ARGH! Flakes of LYE in my finished soap!

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xraygrl

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Last night I made a soap with coconut milk as the liquid portion. I have done this before (a long time ago, I'll admit) with no prolems, but that was with the pellet type of lye. Now I'm using flake lye, and it seems it doesn't dissolve as easily (much biger pieces). my soap was really thick at trace, so I added 3 oz of water at trace, and even 2 oz more after the cook along with some glycerin. This morning as I'm cutting I'm seeing these white flakes in the soap with liquid oozing around them. They ZAP.

Thinking back, my sb was making funny noises, which I thought at the time was just because it's getting OLD. Now thinking about it it really sounded like solid peices of something hitting the blade.

This batch is gonna have to hit the trash for sure. :evil: Next time no 100% cm with FLAKE lye. Clearly it did not dissolve completely. GRRRRRR!
 
The flakes are fine with water, but I don't think I'd use them in say anything less than a 33% solution OF WATER. I'm not sure how they'd react to a 50% solution. I'd have to try them out to see and keep more water to the side just in case. yes this is a real bummer! Good thing it was only 2.5 lbs, but sadly that was the last of my castor. :cry:
 
TY Dixie.

Ahhhem, Everyone can we please have a moment of silence for my soap? It had such a short life, but it fought like no other to try and make it into exhistence. May it rest in peace..... :cry:
 
xraygrl said:
TY Dixie.

Ahhhem, Everyone can we please have a moment of silence for my soap? It had such a short life, but it fought like no other to try and make it into exhistence. May it rest in peace..... :cry:

God rest it's soul...
 
Ty Ladies. :)

Eunique,

This has flakes of undesolved lye in it. I even added more water during the cook and after the cook, and still it had undesolved lye in it. I doubt that rebatching would do anything to disolve the lye. Anyway it already went into the trash, and I am not gonna pull it out of there. EEEWWW!
 
Try rebatching and putting your superfat in at trace to ensure all the lye is gone. Definately don't use flake lye anymore.
 
With water or GM, and buttermilk I have not had any problems with undesolved lye.....only with this coconut milk, it had to be that there wasn't enough liquid in the coconut milk to fully disolve the lye. Oh well, lesson learned. next time it will be 50/50 water/cm with the cm added at trace.
 
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