Recent content by Andy7891

Thank you all for the information on Wintergreen. I didn't know about health hazards until researching it after my soap fiasco. I am a little concerned because it is going to an elderly family member as a gift. Also younger people that may also be on blood thinners. I used 3.1% (per SoapCalc's...

Had my first experience of accelerating trace due to fragrance. The fragrance totally turned into like a wet clay consistency! As soon as it hit the lightly traced soap batter. Definitely a bummer! But I was very happy with my in-the-pot swirl. After I cut the soap, there was still pockets of...

I have only ever got soap to trace by mixing by hand once. I tried again recently and eventually switched to the stick blender. Although, I think both recipes had olive oil. I have heard of people using blenders, which may be cheaper and or easier to come by than a stick blender. If soap is...

This was on Wednesday, but today I cleaned the dishes. I had 140g of beer left over. I added 58g of water. Then decided I wanted 500g of soap (a good test batch size, but I think I'll start going smaller for test batches). Also, I think the heat from adding the lye may have burnt the beer? May...

OK. I just want to say, I did follow two "rules" (not actually rules, come to find out) of the water to fat ratio of 38%, and the lye to water ratio of 2:1. I think this is a mistake a beginner can easily make. Hopefully, a google search will lead a new soaper to this forum and with a grain of...

Thanks for the response- I can tell you put a lot of work into it. I have over 100 posts on this forum. And I have been a supporting member. I am not really a beginner but I thought this post belonged in the beginner forum. I was kind of rushing that day I made the soap- anyone who is a little...

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask! So far that's two of us! Please and thanks!

Looks like I may be learning how to make laundry soap with this lye heavy batch.

I had a typo- my total oils were 584g

So, I heard that 38% water to oil ratio was good for soapmaking. And then, I heard that 2:1 water to lye ratio was a good lye concentration. So I had a lye and water mixture that was 2:1 (222 g water, 113g lye (not exactly 2:1 but pretty close). 222/.38 = 584g (38% of 584g oil = 222g water). So...

I may try that. I will not give up yet! And I am definitely on board with shredding the soap to "re-batch" it, using it as confetti, instead of trying to melt the soap, as last time I tried to melt some old soap in the crock pot it just did not go great. Great tips, thanks!!

Here they are. I think the bacon smell is too strong to be practical for a body soap, but maybe you could clean it enough or use uncured bacon or something that wasn't so strong smelling to begin with.

A friend of mine cooked a few pounds of bacon and saved me the grease. "Cleaned" it once, hope it doesn't smell too much like bacon when it is done. Man, you can get a lot of grease out of bacon! 1 pound of bacon might be close to 1/2 cup "lard" which seems like a lot! Anyway, fun soaping today...

This was a couple days ago, but I made my second hot process soap in two weeks. Third life time total. It went really great. I stopped stick blending at a light trace, 'cause I'm not one to follow the rules (I kept seeing to get to medium trace). It cooked really well, no volcano, and plenty of...

Used my "Lots of Lather" Quick Mix from Bramble Berry for the first time. We made homemade yogurt in my house, and with the whey left over from straining the yogurt, I made soap. It was pretty fast using the quick mix. Less retrieving/returning olive oil and coconut oil from the kitchen, getting...