaporate more of the moisture. Be sure that your bars are not touching each other and there is airflow between layers. If soap is touching while it is curing, it will form moisture between the bars and it may not cure as fast as it could.
Some of them even make the matter worse. Adding more lye will certainly make your soap harder, but lye heavy soap is more alkaline and will cause skin problems. Soap, when in bar form, is made up of a crystalline structure. As it solidifies and dries, the inner structure of the soap continues to change. The crystalline structure of soap has layers to it. These layers are formed by a structuring of the surfactants with time. Surfactants have a hydrophilic water-loving head and a hydrophobic tail one that is not attracted to water, which appears to be repelled by it.
These surfactants come together into structures called micelles. When you make soap, you are normally blending liquids oils and lye. After some blending and a chemical reaction, you end up with a gel-like solid structure. It forms sheets of surfactants that are separated by layers of water. As time goes by, and more water evaporates, the structure lines up better, forming more level sheets with thinner layers of water between them.
People specifically go through the messier process of hot-processing because they think that it allows them to use their soap immediately vs. By the time you pour the hot-processed soap into molds, the saponification process has already completed.
When cooking the soap, excess water will also tend to evaporate away more quickly. These changes will affect the quality of the soap. Cured soap generally lathers better and may have other improvements with time. In most cases, you can safely use both hot-process and cold-process soap a few days after having made them.
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. In four weeks gather up your soaps, place them loosely into a cardboard box or plastic container and store them in a closet or cabinet.
To preserve the fragrance integrity, I only put one scent per box. Fragrance oils will usually hold their scent a year or more, depending on the oil. Essential oils are a little tricky. Top notes tend to degrade quickly and will lose their fragrance after only a couple of months, so I suggest making those only in small batches that you will use up quickly. Happy Soaping! Debbie Shivvers is the owner of Plott Hollow Farm, dedicated to preserving endangered breeds of livestock and poultry.
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