Towels

by Teri
(Rock Springs, WY)

Is it necessary to wrap your CP soap in a towel after pouring into a mold?

Answer:

The idea behind insulating your soap is to make sure it reaches the gel stage. If it is cold out, it will be hard for the soap to build up the correct amount of internal heat to reach that stage. Wrapping the soap in blankets will keep the heat in and the cold out.

If you live in an extremely hot area, it may not be necessary to insulate your soap especially if your soap mold has great insulating properties itself.

Determining when, if and how much insulating your soap needs is a trial and error practice that everyone will have to go through many, many times.

So many factors can influence the soaps ability to reach the gel stage...the ingredients used, the room temperature, the weather, the soap mold and the temperature you mixed at are a few.

I like to check on my soap when it is insulating to see how the gel stage is progressing. If it is near a full gel, I will take the insulation off and open the soap up completely when the full gel stage has been reached. This prevents any overheating that can ruin a perfectly good batch of soap.

And of course if you do not want your soap to go through the gel phase then you would not insulate the soap at all. Rather, you would try to keep the temperature down instead.

Cathy