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Yeah. They were my volcanic black sand and pumice etc. I figured the LOTR / Hobbit theme would be appropriate and only had a short time to think of, design, build, and implement labels.

I can send you some "Soap of Doom" labels if you want. Much cooler, or hotter, than Raglan anything :) Good use of the boy to gather and support the soapmaking.

I expect that you are right there. For these sorts of recipes whole-grams are not a cumbersome unit.

Water is essential for most of the soaping reactions people discuss here. Different types of recipes use differing amounts and ratios of water, but they pretty much all require water. Once the soap reaction has finished, though, the water becomes less important and much of it evaporates from the...

I am relatively new and simply purchased the cheapest items that seemed about right. In my upgrading I'll probably be looking for: The stick blender blade to be removable. That's the little spinning blade tip thing, not the whole click-on blade assembly. Soap collects underneath the blade and...

welcome,welcome

Absolutely! The same beach I got my black volcanic sand from also yields the occasional pumice boulder. It will have floated in as the main volcanic spouts that produced our pumice were both quite away north of here … much closer to KiwiMoose. Next time I see one in the wild I am going to...

Brace yourself, this may hurt a little :) Short answer Potassium fatty acid salts tend to be more water soluble than their Sodium counterparts [1]. Long answer Soaps are the water-soluble sodium (Na) or potassium (K) salts of fatty acids (FA). As such they are anionic surfactants. Soaps are...

I’m with you there. The more I learn the more interesting this becomes – creative chemistry at a grassroots level. The history of the science is also pretty interesting. The first sentence of Nickerson’s 1932 MSc thesis [1] is: “It is probable that no single class of compounds has been the...

I just scooped a double-hand full and plonked it on a tarp in the back of the car. When I got home I hand washed it in a bucket with a hose - not much visible contamination to start with, and put it into a plastic container. I then dried a small bowl full to get my weights and water amounts...

My 'soap of doom' was like solvol, perhaps even more scratchy. I used black volcanic beach sand, moderately coarse, in it. I used 150g dried sand and 100g pumice in that one, and it is a serious stripper. If I could find (or make) a finer sand, and perhaps use less, I reckon It'd get a bit more...

My pumice is also quite fine. Not quite rock flour but much finer than I'd anticipated or was used to. I used 75g pumice and 25g of dried kiwifruit seeds in a batch made with 1kg of oil. The seeds provide some visual impact as well as some slightly coarser exfoliant. The resulting soap has a...

well done. Awesome marine (?mermaid) whimsy soap loaf.

it looks yummy and whimsically marine.

Which is why I am gonna understand the underlying molecular reactions, while your soaps are gonna look and smell great :thumbs:

nevermind:beatinghead:

Yeah, it looks quite carefully shadowed and accented. well done.

I made a batch of Zany's faux-faux-seawater castile soap - I used actual seawater. It feels lovely and handles well, and is entirely well behaved so far. I also took the opportunity to use a gift-mould from my son :-) Time will tell re soapiness behaviours I guess.

Ahhh yes, understood. Simple recipe thread getting hijacked onto 'issues'. Sorry. I have reposted and 'deleted' my post here.

This morning I was reading a thread here and someone (who shall remain nameless for all their shadowy vagueness) mentioned their non-use of EDTA and its toxicity. Now I ‘grew up’ with EDTA in biomedical uses and am always a little sceptical when toxicity and environmental issues get thrown about...