Story of my first ever soap batch (3 years ago)

This is the story of the first batch of soap that I made over 3 years ago and the horrible story!

I was a student part of a club called the mad scientists club. We wanted to make something for a fundraiser that was sciencey but would also be able to sell. I came up with soap (silly me)!

I decided to do hot process with vegetable oil and Crisco because it was inexpensive and we could sell the soap right away. I bought a really bad kitchen scale (not digital) and I actually sprung for a stick blender.

So I measured my stuff, made the soap with a friend and cooked it. Everything went well. I was so scared it was going to be lye heavy so I added some extra oil during the cook. No zap! I was really happy and glopped the soap into the mold. I scented it with some mint flavor.

Then our fundraiser fell through. So I just kept the soaps in a closet and figured we would sell them the next school year.

That didn't exactly work...

I decided to use the soap in my homemade laundry detergent. After 2 months of using it, my clothes started smelling awful. Rancid. Like puke. It was bad. When I went to check the soaps I kept in a closed closet (which thankfully we had never sold) they were all rancid and had DOS.

I tried to look up if I could salvage it. I even tried re-batching. But I ended up throwing it away.

I stayed away from HP/CP after that for 8 months. I did melt and pour. When I felt ready, I bought the right supplies (a digital scale, quality oils) and took my time and my soaps came out great.

So when someone wonders what can happen when you cut corners, yeah its not fun. You also make your boyfriend who uses your laundry soap smell like puke.

Anyone have any other horror stories?? I learned that you realllllly need to do research and test your batches. Otherwise this can happen.

Funny and interesting, the bad stories are more instructive than the good ones. Also a great lesson in why it is not a good idea to sell soap until you are ready, some people seem to have a harder time learning it than you did.

I don't have a funny story to add, my soap failures are all pretty boring. But your post did make me think of the fact that this is kind of a great hobby because you can make a luxury item - I never bought handmade soaps, I just thought they were too expensive - for little more than than the cost of a scale, lye and some oils. I kind of love that.

My tagline on another forum (ironically also owned by the owner of this forum) says: "Bad decisions make good stories."

Lee, I should have a lot of good stories! Have to work on the story-telling skills, think I am up to speed on the bad-decision making ones