Recent content by kdm

Brand certainly. "Quality" is a much more difficult thing to gauge and it's relatioship to price or brand can only be subjective. For example, some folk think high quality vodka should be crisp and flavour-free. The less expensive brands tend to have flavours in them which, conversely, I...

10 tablespoons of (bruised) juniper berries 30 cardamom pods 1 tablespoon dried rose petals 5 teaspoons coriander seeds peel from 1 lemon a good pinch of lavage seed 3L of vodka at 40% ABV. Infuse for as long as you wish. 2 days is adequate. 2 weeks is also pallatable. It does get better with...

Maybe I'm just tentative. It honestly felt like it was about to burn or something. I'll try nuking it next time.

I'm Okay with the white: I didn't shred the commercial soap as I wanted the chunks. I'm more pissed about the amount of air in the melt. There's no way this was ever soft / wet enough for the stick belnder to have made any impact. maybe I simply didn't wet / heat it enough?

I like it. It took weeks in the airing cupboard, after slicing, to stiffen up, but it's kept its scent. I guess the white on top is some oxidisation? Of some Lye coming out of solution?

Not sure what went right or what went wrong, but this was a worthwhile experiment with some offcuts. The white flecks are a commercial soap I'd been saving in a jar for ages. I shredded a lot of my own lavender soap, moistened it and heated it. Possibly not enough water, possibly not enough...

I've just rebatched a load of shavings. Do we expect it to "melt" (as in completely liquid) or just to "soften" (such that they shavings clump together again)? I put it on really gentle heat, but stopped when it smelled like it was burning (on reflection, I don't think it was actually burning)...

OKay, you've given me soaparific expressions to search for! Yes, I also make lathe-turned pens. Sometimes, if I decide to do a plastic pen, when I make the blanks, I make one lump of polyester, then smash it up with a hammer, then embed the smashed pieces in a pot of polyester of a different...

Oh, I know exactly how much hydroxide is in there. I can balance it. That's this weekend's experiment. Either that, or I fix the gutters... Imagine I posted in a beginners forum and hadn't learned the acronyms yet. It does sound like the moisture level is a bit of an art. I was going to heat...

I have no desire to make meltable soap, but I've just read: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/how-do-i-rebatch-african-black-soap-recipes-please.25547/ Questions, questions!! Does this mean our hard bard soap simply "melts"? I thought it might burn? I have some which I added far to...

OKay. Busted exaggerating. I have one gallon. It has a number of uses: it was supposed to be a thickener in some hand gel I was making when the pandemic kicked off, but I found I had to add much more than the recipe suggested and the end result was sticky and ineffective as a hand sanitiser...

I'm going to start again. Here's what I ACTUALLY made: Beeswax 20g Castor Oil 50g Coconut Oil, 150g Lard, Pig 250g Olive Oil 100g 3% SF (I don't understand this setting - HELP!) 3% fragrance Total Water Weight 216.6 grams Total NaOH Weight 81.5 grams How I missed out the...

Nothing to learn from hiding oil! I don't understand SF. I think you're saying the beeswax doesn't do much to enhance for the soap, but it does absorb some of the lye? Once I added the lavender oil, I didn't notice any change in the required amount of lye. Is that normal? Surely extra oil should...

I do believe I ROFL'd.

My deal is to use (as much as possible) stuff I already have before I go buying specialist stuff. My shed is mostly metalwork and woodwork; I have beeswax. So far, the only thing I didn't find between my kitchen and my shed was the NaOH! Ah. I wonder.