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Hello all, I've posted about this topic in the past, but have a secondary question to ask. When my home-made pine tar reacts with lye water (even if using a miniscule pinhead-sized amount of pine tar on end of wooden stick dipped in lye water), it instantly produces an ammonia like scent, that...

I was wondering about this exact subject, the degree to which the lye is consumed by the time the trace stage is reached. Thank you. I also wonder about the degree to which the NaOH is depleted by the pine tar to ammonia reaction. Does whatever compound in pine tar that reacts with NaOh to...

Thanks for that advice. I think I'll try using a whisk just to see for myself how effective it is.

Thank you, Earlene, for all of your tips and information. I appreciate your insights tremendously. The test run batch of pine tar soap I made does seem to be mellowing a little bit, about 3 weeks after it was produced. Hopefully, this trend continues, and ends up yielding an ammonia-free bar...

Well, it seems that the offputting scent coming out of my pine tar/lye water mixture is definitely an ammonia one. I had a chance to smell some ammonia based glass cleaner yesterday, and the two scents are quite similar to each other. There are around 300 distinct chemicals in pine tar, and...

Hello Earlene, Whey you say "intense', do you mean the scent of pine tar was just stronger than what you can smell from the can? If so, it is likely because the pine tar has been warmed up, in which case it would definitely smell stronger. What brand of pine tar are you using?

Hello Earlene, It is really not that difficult, so long as you don't mind putting together a campfire and stuffing some small pieces of pine wood into a tin can, and burying a 'catchment' can. Run the fire for a few hours around the can with the wood, and there should be pine tar in the...

Hi Zany in Co, Thank you for your valuable and much appreciated input on this issue. The offending odor could very well be an ammonia-like one, but I'll have to double-check by taking a whiff of an ammonia cleaner product at the hardware store, just to confirm. At first, I thought it could...

Hello All, I'm a newbie to the world of soapmaking, and have become quite interested in making some homemade pine tar soap, using homemade pine tar. I'm struggling quite a bit with trying to maintain the pleasant campfire aroma of my tar when it is combined with lye water, and have come here...

Hello, I'm experiencing a really vexxing problem that I am having a very hard time figuring out the reason for. I made some home-made pine tar using the tin-can/campfire method, and was quite pleased with the result. The tar has the consistency of molasses, and has a decent scent. However...