My first soap disaster

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funastrum

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Today I was thinking, "I've never had any real problems in my first year of soap making... No partial gels, no volcanoes, beautiful swirls, no botched batches... and then a few hours later, disaster struck.
I had just finished placing 27 bars on the top shelf of my soap rack, about 8 feet high. Well, I overestimated the strength of the top shelf, which is attached slightly differently than my other shelves on the rack, and that made all the difference. The entire top shelf came tumbling down about 5 feet onto the table below. 27 beautiful cold process holiday bars hit the table and received gauges and dents, since they were my most recent, and softest bars. A lot of them were salvageable and took a lot of forming and fingering to look ok again, but they aren't as nice as they were. There's no hope for some of the bars. I had a good cry, not going to lie.

What would you consider your biggest soap making disaster?
 
3 yrs and haven't had any ... Knock on wood. Now watch ... Ill spill lye or something tomorrow. :)


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Oh no! Dropped soap is definitely worth crying over.

I melted the gasket in a stick blender a few months ago. My LS got WAY hotter than I expected. I did get a new stick blender out of the deal at least LOL

Gave myself a wonderful burn once after I spilled some cinnamon EO and rubbed my face before I realized it was on my hand. It burned for 3 days and I luckily missed my eyes. I now wear gloves when handling spice EO's and the gloves come off before touching anything else, learned my lesson.

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Oh no! At least you were able to fix some of them! That's a lot of soap!! **hugs**

I just sat down from experiencing ricing for the first time :/

I added some lovely candy floss FO and had got all excited about the swirl I was going to try and then WHAM riced up to the max and I started shoving it in the mold, it also seized I think because before I managed to even shovel it all in the mold the bottle turned into hardened mashed potato consistency and I had to actually chop it up with the spatula before forcing it in the mold :p I sat there for a little while pressing it down with the spatula trying to get the top to flatten out at much as possible then gave up hope and covered it with some cling film and left it to do it's thing :p

__

[edit] I agree with dixiedragon, little swirl cube soaps could be super cute as a solution to any soaps too far banged up. So sorry again to hear about your soap. This is my second massive mess up and I was okay this time but last time I had a massive anger / crying session so I completely empathise!
 
Like the time when a water pipe leaked nearby and got all the soaps wet? Actually that was fixable and they were not labelled.

What about the time when the rats started eating my soap? (that was the time when soap moved INSIDE the house, so no crying there...).

Falls I have had. From basket on the way to the market and they fell on gravel. I did not cry but uttered some not too polite words. Loudly.

The worse one I had, was using chlorophyll as a green colorant. I like green soap and the shade was beautiful. So within 2-3 weeks all of my green soaps developed DOS, and that was a few dozen. I felt humbled by chemistry.

I have had many more, like seizing lilac salt soap - it made it into the ugly soap basket and sold rather fast...separation and having to stick blend in the mold? not a disaster, that one was a best seller at the regular price.

You can fix your soaps. If they have swirls, use them as insert with swirls. You can get very artistic with that. A fall is bad, but the soaps are recoverable 100%. Trust me, DOS is the worst disaster. It stinks too.
 
Sirona Springs has a great idea for reusing soaps. It would be a relatively quick and easy way to save what you can of your downfallen soaps:

http://sironasprings.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/embedding-soap-a-great-way-to-reboot-a-batch-of-soap/

My worst disaster was with maybe the fourth batch I ever made. I was going for a white soap. A WHITE soap. I had bought some nice and CHEAP single cavity molds on eBay, ('coz I couldn't cut straight back then if my life depended on it) and I thought that this way, I simply couldn't fail! All the soaps would come out straight and perfect! Well, as they say, pride goeth before a fall....

The single cavity silicone molds I bought were red. When I unmolded my otherwise white-as-snow looking soaps, they were all red on the sides and bottoms!! The molds had leached out their red colour onto my soaps!! They were all ruined!

The lesson I learned? Never buy cheap silicone molds on eBay, especially if they're from China.
 
Ouch! Well at least you were able to salvage some. I went three years and just had my first soaping disaster. It's bound to happen to us at some point or other. But at least you could salvage some of it.
 
My worst soap fail was accidentally swallowing some just-mixed soap. I have actually partially repressed the memory and neither my husband nor I can remember why straws were involved, but they were. I hope we were also drunk because mouth syphoning was involved too. I'm sure you can tell where this is going.

I was fine actually. Despite an...interesting...trip to the toilet or two.

Husband got some on his lip and had a red lip for a few hours but fared much better.

PSA for everyone: stupid and soap don't mix. Please take my word for it.

Edit: as I meditate on it, I remember an impending soap lava floe - and clearly straws and not gloves and cloths were the solution.

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My first soap disaster......about 2 hours ago.

I added a new FO (smells like 'Lovely' by SJP) and my batch seized very quickly. After remixing with a little water and colour, the stick blender smelt strange. Well, we will just have to see how they turn out. :D

Take care and have a lovely day.......Aussie soaper.
 
I know how frustrating seizing is because it's happened to me. Everyone else also has had some rough experiences and I feel for you all.

Normally, I make smaller batches (around 32 oz) and decided to make a 4 lb loaf. I didn't get the mold lined properly and the soap leaked out the bottom of the mold. Fortunately, I only lost about 6 oz to 8 oz.

Silver lining - my oven was very, very clean after this occurred. :grin:
 
Oh no! At least you were able to fix some of them! That's a lot of soap!! **hugs**

I just sat down from experiencing ricing for the first time :/

I added some lovely candy floss FO and had got all excited about the swirl I was going to try and then WHAM riced up to the max and I started shoving it in the mold, it also seized I think because before I managed to even shovel it all in the mold the bottle turned into hardened mashed potato consistency and I had to actually chop it up with the spatula before forcing it in the mold :p I sat there for a little while pressing it down with the spatula trying to get the top to flatten out at much as possible then gave up hope and covered it with some cling film and left it to do it's thing :p

__
[edit] I agree with dixiedragon, little swirl cube soaps could be super cute as a solution to any soaps too far banged up. So sorry again to hear about your soap. This is my second massive mess up and I was okay this time but last time I had a massive anger / crying session so I completely empathise!

I find at times when this happens you can leave the batch to sit and start to gel then remix it and get it into the mold. It will have more of the appearance of hp but it does work. Just recently had the same issue with a new fo and I just walked away from it for approx 45 min. Saved the batch without rebatching
 
Oh my goodness, you guys definitely made me feel a little bit better about my soap disaster :shock:
I had quite a chuckle about the straw incident, and I was mortified about the water pipe leaking, even if it didn't ruin everything, it would be a shock!

After walking away from them for a few days and then looking at them again, they do not look so bad. They still have some deformities, but they are not bad soaps, and I am sure people will still want them. One is scented with Bramble Berry's "Sleigh Ride" (I call it Clove and Peppermint) and it is delightful. I think I will cut up the worst bars into samples and be done with them.
Unfortunately my deadline for soaps was the night I dropped them, and I had run out of Lye and castor oil that night as well, so rebatching or using the soap as embeds is not an option... I plan my batches and supplies to a T so that I have just the right amount of stuff, I should have planned for a screw-up, but maybe next time lol.
 
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