First Time Soap

[ctomsheck]

Hello!

Last night after 10 years of procrastination, I finally got everything together and made my first batch of soap. I was amazed at how I had been so frightened about something that was so easy! I poured the soap into the mold, carefully wrapped it up in bath towels and set it aside.

Today I confidently unmolded it, scored it and cut! My confidence was short lived as my beautiful soap cracked! I tried again and it cracked again!!

I had carefully weighed the tallow, measured the water, monitored the temperatures, stirred and stirred and poured after it reached a very clear trace. What I had NOT done was weigh the lye. The recipe I used asked for 6 lbs beef tallow, 5 1/2 cups of water and 13 oz lye. The lye was the one thing that had kept me from making the soap for all those years and I suppose I just assumed (don't ask me why) I would be using the entire jar...

Is there anything I can do to fix my soap? This recipe makes 9 lbs, and if there is something I can do to repair it rather than toss it in the trash I would be very open to suggestions!

Thank You,

Colleen

 

[maiseycat]

Hello!

Welcome to the forum ! I am a newbie myself, so don't have a lot of advice. What size was the jar of lye you used? That will help when people are giving advice. I know a lot of people rebatch unsuccessful attempts, but on that big of a scale, I am going to let someone more experienced try to work out what you might nee dto add to save it.

Don't get discouraged! I have been reading through these forums, and one thing I have learned is that a batch that gets out of hand happens to even the most experienced soapers.

Personally, I have been working with small 1 lb batches as I experiement, so I won't feel as bad when I have my inevitable oops.

 

[ctomsheck]

Thank you for your encouraging words! I used 16 oz lye with 6 lbs beef tallow, when the recipe clearly asked for 13 oz lye. Oops! Maybe it can still be used? Or would it burn my skin? I just don't know how much lye is too much.

 

[maiseycat]

I ran the numbers through the lye calculator at http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp and it does seem like 16 oz would make it lye heavy. If I did it right, you would need 2 more pounds of beef tallow to give you a 5% superfat. (Superfat means that you have more fats than needed for the amount of lye to be completely used up in saponification) It does appear that is the superfat level intended by the recipe, as 13 oz would give you approximately a 5% superfat with 6 lbs of beef tallow. I am still learning though, so I hope someone else chimes in on this one.

The good news is that since you know how much lye was used, and how much tallow was used, it should be able to be saved through rebatching

I've never done it myself, but there is a good discussion here viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32692&p=290457&hilit=rebatch+tutorial#p290457 with lots of links.

 

[Seifenblasen]

Maisycat has already given you some good points, just want to add since your soap is lye heavy, please wear gloves when you handle it, especially when you grate it up for re-batch.

P.S. I run it through MMS's lye calculator and end up with 120 oz. (7.5 lb.) tallow and 16 oz. lye at 5% superfat. Which means you only need to add 1.5 lb instead of 2 lbs. of tallow. Is it that much difference between the different calculators? I am confused.

 

[maiseycat]

Maisycat has already given you some good points, just want to add since your soap is lye heavy, please wear gloves when you handle it, especially when you grate it up for re-batch.

P.S. I run it through MMS's lye calculator and end up with 120 oz. (7.5 lb.) tallow and 16 oz. lye at 5% superfat. Which means you only need to add 1.5 lb instead of 2 lbs. of tallow. Is it that much difference between the different calculators? I am confused.

That's probably my fault. This is the first time I have used the calculator with a fixed amount of lye to determine the weight of oils, and I did do some rounding to be on the safe side. If I just plug in 7.5 lbs of beef tallow at 5% superfat and calculate, it comes out with 16.2 oz of lye.

 

[Relle]

Colleen, as you are new to making soap it might be easier to make small batches of about 2lbs to get the hang of the process of making soap. It will save you a lot of money in the end if they don't turn out . I don't want to discourage you, only that we've all been there before and we've all made mistakes.

 

[ctomsheck]

Thank you. I had no idea what to expect, I actually thought this WAS a small batch! I will look for more recipes with a smaller yield.

 

[Seifenblasen]

You don't necessarily have to look for different recipes; just use half (or 1/4) of what the recipe calls for. And run any recipe through a soap (lye) calculator first to make sure that it is balanced. There are some bad recipes/instruction floating around the internet. Simply because someone published it online doesn't mean it is a good recipe.

Maisycat has given you the link for Soap Calc. I use that, too. Another one I use is Majestic Mountain Sage's calculator. This one also has a feature to help you scale a recipe down (or up).

http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php