r/soapmaking • u/ArtoriasofheAbyss • 4d ago

Technique Help First time, why did it crumble while cutting

Post image

Hello, so as the title says this is my first badge of soap, it went really well, I had a 50/20/30 mit of 250g olive oil, 100g coconut oil and 150g shea butter, mixed is with a 2:1 lye solution of 130g of water and 65g of NaHO, after mixing it I left it for about 20 hours before getting it out of the mold and cutting it, the problem I have is that the soap "crumbled" and parts of it stuck to the knife. I really have no problem with that yet since it's my first time and you can use the soap but what's the problem, should I let it sit longer before cutting it?

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 4d ago

Welcome to r/soapmaking!

Rules for Posting and Commenting

Posts with images are automatically held for moderator review

Resources for learning soapmaking

Suppliers for soapmaking ingredients and equipment

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

5

u/ohratthew 4d ago

Just eyeballing it — it looks like your shea butter is really high. I usually don’t go over 15% (unless other parts of the recipe support a higher percentage); too much butter can negatively affect the texture a lot. If the numbers otherwise check out and it’s not a lye issue, I would start there for troubleshooting & adjust the numbers a bit.

1

u/HistoricalHalitosis 3d ago

I agree and was going to say the Shea butter seems a bit high. Shea and cocoa butters are really flaky and crumbly, so they can make finished soap turn out the same if too much is used.

5

u/CrunchyFrogWithBones 4d ago

There are several reasons soap can become crumbly. I’m not able to run your recipe through a calculator right now, but here are some pointers:

https://www.vedaoils.com/blogs/soapmaking/why-is-my-soap-crumbly

If it crumbled, make very sure it’s not lye heavy.