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When you've got 2 dissimilar liquids boiling in a pot, they can bubble violently if the bottom inside the pot is perfectly smooth. Inert bits of gravel gives the water a bunch of jagged points for relieving the tension.

Ugh... turns out I didn't feel like firing that baby up late in the afternoon, so I just left it in the pot and let it stew in there, the idea being that some of the steam would condense on the lid, drip back down onto the botched batch, and soften the curds enough to saponify. It turned into...

Something went wrong... I got curds, but the mixture didn't become opaque. I spooned some out, and it looked to be a few yellowish curds of soap along with the clearest tallow I ever saw. Lao Tzu said "failure is an opportunity"... rather than just throw my failed batch out, I'm going to see...

As long as it gets me clean and contains no pockets of unreacted lye, it will work for me. :D

Is it possible to use lye and straight tallow to make soap (with no olive or coconut oil)? I anticipate that a straight tallow soap will turn out hard. Has anyone else tried this, and if so, what problems should I watch out for?

I forget which other poster told me about adding vinegar to the water I use when I get ready to deodorize a batch of tallow, but it worked! I filled a large stainless stock pot about 1/4 full of water and enough vinegar to give it an odor, then drop a handful of gravel into the bottom, and...

The active ingredient in poison ivy is a carbolic acid-like substance called urushiol... zinc oxide is an alkali and therefore neutralizes it. You'd have to do some research and find out the name of the active ingredient in jewel weed, and what kind of chemical it is. For example the THC in...

Aside from those tacky little pine air fresheners for car interiors, pine fragrances don't seem to exist anywhere! :cry: Surely there has to be some kind of pine-scented oil suitable for soapmaking, one that doesn't contain irritating turpentine compounds?

For all practical purposes, denatured alcohol is ethanol with a bit of methanol added to make it poisonous. Should be no problem, as long as you let your soap air out thoroughly and keep it away from pilot lights and flames.

Sounds like you've run into the acid/alkali incompatibility with silicone. I once made the mistake of using a silicone rubber gasket in a lid for a bottle of muriatic acid, and guess what? In a couple of days, the acid ate into the rubber, leaving a white crust of silica (aka sand) where the...

To Lindy... rendering is exactly what I've been doing to my grease. I was confused at first, because in chemistry, "rendering" means adding a strong acid (e.g., muriatic acid) to the soap solution in order to extract the waxy fatty acids. As for things like ham rind, beef trimmings, etc etc... I...

When I deodorize and decolorize my grease, I just put about 3 inches of water beneath it in a big stock pot and let the steam bubble up through the fat for a couple of hours... but can this also work for driving the rancidity out of oils and fats which have not gone off too badly? I'm only...

Yep. The results are copper oleate + a clear solution of sodium sulfate.

I can get coconut & other oils at reasonable prices, but I get my tallow as a kitchen by-product. I've found it easy to purify my tallow by bubbling steam through it in a stock pot to remove much of the meat odor and color and then freeze it into bars (the result resembles paraffin wax) until...

Moving to soap-making recipes and tutorials...

Copper soap, aka copper oleate, is one of many heavy-metal soaps. I learned quite a bit about these when I studied oil painting & chemistry as a hobby... Maybe most posters to this board know the difference between sodium and potassium, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people don't...

Hi everyone... I'm not exactly new to soapmaking, but am re-kindling my interest in it. I've made copper soap, for example, to use as rot-stopper on lumber. Currently, I've started de-odorizing all the cooking grease I've saved and frozen (I let steam bubble up through it until it no longer...