My soap thing today was an epic fail. And a total waste of a huge amount of oils! … and when I looked at it this morning there was all this oil laying on the top surface.
Is there any way to save it? Do I just throw it in the trash?
I feel your pain and tears,
@ewhitake. When I’ve discovered a lye error, I have immediately turned the soap fail into a
Hot Process rebatch with
additional lye water to bring it up to the correct sap for the batch of oils used. I chop the soap up, put everything into a large stock pot, cover it, and put it in the oven at 200F until the soap melts. In your case, you have so much oil that you may want to pour off what you can, combine it with the lye water, and blend up to emulsion or trace if you can.
(If the soap is lye heavy, I do the same as above with the required amount of oils plus additional water. Maybe
@Vicki C will do this with her sister soap fail and report the results?)
Basically, you will turn the batch into Hot Processed soap. You will probably need to add even more liquid to get the soap to fully melt, and some of the water evaporates during the cook. I use a stick blender to homogenize the soap at the end of the cook. If you add lactic acid or a little yogurt, the soap will be more fluid to pour into a mold. Watch some videos on HP soap making.
My suggestion above is a lot of extra work to salvage a batch of soap. Unless you want the learning experience, you will be better off tossing the batch and chalking the expense up to the price of a valuable lesson!
and I'll definitely take dishes any day instead.
