Look what melted instead.

[Saponista]

We are constantly throwing away beautiful old fashioned glassware like that at work as no one really does proper chemistry any more. I have salvaged quite a few things, but I only have so much room in my house! I think that distilling your own essential oils would be so much fun, I think you would need huge amounts off plant mass to get a decent strength oil though. Would be really interesting to experiment.

 

[Hazel]

I think finding enough plant material would be the difficult part. It would probably be easier to stick with infusing oil.

That's a shame that they're throwing away glassware. If you run out of room in your house, there's always eBay. Maybe you could sell the glassware to help pay for more supplies.

I had a 1000ml round bottom boiling flask in my cart until the very end, just because it felt good! And they have those long necked round bottom flasks with ground glass stoppers too; that was extremely tempting, but I forced myself to be practical. I just pictured making soap in it and having it accelerate, then not being able to get it out.

I just had a thought. You could use a boiling flask to heat and hold water for lotions.