Help, I'm new!!!

[gizofmoe]

I just made my second batch of soap. I used grapeseed, olive, vegetable oil, lavender EO, and coloring added to glycerine. I did use a calculator that I found on line and was supposed to use 1.74 oz of lye. My scale doesn't measure that precise, so I used 1.7. After 3 days, I finally unmolded it and oil is dripping out of it. Can I just rebatch this and add a little extra lye or just leave it alone and maybe it will do what it is supposed to do. Also, I see everyone talking about the "Zap Test"..I get that you stick your tongue on the soap, but how does that tell you if your soap is good or not...PLEASE HELP!!!

 

[thefarmerdaughter]

Posting your whole recipe including all measurements will be helpful in determining what happened....
A zap test can tell you if there is lye present. raw fresh soap will zap you. if it's saponified and it zaps you its probably lye heavy....

 

[Hausfrau007]

If you can stick your tongue onto your soap after three days and aren't sure what a zap test is, then your soap is definitely not lye heavy. It's called a 'zap' test, because if your soap is lye heavy, you'd get something similar to an electric shock feeling on your tongue. Don't worry -- you'll know! lol

Not sure why your recipe didn't turn out until you post the ingredients and amounts, but it sounds like your lye was completely absorbed. I doubt, though, that it's because you discounted the lye too much. I've done that, and all it does is add to the superfatting percentage. Maybe your didn't stir your soap enough?

 

[judymoody]

It sounds like your soap separated which can happen if you didn't reach a true emulsion or trace or if it overheated.

At the risk of piling on, you need to post your complete recipe.

Do NOT do the zap test if your soap is separated and oozing!

Save everything, including the oozy liquid in case a rebatch is a possibility. You will need all of it.

As a side note, you used only liquid oils which is going to yield a soft soap. Assuming that "vegetable oil" is soy or canola or some mix of the two, the mix isn't optimal. Soy, canola, and grapeseed spoil relatively quickly and your soap could go rancid. A better mixture would be olive oil, palm oil (or lard) and coconut oil.

 

[gizofmoe]

I used 4 oz each of the grapeseed and vegetable oil and 4.8 of the olive. I also used not quite 2 tsp of EO, the dye I did not measure. It is very very soft. Oh, and I also added some lavender blossom seed thingys. It did saponify and got thick before I molded it, but I did have some issues with doing that so maybe it got to cold before doing so...thanks so much for the thoughts and help...you have no idea how greatly I appreciate it.