Deep Discount-The Results Are In

I could hardly sleep last night wondering what was going on inside my mold. My mold was tucked away complete with a high tech soap koozie and caps at both ends-making it a challenge to "take a peek"- besides taking a peek would've compromised the experiment altogether right? The whole objective of this experiment was to see if I could get rid of a plague of pock marks that have been haunting me for months. I have tried tweaking many things in the process of elimination to rid my soap of the dreaded marks-such as different molds, different lining, insulating, not insulating, cover, uncovering, practically sealing soap inside the mold and not peeking, various eo changes-you name it. Finally, we wondered if taking the water down more would help-which resulted in this trial. 

I can tell you that within an hour of pour things got HOT-really hot. I think that most of the late afternoon evening was spent on the cool down as I suspect gel happened fairly quickly. 

Fast forward to this morning-the soap was cool and HARD and ready to unmold right away. Once the soap was unmolded-I let it set for just a bit before diving in with the cutter.The outside was beautifully shiny and perfect, no blemishes or pock marks that I had been struggling with for several months now. I knew it would have to be cut sooner rather than later. Time is not on your side with soap this hard and a wire cutter. 

The cut- in the back of my mind I worried a bit that it might be too hard,but actually it cut very nicely. There was no usual gooey wet sound as the wires passed through the soap at all-but still it was smooth and efficient. There was of course a mild bit of crumbling (only the normal amount you get when cutting soap.)The end result was perfectly cut beautiful rounds that were already very hard. 

I can already see some clear advantages to this process. 1) I use less distilled water per batch=a little less cost per batch 2)less shrinkage occurring in my packaging 3)*** the pock marks I was getting fairly often I believe were a result of too much water in my batch(even though I was discounting to begin with) with this method the outside was shiny and perfect. 

From all I've read this method is not recommended for use with milk soaps, alcohol, sugar, or eo's/fo's that accelerate.,or formulas with shea etc that accelerate quickly-making this method somewhat limiting. 

I would also like to stress this is NOT a method for a beginner-you should know how weaker solutions react before trying this deep of a water discount.