I quit.

[TeresaT]

I'm done. This is it. Never again. I have just realized I have made two--possibly three--batches of soap at a 50% SF? How? Why? Because I suck at math!!! I did NOT double my lye weight when I weighed out my 50% solution. However, I did deduct the lye weight from my water weight. So, I made at least two batches with a 3:1 water:lye ratio yesterday and maybe one on Monday Or a 25% lye concentration. Or a 50% SF. Pick one. They're all pretty much equal according to the SoapCalc. I hate me.

I master batched the wrong recipe. I did a slow mover instead of my regular oils. I master batched 50% lye in a soapy jug and have stuff floating in it. I used floater-filled solution to saponify one pound of oils and dumped it into two pounds of oils. No wonder it took forever to trace!!! My shortcuts to make things easier just caused major work. I hate me.

Should I rebatch, leave them alone or toss them? Has anyone ever SFd at 50% with lard, olive, coconut, castor (40/40/15/5)? I doubt it, but you never know.

Did I tell you I hate me? I am so freaking annoyed right now. If I wasn't so annoyed, I would be laughing my butt off. OK. Now that I've ranted for a few minutes, this is actually quite hilarious. I really suck at math. I need a keeper. Like the gorillas at zoos have.

Damn! I'm an idiot. Funny as sh*t. But still an idiot. I'm going to bed. I hope when I get up in the morning there will be wonderful words of advise. Or a bunch of laughing people. Either would be appreciated.

 

[Earthen_Step]

I <3 you, don't hate yourself. I'll let others chime in on advice on salvaging the soap, I'm sure it can be done. I'm going to bed, hope you sleep well and wake up happy. If you overall enjoy soaping, keep at it.

 

[kumudini]

Wow, that's a major mess up, Teresa! But nothing a rebatch couldn't fix, if you know the exact weights of the oils and the lye solution you used as in you know for sure because you have written down everything. Then you could calculate how much lye/ solution was missing. Put your batch in a crockpot or a double boiler along with some water and the missing amount of lye. Since it's half the amount, there would be a lots of FAs that need saponifying so I would probably wait for some gel stage before molding it, just to be sure.
just double check all your figures next time, write down every little detail before you begin. I recently master batched my lye at 50%, and luckily I remembered for all my 4 batches that I need to double my lye amount as its only 50% and add the additional lye for my CA, that also doubled and so on. Since I can't multitask except in cooking, I do one thing at a time. My speed or lack thereof was probably what helped me avoid failures so far.

 

[Obsidian]

If you know exactly what happened and how much extra lye is needed to fix it, I would rebatch. I did try 25% SF once with a regular bath soap and it was ok but had weak lather and left you feeling too oily. I imagine 50%SF wouldn't be very nice.

 

[Jstar]

Whoa....that's wild. If it makes you feel any better, I suck major pond water at math too, so thats why I dont do masterbatching :razz:

Btw, you can't quit..you have been assimilated so there :twisted:

 

[MorpheusPA]

Rebatch! There's no need to ditch the soap, just HP-rebatch the thing and double the lye.

Should I rebatch, leave them alone or toss them? Has anyone ever SFd at 50% with lard, olive, coconut, castor (40/40/15/5)? I doubt it, but you never know.

20% is the normal maximum, and only with coconut since it's incredibly stable. For other oils, 10% is the absolute maximum, with 5-8% being the normal maximum.

 

[Susie]

And stop hating yourself for being human! None of that allowed here! We screw up and fess up so maybe someone can learn from our "oops". We love you, and you have been assimilated. Resistance is futile.

 

[dibbles]

I'm math challenged too (my kids call it 'mommy math'). If it makes you feel any better, your experience has reaffirmed my decision to never, ever masterbatch anything.

I hope you feel better in the morning.

 

[MorpheusPA]

With all the talk of math challenged, it brings up a good point.

I'm not math challenged in the slightest. But y'know what? Everybody makes mistakes. That formula would've gone off perfectly if you remembered that your lye solution was 50% diluted.

Oops. It's fixable. We all do that kind of thing, it's called being human.

Ask me about the time I read my lard line when I was adding coconut. I had to adjust the recipe on the fly and vastly increase the olive to compensate, then shift the lye amounts...

Oops. It was fixable, but the soap is taking longer to cure than projected due to the much higher olive oil levels. So far, so good. It's not my best batch to date, but you know what? It ain't bad.

 

[IrishLass]

Before you rebatch (and you will rebatch- the council has spoken ), set aside 1 bar of the 50% S/F soap and keep it for observation purposes.

By the way, your post gave me a hearty belly laugh. lol

Don't give up! We've all been there.


IrishLass

 

[JayJay]

Hey Teresa! I don't know whether this makes you feel my better but I recently did the same thing! Only, it took me SIX weeks before I figured out what was wrong with all of my batches (with the help of this forum).

I ended up doing a rebatch (hp) on all of them and adding the missing lye. They all turned out ok. One batch got too dry and started to brown in the crock pot. I added a dark color to fix hat problem and ended up with a really cool looking soap. I plan to intentionally recreate the look of that soap in the future. The rest of the batches turned out nicely as well.

Since my blunder lasted so long, some of my soaps actually cured before I figured out what was going on. This meant that I had a chance to test the cured soaps before rebatch. They all lathered, but we're soft and I could tell that they would get used up really quickly. I thought about all that oil just going to waste running down the drain and I decided it was worth the trouble to salvage the soap by doing a rebatch.

 

[Saponomancer]

oh geeze, thats bad luck on the calculation mistakes, I'm pretty sure it could have happened to any of us though. Good luck on the rebatch and dont worry too much! we all make mistakes

 

[navigator9]

Awwww....I suck at math too. So now it's the next morning and all things look doable. Have a big cup of coffee, put on your goggles and gloves and fix that sucker!

 

[nsmar4211]

Temptation to masterbatch lye.........gone!:crazy:

I thought my 20% SF with a canola/olive/sunflower was bad... I ended up using it as shreds in a 1% loaf so it's theoretically 10.5% now...so far so good. In your case though that'd be a ton of soap.... at least you know what happened and can fix it.

*passes over nice tasty beverage to soothe (your choice)*

 

[hozhed]

Whoa....that's wild. If it makes you feel any better, I suck major pond water at math too, so thats why I dont do masterbatching :razz:

Btw, you can't quit..you have been assimilated so there :twisted:

What EXACTLY is "masterbatching"? Isn't it just a large batch of soap, bigger than one usually makes, or am I missing something? I just plug everything into soapcalc and have never had a bad batch of any size.

 

[Saponomancer]

What EXACTLY is "masterbatching"? Isn't it just a large batch of soap, bigger than one usually makes, or am I missing something? I just plug everything into soapcalc and have never had a bad batch of any size.

its when you make up a big batch of your oil blend or your lye solution ahead of time to portion out into smaller batches

 

[hozhed]

its when you make up a big batch of your oil blend or your lye solution ahead of time to portion out into smaller batches

Ok,....whats the point in doing that?

 

[kchaystack]

Ok,....whats the point in doing that?

It is a huge time saver. Your oils will likely stay liquid unless it is fairly cold so you just give them a quick stir, measure out your batch size, and you are good to go.

With the lye, you make your solution ahead of time and it is at room temp so you do not have to wait for it to cool. Unless you always use the same concentration tho, there is some math involved to get the amounts right.

And it can complicate doing full water replacement for non powered milks and such.

 

[Susie]

It saves people the time they would spend waiting for the lye mixture to cool down if they are swirling and such. It also allows people who make a lot of soap to sell to make their own recipes that they don't necessarily want to share with their employees. They can tell someone, "Use 48 oz of oils and 12 oz of lye solution with 4 oz water." so that employee does not know how much of each oil is in there. (numbers completely made up) It can also allow folks to mix all their lye with water so that they do not have to store the lye dry.

 

[hozhed]

It saves people the time they would spend waiting for the lye mixture to cool down if they are swirling and such. It also allows people who make a lot of soap to sell to make their own recipes that they don't necessarily want to share with their employees. They can tell someone, "Use 48 oz of oils and 12 oz of lye solution with 4 oz water." so that employee does not know how much of each oil is in there. (numbers completely made up) It can also allow folks to mix all their lye with water so that they do not have to store the lye dry.

Ahh, ok, that makes sense to me now. Thanks. As far as storing the lye . Storing it in a liquid for would make me nervous. I can think of about a zillion scenarios where something can go wrong at my house.lol. Where I work, we buy caustic soda by the train car load and have a ton of safety rules when handling that stuff. It can bite you in so many ways. Anyway, thanks for the explanation you guys.