Misadventures of Thursday Night Soapmaking

[Cherry Bomb]

So last night before I left for Zumba class I put all of my supplies together to make a nice large (4 pound) batch of Lavender/Peppermint EO soap. I did everything except mix my lye water and weigh my oils. I didn't want loose lye laying out while I was not home. I arrived home around 7:45 pm, cooked dinner, cleaned up, called my mom, and then started mixing my lye and water and weighing my oils. Well in the middle of weighing my oils my scale died so I had to replace the batteries. Frustrating. I weighed everything in grams and then away I went. While I was cleaning up my forehead started itching. I was trying to rub my arm across my forehead and unknowingly my glove touched it instead or my arm and guess what? I now have lovely lye burn right in the center of my forehead. This just goes to show that even when you are being careful mistakes you don't consider will happen. Well, this afternoon I learned two things. ONE: I am a ding bat and didn't consider that my actual 4 pound batch was much more than 4 pounds because I didn't count the water/lye aspect lol. Lesson learned. TWO: I just received the biggest zap of my life. I mean literally! So this just tells me that my poor batch is extremely lye heavy. I am not sure what I did wrong. I ran my numbers through soap calc, printed the recipe, and followed what it said on the sheet. Here are my numbers:

Superfat 8%
Water 689 g
Lye 239 g

Apricot Kernal Oil 5% or 91 g
Cocoa Butter 7% or 127 g
Coconut Oil, 76 deg 20% or 363 g
Olive Oil 43% or 780 g
Shea Butter 25% or 454 g

I added 4 tbsp Kaolin Clay
Purple Coloring (didn't really measure)
1 ounce ground lavender buds

Don't yell at me but here was my EO totals: They are on the high side
I did a 2:1 ratio

Lavender EO 68 g
Peppermint EO 26 grams

Surely I didn't measure my lye and water amount the same. I think that I may have been a little tired. UGH!!! I thought I was ready for a larger batch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do not know where my calculations went wrong. Should I crockpot rebatch? It is still too soft to grate. :yawn:

 

[Genny]

You just made this last night? If so, that could be the biggest reason that you got zapped, the lye's still active. I'd wait another day or so & then check for zap again.

 

[Cherry Bomb]

OK Thank you Genny! I actually completed this batch at 10:00 pm last night. I will give it another day or two and then check again. Getting zapped in NOT fun! lol

 

[rosevalleygirl]

Numbers look good unless you measured incorrectly. Since you just made the batch I would wait a couple of weeks and zap test again. It should mellow out.

I really don't know how to rebatch lye heavy soap when you are not sure where you went wrong. I may have a lye heavy batch on hand too and really don't want to hazard to guess how much oil to add to balance it.

That's awful about the lye burn...on your face. Yikes. It happens to the all of us. My spring allergies have kicked in so my eyes are super itchy. Last week I couldn't resist itching and managed to get essential oils in my eye. OUCH!

 

[Cherry Bomb]

Numbers look good unless you measured incorrectly. Since you just made the batch I would wait a couple of weeks and zap test again. It should mellow out.

I really don't know how to rebatch lye heavy soap when you are not sure where you went wrong. I may have a lye heavy batch on hand too and really don't want to hazard to guess how much oil to add to balance it.

That's awful about the lye burn...on your face. Yikes. It happens to the all of us. My spring allergies have kicked in so my eyes are super itchy. Last week I couldn't resist itching and managed to get essential oils in my eye. OUCH!

OUCH! I bet that didn't feel good! Especially if it was a peppermint or some other kind of "spicy" essential oil. Anything in the eye in uncomfortable! I hope that your batch is not lye heavy Sometimes I wish that I could give lye a good kick. But it is necessary to make beautiful soap. Thanks for your input. I was wondering how rebatching would work if I didn't know exactly what went wrong. I read somewhere that as it sits in a crock pot you just add 1 tbsp of oil over a period of a few hours until you don't get zapped anymore. I am not sure how accurate that is though. Here is where I found that info written by Irish Lass:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/f11/very-lye-heavy-can-i-salvage-rebatch-19104/