Mixing Fragrance Oils with lye water has anyone done this?

[zolveria]

it was not... I do this all the time.. i have pictures I have posted. with the same amount. very nice hard bar. after cure it last a long time.. as for the oils the are slow moving.. My bars unmold in 8 hours and go in there little box to finish curing after cutting. very nice sharp edges and shiny smooth. i shape and edge all bars upon first unmold..
TO = titanium Oxide
smh= shaking my head
the water was part of the intial water..
this is not the first time i have attempted to use this fragrance.. oil
it been sitting on the shelf for almost 2 years. at ULTRA stregnth.

so 1/4 of an ounce was used. Normally i have no ZAP AFTER 8 hours .. this zapped me.. i made the same recipe yesterday and no zap different fragrance oils of course.. Moons ago i would get zapped managed to figure out how to not make soap Lye heavy. i use 2:1 ratio water to lye. and sometime just a tad lower.. depending on my sat/unsat.

I know the only way around this is to add more water
I dont want to extend my dry time , cure time and unmolding time

I also Soap at room temp

the speckles is my fault. due to the TO.. i normally use Kaolin..

the soap will sit until it cures.. it usable let me post you a picture in a few..

when i say leak i mean i can brush my hand on the soap and feel oil .. the leaking is not drastic.., she gonna dry and the zap will go away.
Just i will have to wait longer

and my apologies it save on scents not citric
http://www.saveonscents.com/product_info.php/products_id/2138
today it did not ZAP .. this soap is hard on edge and some spots in center are soft. smh
This little soapy not making it to market at all...

 

[Saponificarian]

I tried this method 2 days ago with a Tallow, Shea, Rice Bran, HO Sunflower recipe. Used a fragrance oil that I know is a PITA to work with and that I have a love/hate relationship with. Wild Honey fragrance from EBC. I hate this fragrance for the first 4 weeks in soap, it is the one soap I cure outside the house but it is such a lovely fragrance from the 5th week of cure, much like honey without the sickening sweetness some honeys have. It is soooo strong and not in a good way. It rices and separates and just generally misbehave.

I added the fragrance oil to my cooled lye Water and it immediately rices. You could see scattered speckles much like oatmeal. I didn’t want to start stick blending lye water so I poured the mixture into my oils hand stirrred and pour into my mold. It didn’t turn to stone like it usually does and I couldn’t make a stiff peak for like 20minutes after pouring in the mold.

This method did help with those fragrances that race and rice Down side is the speckles though. The batch looks like I added ground oatmeal and it muted the fragrance Not a good thing with some fragrance but definitely a great thing with this particular fragrance because I can cure this batch in the house. It’s smelling like a 4 weeks old batch so in all, I think this is the method I will be using for this particular fragrance.

 

[Veggiebin]

How do these quick reacting fo’s react when you add them to your oils? I’ve done that and it works fine, maybe traces earlier, but easier to control. I’m not understanding why you wouldn’t just add it to your oils instead of the lye.

 

[Saponificarian]

Same fragrance added to oils and then lye Water gives me soap on a stick with just hand stirring. Most EBC fragrances are not for CP so I knew what I was getting into.

 

[zolveria]

Yes.. mine was workable just weeping a little yesterday they dried up.. these will def. Take q LONGER time. Mixing with lye water does help..

 

[DeeAnna]

Here's my guess about this, thanks to Carolyn, Zolveria, and Saponificarian's explanations --

A difficult FO is difficult because some chemicals in the FO are reacting almost instantly with the NaOH. How you present the FO to the NaOH can make a difference in the outcome.

If you mix the FO directly to the lye, the FO will react quickly with the NaOH and form larger, visible lumps/speckles. I think, as did Saponificarian, that if you stick blended the FO into the lye solution, the speckles might be smaller, but I'm going to bet the FO-lye mixture will also become thicker.

If you mix the FO with the fats first and then add the lye, the FO will be broken up into small droplets by the time the NaOH "sees" the FO. The result is the solid bits will be much smaller and won't make visible speckles, but these tiny bits will thicken up the soap quickly.

If my idea is correct, this process may be similar to the process of making gravy. If you drop dry flour into boiling liquid, the gravy will have large lumps and won't thicken properly, because most of the flour is bound up in the lumps. The lumps are created by the hot liquid reacting with the flour on the outside of the clumps and sealing the surface. If you make gravy correctly -- either by making a roux or by mixing the flour with a bit of water and adding this flour-water slurry to the hot liquid -- the gravy will be thicker and lump free because the flour particles are small and well mixed by the time they react with the hot liquid.

Another analogy is using sugar in your soap batch. If you dissolve the sugar in plain water and then add NaOH, all goes well. If you make your NaOH solution and add granulated sugar to that, the sugar makes a clumpy mess. The NaOH is reacting with the sugar in both situations, but the reaction seals the granulated sugar into clumps, and the sugar-NaOH reaction is incomplete. Dissolved sugar reacts fully with the NaOH.

 

[zolveria]

You are absolutely correct I waited until my lye water was cool. Meaning I can hold the cup in my hand she did not clump at all.

In the end I can swirl. But using squeeze bottle tech. Is not gonna work with this FO

 

[Saponificarian]

I love it when DeeAnna talk soap science

 

[DeeAnna]

Awwwwww!

Remember, though, I'm just guessing about this. No guarantee that I'm right.

 

[OldHippie]

A FO that uses that much lye activity will have a definite impact on the hidden superfat level.

 

[cmzaha]

As DeeAnna says above, I always figured it was the lye reacting with some of the fo chemicals instantly, and I do not want the clumpies, no matter how tiny, in my soap. So I just have to deal with naughty fo's some other way

 

[paradisi]

A FO that uses that much lye activity will have a definite impact on the hidden superfat level.

Not at all a given.

Plant materials used as colorants (alkanet, indigo, other pH sensitives), honey, titanium dioxide, other colorants like UM's all have reactivity with lye solutions, but do not affect superfat level. For that matter, many essential oils are reactive with lye solutions due to inherent pH-reactive components, and they don't affect superfat level either.

Nor do fragrance oils, either, unless you're buying adulterated ones. You might benefit from reading about them from more reputable sources than wikipedia etc.

Here's a for-free thought experiment: if fragrance oils contained vegetable oils, they would both leave oil-spotting on paper (and ones from reputable suppliers do not)-- and fragrance oils, kept for years in a soaper's cabinet, would begin to smell off as the fragrance oil went rancid. And that doesn't happen, either.

 

[zolveria]

well all is fine.. I posted this question because and old timer has been doing this for far longer than I. mixing difficult FO in lye water.. and she 2o older than me.. and it worked for her. i was nervous. but as long as my lye water is room temp.. all went and will go well..

 

[OldHippie]

Not at all a given.

Plant materials used as colorants (alkanet, indigo, other pH sensitives), honey, titanium dioxide, other colorants like UM's all have reactivity with lye solutions, but do not affect superfat level. For that matter, many essential oils are reactive with lye solutions due to inherent pH-reactive components, and they don't affect superfat level either.

Nor do fragrance oils, either, unless you're buying adulterated ones.

If I'm missing something here, please tell me what is is. It seems pretty simple from where I'm standing.

A basic tenet in chemistry is the balanced chemical equation. Any change in the reactants effects the products. Soap Calculators will give you values that provide a balanced equation.

Superfatting or Lye Discounting means that there is not enough lye available to sponify the available oil; when the saponification is complete, there is still some unsaponified oil remaining.
Any additional reactants, such as those that you list, will use up some of the lye, and less will be available for saponification, resulting in more unsaponified oils, i.e. higher superfat level. You just can't upset the stoichiometric ratio by throwing in additional reactants and expect the products to remain the same.

You might benefit from reading about them from more reputable sources than wikipedia etc.

You might benefit from reading my posts before you respond.

Oh, don't presume to know what I based my point of view on. I did plenty of research. It's what I do. I provided the examples to give you a starting point if you wanted to pursue it.

 

[Saponificarian]

I can tell you that there was NO saponification when I added my fragrance oil to my cool lye water. My lye Water remained clear while the fragrance separated on top of the lye water. There was a chemical reaction but it was not saponification.

If you are this interested in the whole chemistry of it, why not try it yourself? I am sure you have everything to try it out and then see for yourself. Do an experiment and let us know how it goes. I mean, we might just learn something new.

 

[jakropelnicki]

okay so this is what i did.
water had 1tbs of salt and 1tbsp of sugar.
13 oz water
6 oz lye
1tbs Green Leaf & Bamboo Ultra (save on citric)
my slow moving recipe 42:58
TO= 1/4 tsp in lye water did not help.. left speckles.. i never really mastered TO i use Kaolin normally. ( speckle in Soap Pic) smh

lye water temp 98
added 1 tbsp of salt and sugar.

added 1 oz of water to fragrance oil. then added it to lye water.
then added it to my oils.

PAST EXPERIENCE: my oils will sieze and just become Pudding stiff.
Now with this method. I had small speckle and modereate thickening. will post pictures

I'm curious to know what adding salt and sugar to lye water does?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I'm curious to know what adding salt and sugar to lye water does?

Salt helps to make a harder bar, but needs to be used sparingly to prevent it inhibiting the lather - balanced recipe soaps don't lather well in salt water.

The sugar changes the physical structure of the soap, how each soap molecule binds to the next one, which improves the lather.

If you've made soap without them, I would make a batch with the salt, one with sugar, and then one with both.

 

[Saponificarian]

Old Hippie, why not post your comments and such here instead of sending me a direct message? You never know, others might learn from your enlightening comments and such.

 

[Shiningdown]

I've tried adding a little to my water/lye solution. By the time was all mixed with oils and reached trace, I couldn't smell a thing. I did smell it in the beginning before trace but nothing after. Even the next day after being unmolded there was nothing Cheap EO? Not enough EO?Did the lye eat it up or alter it? I'm not certain. It was a lavender EO.

 

[Saponificarian]

I've tried adding a little to my water/lye solution. By the time was all mixed with oils and reached trace, I couldn't smell a thing. I did smell it in the beginning before trace but nothing after. Even the next day after being unmolded there was nothing Cheap EO? Not enough EO?Did the lye eat it up or alter it? I'm not certain. It was a lavender EO.

What’s the percentage of the EO to your batch? I did noticed that adding the fragrance to the lye water affected the fragrance strength. I noticed it wasn’t as strong as when I added the fragrance to either the oils or the batter but that was a good thing in my case. I wouldn’t use this method for fragrances that behave or just slightly accelerates.