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Hi All! Been kind of busy here. Made two 40-bar batches of soap. Mixed, poured and cut. Now drying in my forced-air, ventilated drying tower. What a lot of work. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures. One batch was called Love Spell (from Windy Point in Canada) and the other was The Perfect...

I made soap for a few years in the 1990s and 2000s. Then life changed and I stopped for a long time. Then life changed again and I started again, but I couldn't remember a lot of things about how I used to do it. Once thing I noticed a couple of years ago, as I unearthed all my equipment, was...

Hi Boys and Girls! I'm looking to buy some shea butter. The place I want to buy from offers it in unrefined form with it's concomitant ivory color and nutty, smoking odor. Will it make that much difference in in the product? Or should I stick to refined only? It makes up only 7% of the oils...

As I have mentioned, I am returning after an extended break in soap making. Last time I made soap was well before Covid. I went to the supermarket to do some informal pricing. I never expected the shock! A pound of lard used to cost 2.85. It now costs 4.79!! Olive oil was 19.00 for 3...

Hi All! I am not really a newbie, but I have been away for a year or more. I disappeared about the time our beloved Owl went missing. (Don't suppose he/she has reappeared, has he/she?) When my bar inventory reached 200, I thought it was time to take a break. Been living off the fat of the...

I have been absent for a few months. I haven't made any soap in that time because I have MOUNTAINS of soap around my house! I stopped by just to glance around a bit. In the back of my mind, "Has the Owl been around at all?"

@Zany_in_CO "You may want to keep your account open until @Resolveable Owl returns. " So this means the Owl will be back in the future?

Now that you say it ... Yes! I recall! Thanks so much!

Does anyone know the usage rate of Vanilla Color Stabilizer? I should know cuz I just used it last month, but I didn't write it down and now I have no idea. Thanks in advance!

Went to have my blood drawn this morning. The blood taker asked, "What is that scent you are wearing?" I had showered with OMH earlier. I told him the whole soap making story and he was fascinated. So, to make a long story short, guess who is coming to my house on Monday to buy soap!

Some good news I did the lye purity test from DeeAnna's Classic Bells page on the 50 pound bag of 24 year old lye I have. I did three trials and averaged them, as she recommends. The stuff came out 99% pure! I am amazed! I'm going to store it in a 5 gallon air-tight bucket I got on Amazon...

I'm too embarrassed to share my math problems on here. I find it on the internet somehow! The Monty Python skit from Holy Grail on identifying a witch is like me and doing math for soap projects.

@ResolvableOwl Your absence was definitely noticed! Welcome back!!

@ResolvableOwl I was hoping you'd say you have been on some Caribbean beach for a couple of weeks! Nice to see you back!

11 days later... The Vanilla Color Stabilizer seems to be doing its stuff. The bars are not getting any darker. The brown that you see is the ITP swirl I did to give the sense of vanilla BEAN. So far so good!

I knew I had it somewhere in the basement. It was just a matter of moving some stuff around. Fortunately, the storage container (a heavy-plastic bag) was intact. I will have to examine the lye more closely and test it for purity.

5129 grams of oils. I make 40 hefty sized bars at a time.

@shylanair The chemist's name is Kevin Dunn and here is the link to the video! (Don't be put off by the name "chemist". He is lots of fun.) DeeAnna also has a video of it which is very clear.

Hi Shy! Your lye is probably just fine. I'm going to guess 95% pure. I just test mine cuz it's so old. Some of mine tested at 78% pure and some other at 85%. You just make up the difference as specified on DeeAnna's webpage. All of my soap has come out perfectly when it comes to lye-related...

I just dug out a 50 pound heavy-plastic bag of lye from storage. It is 24 years old but seems to be intact. I will be doing DeeAnna's purity test so as to make allowances for any deterioration. (It's kind of a fun exercise. Makes me feel like a chemist.) You can see the test description at...