Dear Shea Butter: What did I do to deserve this?

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soapythekid

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Mar 31, 2020
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Hi all, I'm wondering if I can get some advice. I've been soaping for about 2 years and it's been a while since I had a batch run wild on me without knowing what I did wrong. About 1 year ago, I made a batch of shea butter soap that worked wonderfully. My friends have been begging for more. So I made it again today, the only difference being that I doubled the size of the batch. I ran it through a soap calculator, melted my oils, made my lye solution and all was going well until that fateful moment I mixed. The oils and solution didn't seem to mix at all and when they finally did, it turned immediately into nasty white chunks. It didn't trace as much as it just sort of congealed. I'm not sure what went wrong.

The ONLY thing that I did differently was I added 2 teaspoons of sugar to my lye solution. But I can't see how that would affect anything.

Anybody seen this before? Can anyone tell me what happened?
 

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soapythekid

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Mar 31, 2020
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Yooper said:
It looks like a false trace- remember you have to keep the temperature of the oils above their melting point. Is that possible?
Click to expand...

Hi Yooper! My lye solution was about 122 degrees and my oils were around 130 degrees. Everything was liquid until the mix. Then... boom! It was chunks. Is this what false trace looks like? I didn't even get to add any fragrance or additives. I just stopped there, when I couldn't stir it anymore.
 
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soapythekid

New member
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Mar 31, 2020
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4
Here's my recipe. It's a primarily shea butter recipe. I did it once before and it turned out marvelous... but this time, I just don't know what went wrong! :(

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