Vinegar.....

Hi

I took a class of cold process soap and the teacher told us that we should clean our material with vinegar... I did it... Everytime I use my stuff I wash it with soap and clean it with alcohol too.

I just did some recipe. During the drying process, everything was ok. This morning I took the soap in my hands and my hands were smelling vinegar.... :-(

How do you wash your material ???

When making soapI just wash my dishes in hot soapy water. I will sometimes wipe down my counters with some vinegar when I'm done but mostly just soapy water. I do spray with some alcohol and wipe down my counters when I start just to make sure everything is clean. Never use vinegar if you get soap on your skin. Just flush well with water. Vinegar will make it worse.

Do you mean the work surface or the washing up after, you are using vinegar?

I wipe my work surface down with vinegar after I have finished to neutralise any lye that may have got lose.

As a beginner myself I was wondering the same thing, what others use to wash up the utensils? I am finding this hard as everything is covered in soap or oil and its very difficult to get off, just using washing up liquid does not clean it very well.

The recipients I use to dilute the NaOH, I wash them with water and soap. I leave the rest covered until fresh soap on them gits firm. Then I try to get it off with some spoon, I keep the scraps and wash the bowls, spoons etc with water and soap, as well. It 's a method I got from someone around here and sadly I can't remember his/her name (thank you whoever you are!!)...

Fresh soap can be bad for the plumbing...

I read that somewhere to leave everything out overnight and wash the next day as by then the lye will have neutralised.

I did try this method but still found it difficult to wash off also my stick blender got a bit out of shape lol I can only guess it was due to the heat of the lye turning into soap on the plastic.

Vinegar will neutralize lye, so I spray it on the stuff in sink Lye bowl and spoon, rince with water then wash with soap
Vinegar is good in laundry room as a fabric softener.
Maybe you had misunderstood the teacher)

happyshopper said:

I read that somewhere to leave everything out overnight and wash the next day as by then the lye will have neutralised.

I did try this method but still found it difficult to wash off also my stick blender got a bit out of shape lol I can only guess it was due to the heat of the lye turning into soap on the plastic.

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You can absolutely do that. I make too much soap a one time to leave all those dishes laying around. I just scrape out as much as I can then wipe the rest out with papertowel or an old rag (I wash after it sits) then wash with soapy water.

I have a spray bottle of vinegar water that I spritz my utensils with, then put them in hot water with a bit of degreaser (makes for easier cleanup). I always wear gloves when I wash up and wipe down my counters( more to save my nails than anything else...lol)

Alcohol is a good sanitizer -- meaning it kills living cooties. If you're making lotion or salves where you want to minimize the living organisms in your products, then it is a very good idea to sanitize your work area, tools, containers, etc. I don't bother when I make soap -- I just make sure my work area is reasonably tidy as normal.

Vinegar, an acid, does neutralize alkali. If it makes you feel better to spray vinegar around your work area and rinse your utensils with it, then do so. You aren't going to harm anything by using vinegar on items that can tolerate normal soapmaking ingredients.

That said, just a good rinse with water is fine for cleaning up anything that's been in contact with lye -- lye container, counters, whatever. All that is strictly needed is dilution with plenty of water.

For cleaning soapy or oily bowls that may also have lye on them, I wipe the items with old towels to remove excess soap and oil residues and rinse the items well with water. I then use a synthetic detergent cleaner like Dawn and hot water to do a final wash. The soapy/oily/alkali-covered towels go into a plastic bucket far out of reach of curious hands and paws. Once the residues have plenty of time to saponify, the towels gets washed with dirty chore clothes.

For the sake of those who may have heard to use vinegar to treat a lye spill on your body -- DON'T. Never, never use vinegar on a lye burn to the body. The correct first aid is to rinse with plenty of plain cool running water. The faster and more thoroughly you get the lye rinsed off, the better. If the burn is on or near the eyes or mouth or is a deep or large burn, see a doctor for treatment immediately after you have rinsed well with water. Otherwise, treat small, mild lye burns just as you would any second degree burn. Keep it covered and moist. No oily salves, butter, or other fatty stuff.

Thank goodness this is what this thread is about, was worried some ppl are still recommanding vinegar to clean the body of lye...
Like DeeAnna said just cool running water for that!

Thank you for your recommandation. I will ajust my way of working and one day I won't bother you with my weird experience .....

shunt2011 said:

When making soapI just wash my dishes in hot soapy water. I will sometimes wipe down my counters with some vinegar when I'm done but mostly just soapy water. I do spray with some alcohol and wipe down my counters when I start just to make sure everything is clean. Never use vinegar if you get soap on your skin. Just flush well with water. Vinegar will make it worse.

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Thank you

Trix said:

Thank goodness this is what this thread is about, was worried some ppl are still recommanding vinegar to clean the body of lye...
Like DeeAnna said just cool running water for that!

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Thanks. Sorry to say In my class they told me to use the vinegar on our body to neutralise de lye (if ever it goes on me).... :-(. I'm learning alot here !!!!!

Stacyspy said:

I have a spray bottle of vinegar water that I spritz my utensils with, then put them in hot water with a bit of degreaser (makes for easier cleanup). I always wear gloves when I wash up and wipe down my counters( more to save my nails than anything else...lol)

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Good idea. Thanks

Vinegar, an acid, certainly does neutralize lye (an alkali, can be either NaOH or KOH), so that part of the story is correct. It seems like a logical suggestion to neutralize the lye if you get a lye burn, but people who make this kind of suggestion are not thinking very far ahead. So here's the rest of the story --

You know how when you make lye solution for soap how immediately steamy hot the water gets? The exact same thing happens when you mix vinegar with lye -- the two immediately react and release heat. The heat released is even worse, however, than when you mix just water and lye.

If you treat a lye spill on your body by adding vinegar to it, the heat released by the neutralization reaction will cause a thermal (heat) burn. And the damaged skin is likely to be further injured by the acid (the vinegar) as well. While normal skin can tolerate vinegar for awhile, injured skin is no longer normal skin!

So now you have to deal with a heat burn AND an alkali burn AND an acid burn -- and all right on the same spot. A lye burn is painful, but a triple burn like this hurts like the blazes. It's also going to be slower to heal since all this well-intentioned "first aid" has make a bad matter much worse.

So getting back to the real first aid for a lye burn --

Yes, lye and water also release heat when they combine. But the first aid is not just for a splash of water -- the first aid is to rinse the area with COOL, RUNNING water for some time -- the usual is 10-15 minutes. Cool water removes heat from the skin. Running water carries the lye off and away from the skin. The 10-15 minute time period is to make sure the job is done properly -- to ensure no trace of lye remains on the skin and to fully cool the heated and damaged skin and the deeper tissue below the skin.

I hope this back story helps to explain why water only is best for a lye burn.

In my experience, the best way to clean utensils, bowls etc is to wait a day or two. By then the soap batter is more like soap and less like oil. I don't run a lot of soapy stuff through the dishwasher b/c it creates a weird film on stuff, especially Gladware type stuff. I wipe everything down with paper towels, let it sit overnight and wash with hot water.