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20190609_163436 by kmkieva posted Jun 9, 2019 at 8:44 PM I recently made a "mostly olive oil" soap, and I have white spots that I've never seen before. I've used the soap and have encountered no problems with it, i.e., lye pockets, but I want to ask if it is safe to sell this soap.

I have to dispose of "old" lye that has clumped together. I contacted my waste disposal company and they say they don't handle hazardous waste. I went to earth911.com and couldn't find a listing for "lye" or "sodium hydroxide." Can someone help me figure this out? I want to do the right thing by...

It's been about a year since I made soap and I'm restarting, but the lye I have (crystal beads) has solidified. Is there a way to get it back into bead form? I can break it up into chunks, but that makes precise measuring very difficult.

Epic failure yesterday with a cream soap (bar soap made with cream). I know what I did wrong, so that's not a problem. But I was washing the dishes this morning and found this stuff, a jelly-like, translucent gunk. Can you tell me what it is? No, I'm not dumping it down the drain; I just wanted...

I've tried working with EOs but I found I get a wicked headache, even with windows open and fan blowing. I thought about getting a respirator, but now I'm wondering whether FOs would have the same effect. Thoughts? I'm also going to get the BB fragrance sampler.

I mixed up the lye solution for a "mostly olive oil" soap before I remembered I need to add salt and sugar. I added it AFTER adding the lye and now the salt and sugar won't dissolve. Do I throw out the lye solution and start over? If so, what is the safest way to dump it?

I looked for this topic but couldn't find what I was looking for....Can anyone recommend a respirator to use with essential oils? I get a wicked headache as soon as I open the container. I'd rather not work with them at all but of course people like scents, so I'm shopping around.

Note to self....if you decide to increase the recipe by a factor of 3, make sure your pot is big enough to handle it. Once the oil was melted and ready for the lye, I realized the pot wasn't big enough to handle it all. Mad dash (with BF's help) to pour half the oil in a second pot and then...

I've come across this acronym, DOS; what does it mean?

I bought a plastic, 8-bar mold for a M&P soap and it worked out fine. I used that same mold for my first "from scratch" batch of goat milk soap and just demolded it; big chunks came away with the mold. I used the following from a published recipe: coconut oil 76 33% Crisco 13% Castor oil 6.5%...

I just finished my second batch and it went MUCH BETTER than the first. My question, though, is there are lye crystals in the plastic bowl and on the spatula I used to mix it into the goats milk; how do I clean them? Also, I let the lye temperature drop too low; I assumed I couldn't heat it up...

I had an unexpected day off today and decided it was time to stop reading and start doing. I found a simple beginner's recipe in "Smart Soapmaking, the "All Veggie Grocery Store Soap #1, containing just olive oil, coconut oil, water, and lye. I decided to include Sweet Almond Oil as the...