Why would this happen? Soap leaking Lye!?

[NewbieSoaper]

Two batches of soap I've made are now leaking lye! I suppose it's lye cause there is a zap on the substance. At first I thought it was oils, but after sitting for a month, I zap tested it. This is odd because the second day of coming out of the mold I zap tested it and it was fine - no leaky substances. But after about two weeks, the sides started leaking (for lack of a better word). :cry:
The tops and bottoms of the soap without the wet substance has no zap.

For the first batch, it was: 12.8 oz crisco, 9.6 oz of each olive and coconut oil, 11.3 oz water (with aloe), and 4.6 oz lye. At trace, I added .8 oz tea tree.

Second batch: 12.8 oz crisco, 9.6 oz each soybean and coconut oil, 4.6 oz lye and 12.16 oz water. At trace, I added 1/4 cup toasted orange peal.

Other batches made with the recipes above but with different additives at trace turned out ok thus far.

What do you more experienced soapers think happened? I froze the soap to remove from the mold - could that have done something? (Other froze batches were fine, though)

Should I re-batch? If so, do I add more oils?? Thank you!!!!!

 

[NewbieSoaper]

Anyone? I saw a posting similar to this in the past, but I was unable to find it using the search. I don't want to have to toss these batches!

 

[kaseencook]

I actually was just writing about when the same thing happened to me in another post. My second ever batch of soap started to leek clear lye just as yours sounds. I didn't know why it happened, as the recipie was fine, it was most likely a mistake in my measuring scale which wasn't that great at the time - and I also was doing small batches which increases the chance of error greatly as the lye measurement must be more exact, where is large batches there is room for an error of a gram or two. . I've since got a more sophisticated scale and have never had that happen again - That was also switched to doing HP at that point.
Perhaps you could try the recipie in a larger batch or try it as HP (I do 100C for 1 hour in the oven, until clearish and cohesive, with a stir at 30min and adding additives and EO/FO after cooked without cooling and quick moulding). At least then you won't have to wait so long to see if it works. I assume you have probably already put it through a lye calc and ruled out the recipie as an issue. You could always check it in another lye calc though, I use SoapCalc 9. Perhaps chrisco may throw off the calculations - I don't remember that oil listed in the lye calc. Well there's some ideas anyway! Prob just a fluke!

 

[kaseencook]

Oh yea, I was also going to say that I tried to rebatch that lye leaking batch by adding more oils and putting it in the oven for a bit, but it would just not work (recombine) and there was always the risk that there was a pocket of lye liquid hiding in there somewhere, and I didn't want to use it. I did keep it though and it was a very crumbly soap - I though it may work well for cleaning applications like laundry and dishes so I kept it around.

 

[topcat]

I had a soap overheat in its mould and it ended up leaking lye liquid from each end and lots of lye pockets through the soap. I grated it up finely (wearing gloves) and rebatched it by adding extra oils to soak up the excess lye. Not sure if I really needed to add the oils, but better safe than sorry I thought, and the soap worked out fine. I used Lindy's whipped rebatch tutorial here on the forum.

Tanya