barbara mariottini

[barbara mariottini]

i was making soap the other day and this is what to my soap it does not look nice it looks like a volcano it 2 seconds for it to reach a heavy trace and it looked rocky her is is my soap recipe the lye the temperature went really high to 50 degree f within 2 seconds and didn't give me a chance to get my oil ready what happened and what can i do to prevent this and is this soap safe
32 ounces tallow or lard

4.33 ounces sodium hydroxide or lye
11.2 ounces distilled water
1 or 2 teaspoon essential oil

Gather supplies prepare molds
2 melt tallow in sauce pan
3 Wearing long sleeved shirt googles gloves add lye to water be careful don’t splash always add to water
never the other way around it might explode
4. when tallow cools to 100- and 125-degrees fare height and the lye solution is within 10 degrees oof tallow solution s solution pour lye into tallow
5 use immersion blender a and mix until trace and soap
6 Stir in essential oils
7 pour soap into molds

 

[AliOop]

Welcome to SMF, and sorry to hear you are having some troubles.

Which essential oil did you use, and what brand was it? Some essential oils will speed up trace if you add even a few drops: clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a few more. Sometimes the brand of essential oil may be known for adulterating their oils with alcohol or other ingredients that make the batter accelerate.

Also, I don't really know what you mean when you say this:

"the lye the temperature went really high to 50 degree f within 2 seconds"

That temperature - 50ºF - is actually not high at all, so I'm wondering if you meant to say 150ºF? My lye solution often reaches 150ºF and higher within a minute or so. That's what NaOH does when you mix it with water - it gets hot pretty quickly.

The lye solution doesn't really have to be within 10 degrees of the oil temperature. But if you were worried about the lye getting hot, all you had to do was cover it and wait for it to cool down. Some people put it in an ice bath to cool it off faster.