jeremy82many
Member
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2010
- Messages
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Hi there!
Well first off, I want to thank anyone kind enough to wander in and offer any suggestions to a total soap noob. I wanted to make my beautiful woman some handmade organic vegan soaps for a Valentine’s Day present. She’s into bath soaps and all those girly things, and I’m kinda crafty, (and I love her lots) so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I liked the fact that the process involves some chemistry as I’m a bit-science minded as well.
Here’s my problem before I go any further – After running through the whole process, it appears that I still have some Zap. I am trying to see if anyone here thinks the lye will cure out (it’s only been unmolded for a few hours) or if this batch is a waste. I cooked for a while and then did the Zap Test and it was still very caustic. I stirred and threw it back in the oven for several 20 minute cycles. The Zap definitely lessened with time, but all in all I cooked for a long time it seems. After pouring and unmolding, I can put the sop on my tongue and not get the zap. But if I let it sit for a few seconds – it Definitely gives a zap, light but there. Okay now to all the background -
So I went online and read articles and tutorials on making soaps at home for a few weeks. I read about CP, HP, OHP and a whole bunch of variations. I ended up settling on the Oven Hot Process as I was hoping to reduce the need to buy equipment – so all I really needed was a stock pot and stick blender for the OHP. (other than the soap ingredients)
I found a recipe that said that it could be easily unmolded from plastic molds (I had bought some plastic molds at Michaels, so I wanted to be able to put them to use). However it called for 15oz of Palm Oil, which I could not find at Whole Foods when I went there. So I had to modify the recipe. Since I had read that modifying the oils in the recipe would call for modifying liquid and lye, I went online to the lye calculators. I was able to get most of the oils in the recipe for easy unmolding, but not the Palm Oil. The recipe said I could substitute other solid-at-room-temp oils and it would work as long as my ration was about 75-80% room temp solid oils. I went online and used the MMM Lye Calculator and also used the one at J. Soule Web Design. They both came up with very similar numbers, with the J. Soule being slightly less Lye needed.
So here is the recipe I came up with using the calculators;
14 oz coconut
1 castor
4 hemp seed
2 Shea Butter
4 cocoa butter
1 Sesame Seed
*9oz water
119 g lye = 4.261oz.
*Instead of pure water, I brewed 6 tea bags of White Vanilla Apricot Tazo Tea to make a strong extract into the 9oz. of water.
Okay to get into the process – I bought all Organic ingredients, the best and purest quality I could find;
Here is the Tea brewing
Before I take out the lye, I suit up for safety – notice the long sleeves tucked into the gloves;
Now I measure the Lye on my digital scale. It is accurate to a tenth of a gram and I literally quadruple checked my measurements before moving on. I had exactly 119grams of lye.
Okay the lye is weighed and ready to be added to the water/tea extract
But before we add the Lye, I take everything outside just for added safety, in case the jar breaks, or the solution boils over.
Now I go back inside to let the Lye + Water mix cool down. I get all my room temp solids ready;
And add them to the stainless steel stock pot.
I also turned on the stove to 200F
Once I mix all the room temp oils (with a little heat from the stove), I add the other oils/fats. Then I take my thermometer and make sure both the Lye Water and the mixed oils are about 110F.
Once that is confirmed, I add the lye water to the oils and stir with my stick blender for about 5-10 minutes on and off.
After the 10 minutes of mixing it looks like this – it will easily hold what the soap people are calling “trace.” ( I think!) You can see the lines on top of the mix here, they stayed for a bit.
At that point I put it in the pre-heated oven;
I left the oven on for about 10-15 minutes and then turned it off (some OHP call for leaving it on, others say turn it off). I let the mix cook for about an hour and then I opened the oven to do a Zap test…I got a pretty good zap, so I put it back in the oven and turned it on.
I did a few more stir-cook-stir-zap test cycles, so that the mix was cooking almost 3 hours or more. At that point it was already 1 in the morning – I had to sleep for work tomorrow!!! So I did a final zap test – it was almost all gone, but not totally. So after 3 or more hours of cooking, all the lye has not saponified, so I am really wondering if I put too much lye…however I used two calculators and quadruple checked the weight measurements of the lye – really.
So I woke up in the morning and unmolded the soap.
I did wash my hands with it and it did seem to maybe possibly irritate my skin, it was nothing overwhelming. But my woman has sensitive skin. And I can’t give her half-made soap that is going to hurt her cute skin for Valentines Day! I’m pretty upset at this point, as this was my whole plan for a cool present this year. I still have about 4 days left for it to cure, but I am not sure if it will actually make the lye sting go away or not.
After doing some reading here last night (in a panic), it seems I may be able to re-batch if it is messed up, but I know nothing about that, or if it would help…I think I may have time to do another batch tonight, but I’m short on money and room temp oils…
Any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!!
Well first off, I want to thank anyone kind enough to wander in and offer any suggestions to a total soap noob. I wanted to make my beautiful woman some handmade organic vegan soaps for a Valentine’s Day present. She’s into bath soaps and all those girly things, and I’m kinda crafty, (and I love her lots) so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I liked the fact that the process involves some chemistry as I’m a bit-science minded as well.
Here’s my problem before I go any further – After running through the whole process, it appears that I still have some Zap. I am trying to see if anyone here thinks the lye will cure out (it’s only been unmolded for a few hours) or if this batch is a waste. I cooked for a while and then did the Zap Test and it was still very caustic. I stirred and threw it back in the oven for several 20 minute cycles. The Zap definitely lessened with time, but all in all I cooked for a long time it seems. After pouring and unmolding, I can put the sop on my tongue and not get the zap. But if I let it sit for a few seconds – it Definitely gives a zap, light but there. Okay now to all the background -
So I went online and read articles and tutorials on making soaps at home for a few weeks. I read about CP, HP, OHP and a whole bunch of variations. I ended up settling on the Oven Hot Process as I was hoping to reduce the need to buy equipment – so all I really needed was a stock pot and stick blender for the OHP. (other than the soap ingredients)
I found a recipe that said that it could be easily unmolded from plastic molds (I had bought some plastic molds at Michaels, so I wanted to be able to put them to use). However it called for 15oz of Palm Oil, which I could not find at Whole Foods when I went there. So I had to modify the recipe. Since I had read that modifying the oils in the recipe would call for modifying liquid and lye, I went online to the lye calculators. I was able to get most of the oils in the recipe for easy unmolding, but not the Palm Oil. The recipe said I could substitute other solid-at-room-temp oils and it would work as long as my ration was about 75-80% room temp solid oils. I went online and used the MMM Lye Calculator and also used the one at J. Soule Web Design. They both came up with very similar numbers, with the J. Soule being slightly less Lye needed.
So here is the recipe I came up with using the calculators;
14 oz coconut
1 castor
4 hemp seed
2 Shea Butter
4 cocoa butter
1 Sesame Seed
*9oz water
119 g lye = 4.261oz.
*Instead of pure water, I brewed 6 tea bags of White Vanilla Apricot Tazo Tea to make a strong extract into the 9oz. of water.
Okay to get into the process – I bought all Organic ingredients, the best and purest quality I could find;
Here is the Tea brewing
Before I take out the lye, I suit up for safety – notice the long sleeves tucked into the gloves;
Now I measure the Lye on my digital scale. It is accurate to a tenth of a gram and I literally quadruple checked my measurements before moving on. I had exactly 119grams of lye.
Okay the lye is weighed and ready to be added to the water/tea extract
But before we add the Lye, I take everything outside just for added safety, in case the jar breaks, or the solution boils over.
Now I go back inside to let the Lye + Water mix cool down. I get all my room temp solids ready;
And add them to the stainless steel stock pot.
I also turned on the stove to 200F
Once I mix all the room temp oils (with a little heat from the stove), I add the other oils/fats. Then I take my thermometer and make sure both the Lye Water and the mixed oils are about 110F.
Once that is confirmed, I add the lye water to the oils and stir with my stick blender for about 5-10 minutes on and off.
After the 10 minutes of mixing it looks like this – it will easily hold what the soap people are calling “trace.” ( I think!) You can see the lines on top of the mix here, they stayed for a bit.
At that point I put it in the pre-heated oven;
I left the oven on for about 10-15 minutes and then turned it off (some OHP call for leaving it on, others say turn it off). I let the mix cook for about an hour and then I opened the oven to do a Zap test…I got a pretty good zap, so I put it back in the oven and turned it on.
I did a few more stir-cook-stir-zap test cycles, so that the mix was cooking almost 3 hours or more. At that point it was already 1 in the morning – I had to sleep for work tomorrow!!! So I did a final zap test – it was almost all gone, but not totally. So after 3 or more hours of cooking, all the lye has not saponified, so I am really wondering if I put too much lye…however I used two calculators and quadruple checked the weight measurements of the lye – really.
So I woke up in the morning and unmolded the soap.
I did wash my hands with it and it did seem to maybe possibly irritate my skin, it was nothing overwhelming. But my woman has sensitive skin. And I can’t give her half-made soap that is going to hurt her cute skin for Valentines Day! I’m pretty upset at this point, as this was my whole plan for a cool present this year. I still have about 4 days left for it to cure, but I am not sure if it will actually make the lye sting go away or not.
After doing some reading here last night (in a panic), it seems I may be able to re-batch if it is messed up, but I know nothing about that, or if it would help…I think I may have time to do another batch tonight, but I’m short on money and room temp oils…
Any help anyone can offer is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!!
Oh no. That's really too bad. I definitely didn't want to give her soap that is lye-heavy 
