question about a recipe

[mychicknpi]

I have a very good friend that makes a soap recipe out of one of my soap books, it's from the 70's and goes on volume not weight. And I wonder about the lye volume in it. Plus, she said she couldn't unmold it until today, it was made Thursday morning and was still very warm to the touch. She says it is still very soft, still goopy in some places. She greased her mold, which I don't think did her any favors, but she says that's what she should do. And she said that her soap is still zapping her....I wonder if it will work out the more mature it gets....and could using an FO from walmart (don't know if it is skin safe) have anything to do with it? She also tried to use food coloring. I told her even though it faded to white that she might get colored skin....we don't soap the same.
Anyway, here's the recipe:
2 quarts lard
3 cups rain water
1 cup lye

I thought about running it through soapcalc, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.....too lazy to get my lye out and dump it into a cup and weigh it, let alone my lard....
Thanks,
Anna

 

[Healinya]

I'm too lazy to get my lye and lard out, measure it, then weigh it.... but that sounds like an aweful lot of lye. I hope someone else can help you more. I wouldn't use it.

ETA: you could take a measuring cup, fill it halfway with water. Then submerse enough lard under the water to make the water level go up one cup. Then use that lard to weigh it out and do the math to see what two quarts would weigh. There may be too many variable factors to really know what is going wrong when you think about what could be in the rainwater today that wasn't in it 40 years ago, and the fragrance oil.

 

[ChrissyB]

These days, soapers should only measure their oils, water and lye by weight, not volume. And metric (grams) is much more accurate than ounces.
That is very outdated soaping advice, in my opinion.