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NaOH is the chemical formula for Sodium Hydroxide, the sort of lye you use to make solid soap. I think NaOh is a typo and it should say NaOH. CO2 is Carbon Dioxide. As for mol, it is the symbol for Mole, the SI unit for amount of substance, defined as around 6*10^23 molecules.

I've made a few batches of soap with honey as an additive (60 grams per kilo of oil). I noticed the soap is a bit slow to set, and the soap residue in my equipment was a bit oilier than usual. So, I got to thinking, honey is acidic so it probably reacts with lye. I tried removing the honey as an...

I decided to experiment with the lye. I have discovered that hot moist lye will corrode the glazing on ceramic containers and will eat through baking paper.

I just opened my supplies cabinet after a week, and realized I had left the lid off my tub of lye. I have had rainy weather so the air moisture is up, too. As a result, it looks as if at least some of my lye has deliquesced, that is to say, absobed enough moisture from the air to dissolve in it...

With water, the CO2 has a better chance of penetrating into the mixture, and new molecules of NaOH will move in as ones near the liquid surface react, so the reaction will happen a lot faster. That is how you end up with soda ash on top of uncovered soap. And, as another comment on the risks of...

Hygroscopic means it absorbs water from the air. However, to get a carbonate you need to get carbon from somewhere, and that is where the CO2 is needed.

I started wondering about lye turning to soda ash. I found a figure 1800 mg/m3 for CO2 concentration of room air. A single molecule of CO2 will react with two NaOH molecules, the molecular weights are 44g/mol for CO2 and 40g/mol for NaOH, so to turn a gram of lye into soda ash would take about...

Maybe you should specify that the temperatures are in degrees Fahrenheit, and include the equivalent in Celsius. I know you can get oils to 120 centigrade, I'm not sure how hot a lye mixture can get.

According to Springer, sodium hydroxide dissolves glass particularly fast, as far as hydroxides go. Then again, water also dissolves silicate glass. I personally wouldn't worry about the trace sodium silicate in the soap. As for keeping the implements separate, sodium hydroxide is a component...

Okay, I got the shipment of lye and made the soap. The final recipe was 50g Olive oil 50g Castor oil 50g Coconut butter 50g Rapeseed oil 40g glycerine Lye: 28g NaOH 1 dl water 1 tsp bentonite clay 10 drops lavender EO 5 drops vanilla EO 1 tsp Titanium dioxide (White...

Heh, I just noticed I hadn't filled in the "Location" box in my profile. I don't quite want KOH enough to pay for overseas shipping :wink:

Well, there's been a major snag. The soap making supplier isn't stocking KOH, and all the pharmacies are out of stock, too. I guess I'm going to have to make a hard bar.

I have had limited success in making a hard tallow soap from wood ash lye. For perspective, the lye you get from a half-gallon of slightly compressed weed ash made about a palm-sized inch-thick puck of harsh soap. If you're going to try it for the sake of doing things from scratch, I...

So far I've just thrown in fresh coffee grounds and accepted it as a given that the soap will come out as brown. On the other hand, I suspect that the soap would suck most of the moisture out of the grounds as long as you don't use them while they're still warm.

I suppose you could just go to the supermarket and pick up a sack of coals, and either sift out the dust or grind a few bits. I'm not sure if it being active is all that important in use as a soap colorant. I haven't tried it, though.

Some of the lye calculators let you choose to use KOH instead of NaOH. Also, KOH weighs 56.1056 g/mol, and NaOH 39.99711 g/mol, so multiplying the NaOH weight by 1.4 gives you the right weight of pure KOH to use.

What's wrong with discolored lather? Does it mean the colorant is going to the skin? I'm asking this because I think it would make a neat "novelty soap" if you could get a nice dark colored lather, bonus points if you can somehow make it different color from the soap.

Thanks. I left it out because I didn't know where to get any (other than a twenty pound sack of cement), but I luckily managed to find an actual soapmaking supplier, so I'm adding that.

I'm going to try my hand at making shaving cream. I'm going to make a small batch at first, so I'm not stuck with a years' worth of stuff-not-fit-for-shaving. Here's the recipe I'm planning on trying (please excuse the metric system): 50g Olive oil 50g Castor oil 50g Coconut butter 50g...

Okay, that brings up a question; is it just that the crayon manufacturers won't shell out for an FDA approval, or is there something else? I know that crayons are generally considered safe for kids of any age, so I find it hard to believe there's something in the crayons that's actually damaging...