Teach Soap

I'm glad you got the experience. Did you run the recipe through a soap calc? When I make small tester batches, I use grams. I weigh everything separately and into the small pot it goes. For glycerin soap, I use phenophtalein. If it turns pink, it still has excess lye. If it stays clear it's done.

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

yeap. I used the BB calc using % and told it I wanted a total of 300g oils. It did the rest. Sadly, it didn't tell me the directions at the link just wanted me to have flash-backs from my childhood.

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

After a few days the little soaps were still somewhat sticky and not very firm. I decided to re-heat per the guidelines on the webpage I was using. Sunday evening I put all the little soaps in a double boiler on low and stirred every half hour. This was going well and I felt like I was making progress driving off the excess water or alcohol or whatever was creating the soft stickiness. After 2 hours of gentle heating, I knew I was almost there - just one or two more times and it would be ready to go back into the molds for a second try.

Let me pause here and say I can get a bit focused sometimes. So the entire day before at work, I couldn't wait to get home and check if it was any better than when I left that morning. The unexpected 6 hour round trip in the middle of the night to the Dallas airport, I kept thinking about how to fix it. Then arriving back in OKC a mere 15 minutes late for work and all day at work, I couldn't wait to get home so I could fix it. I did get a 20 minute nap in my car at lunch. . .

Back to Sunday evening. After 2 hours of gentle heating, I knew I was almost there - then I fell asleep. After 42 hours with just a 20 minute nap, it all caught up with me and down I went. An hour and a half later I woke up and the house was smelling strongly of the FO I'd used in the glycerin soap. I rushed to the kitchen and immediately shut the heat off and moved the pan. The water in the bottom pot had of course boiled off. When I lifted the lid and went to stir the glop it boiled up - I guess you all around here would say it 'volcanoed'. Anyway after stirring for a minute or two it calmed down.

In for a penny, in for a pound so I spooned it back into the molds as best I could and went to bed. Properly this time. The molds I used for this are about the size of ice cubes because I didn't want this soap to sit on the sink for long. I had in mind for a face soap. Just a few uses per bar then a fresh one.

I tested it Monday afternoon when I woke up and it feels incredible on my skin and leaves my face very soft. It still has its wonderful soft floral fragrance. The only thing is, it's brown and lumpy. This evening, I put one of the lumps into about 2x of warm water. It is melted nicely and in that state is not such an unappealing color. It used to be this, now it's this, but in the water it's more like this.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. I know. I'm lucky the only tragedy is the color and odd shapes of the soap. I could've burnt the house down. Literally. What I'd like to ask is if anyone knows if I get some distilled water and put all the little stones (cause that's what they look like, silly little 2" stones) in it, can I turn this into a liquid soap? What else would I have to do to help preserve it? citric acid? borax? lemon juice? something else I have to run out and purchase? Or should I just leave them the heck alone and since they're meant for the Christmas baskets, call them coal and tell my family Santa forced me to add it.

I would just leave them alone and call it a day.

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