Teach Soap

I've heard that you can't make good soap when it's raining outside. Does anyone know anything about this or have an opinion?

I can't answer your question as a soap maker, but as a chemist I can.

I can understand it not to work well in rainy of humid weather because lye absorbs moisture from the air. So the more humid it is, the more the lye will prematurely react.

I know that when I was working in the lab at school, when we worked with lye, we had to weigh it quickly, because if we waited, the weight would increase.

I also noticed the lye crystals turned kind of greasy looking, because of the water that reacted with it.

I soaped at my mother's house when it was raining with no problems. I had the water ready to go; measured out the amount of lye needed and added the lye to the water right away. I did do CPOP there, so I could unmold sooner.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Interesting..first of all I don't have much rain, but I do soap in a basement and I sometimes had a problem with very minimal moisture in the lye bottles, so now I make sure to keep them in a 5 gal used and well cleaned BB bucket and I get the oxygen/moisture remover packets from a nearby cannery for penny's. Works well to keep the lye dry. The funny lesson learned, one day I had poured the lye and let it set out for the day because something came up and when I got back the lye was melted into a hard rock with 1/2 inch of water on top..so it will attract the moisture if you wait to long to use it after measuring

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"Maintaining Balance Between People and Nature"