Used liquid measure instead of weight..can it be saved?

[Slabobbin]

Ok, so I know I'm a dunce. I will go ahead and get that out of the way. So my soap turned out very, very lye heavy. Can my soap be saved? Is there a way to melt it back down? And if so, how do I know what to add in order to save it? I hate to waste all of those ingredients!

 

[Lucy]

How big was your recipe? Unless you know how much all of the oils you used weighs there is no safe way to determine how much extra you would have to add to a rebatch to make it right. If it is not a big recipe I would say discard it and start over.

 

[soapbuddy]

How big was your recipe? Unless you know how much all of the oils you used weighs there is no safe way to determine how much extra you would have to add to a rebatch to make it right. If it is not a big recipe I would say discard it and start over.

I agree. If it's just a small batch, toss it.

Irena

 

[Slabobbin]

It wasn't a HUGE batch but it was enough that I hate to waste it. I read somewhere that the "old timers" used to keep adding stuff and then sticking their tongue to it in order to test it. I'm scared to try though.

 

[carebear]

In theory you MIGHT be able to fix it... depending on what you did in the first place. If you worked with all liquid oils or packed the measuring cups if they were soft butters then re-measure each out again and weigh it (weight the container, tare, add the oil to get the weight). Then enter these amounts into your soap calculator to see how much lye you should have had.

Do the same with the lye - to see ABOUT how much you actually used.

Then you will have to mess around with the soap/lye calculator to figure out how much oil you need to add. Once you have an idea for that, melt down your lye heavy soap (rebatch it) and add in the oil and cook it till not lye heavy anymore.

But personally I wouldn't. It's risky and it's just gonna end up wasting more materials.

Regarding the tongue test - yea a lot of us do it. But only with soaps we're pretty sure are ok. To do it, you can wet your finger and rub across the surface of a bar of soap or a bit out of your HP batch then put your finger to your tongue. If you feel a bit of zap, like you get if you lick a battery, then it's lye heavy. (I personally just lick the bar, but I'm lazy and I'm not selling the soap). But that's really only a double check. You don't want to actually put raw soap on your tongue - I know cause I've done it!!!