Cold press 50/50 lye water ratio

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LadySarah370

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So, I have made a few batched of cp soap. This one threw me a wee bit. I had watched a very talented, very experienced soaper use a recipe I was going to try from BB or Soap Queen. She tweeked it said dhe did a 50/50 lye solution bc she added coconut milk and carrot puree. So I thought I would do this as well. Ran it through the lye calc and it said for a 42oz mold with 27 oz of olive oil and 5 oz of coconut oil to do 8.7 oz of lye and water. It seemed like it may have been too much. I figured it knew what it was doing....altho the more I thought about it, the more I thought well maybe I could have just added the same amount of water that the recipe called for the lye...I ended up with a bit extra. I am concerned now that I mucked up the soap :(
 
Don't lose heart! It's better to err on the side of having too much water in your batch than too much lye. The worse that'll probably happen is that it'll take a while for your bars to harden.

Can you supply us with the recipe and the total amount of liquid you ended up using?


IrishLass :)
 
Don't lose heart! It's better to err on the side of having too much water in your batch than too much lye. The worse that'll probably happen is that it'll take a while for your bars to harden.

Can you supply us with the recipe and the total amount of liquid you ended up using?


IrishLass :)
Well the recipe said to use 4.3 oz of lye. lye calc said to use 8.7 oz of each. What did I do wrong on lye calc? Is my soap ruined or is it ok?
 
LadySarah- could you post the entire ounce or grams weights of each of the oils/fats you used in the recipe? Plus the water/lye weights you used, and the weights of any other liquid that you added? That would help greatly in helping me make sure everything is really, really okay. Thanks! :)


IriushLass :)
 
So the Recipe from BB is:

Olive Oil – 27 oz
Coconut Oil – 5 oz
Buttermilk – 8 oz
Carrot Baby Food – 2.5 oz (make sure it says just carrots and water)
Lye – 4.3 oz

So the one that I watched on youtube:

50:50 lye solution
Olive Oil – 27 oz (from the recipe bc it's for the same mold I use)
Coconut Oil – 5 oz
Coconut milk– 8 oz
Carrot Baby Food – 2.5 oz (make sure it says just carrots and water)

it wasn't posted just what I guessed from her video.
 
By the way I just ran it through soap calc....so not the amount of lye and soap...perhaps I misunderstood the lye calc...lesson learned though oh my goodness. I just hope I didn't completely ruin that batch though....
 
Thank you so much, LadySarah.... turns out I misunderstood your first post, but I see the complete picture now.

I just ran it through SoapCalc, and yes..... for 27 0z of olive oil and 5 oz of coconut oil @ 5% superfat, it says to use 4.3 oz of lye total.


Oh boy! So.....if you really and truly used 8.7 oz lye in a batch containing only 27 oz olive oil and 5 poz coconut oil, your gut instinct of concern after thinking more about things was spot on. You used twice as much lye as needed, giving you a very lye-heavy soap.....a negative 90.3 superfat to be exact. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Whatever you do, don't use that soap! :eek:

What should have been done was to was use 4.3 oz lye, and added it to 4.3 oz of water (a 50/50 lye concentration), and then gone on with the rest of the recipe amounts.

If it were me, I would toss that batch and start anew.


IrishLass :)
 
IrishLass,

Thanks, I thought so...lesson learned..wow so will laugh about this later I am sure...

Will it be ok to wash the stuff out of the bowls??
 
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