Sounds like not only did it not come to trace but it is possibly lye heavy or water heavy as well. To tell if your soap bar is lye heavy (excess lye that wasn’t used up in turning the oil into soap-aka “saponification”) do the “zap” test–barely touch your tongue to the soap, if it gives a zap or tingle like a battery does their is too much lye. It can be fixed but that’s a whole ‘nother project. If it’s water heavy then it will dry some but not enough for a hard bar. Stick blenders are the tool of choice for blending the soap to trace, they shorten the hour to about 15 minutes or less depending on oils and additives. Lard also makes a softer soap, with very little cleansing ability. Grace’s second recipe uses coconut oil (available in many grocery stores) which gives cleansing properties to soap and is used in most soap recipes.

Good places for someone to start soaping are Miller Soap ( http://millersoap.com/#Soap%20Contents ) Teach Soap ( http://www.teachsoap.com ) and for playing with recipes and checking to see if a recipe you find will work– Soap Calc ( http://www.soapcalc.com/ ) . If you get serious about soaping (it’s a lot of fun and can easily become addicting) there are tons of great groups that will help you out, especially Yahoo’s Southern Soapers.