Near miss with lye and honey [insert facepalm emoticon]

[fatpigeon]

My buttermilk honey oat soap recipe that I'm tinkering with uses honey at a whopping 5% total oil weight. I can't remember where I initially got that figure but I like the colour and faint smell it adds to the finished soap so I've been sticking with it.

Aaaaanyway I recalled seeing a thread on here where people mentioned adding their honey directly to their lye water. So, being the bright spark that I am I thought I'd do that (not even thinking that most people are probably only using a couple of teaspoons of honey). And added 50 g honey directly. To. The. Lye.

Thankfully I made my lye mix up in a super tall beaker so when the sugars reacted to the lye and foamed up in a glorious volcano of alkaline bubbles, it didn't overflow.

Still. Lesson learnt. And I made the stupid-ass move of grabbing the bubbling lye beaker and moving it to the sink so that if it did overflow it wouldn't do it all over my scales. I'm damned lucky I didn't wind up spilling it all over myself. :wtf:

 

[QuirkyBlossom]

Glad to hear no soap makers were harmed during the soaping session turned science experiment.

I also just added this note to my notebook of tips for a newbie like me. So thanks.

 

[Steve85569]

Now if you had a video of that reaction you could use it as a good warning and visual aid.
Wow.
You got lucky in a nice way.
Lye is not our friend.

 

[shunt2011]

You got very lucky. I never add my homey to my lye. Always add it to my oils before the lye. Lesson learned.

 

[fatpigeon]

Glad to hear no soap makers were harmed during the soaping session turned science experiment.

I also just added this note to my notebook of tips for a newbie like me. So thanks.

Yeah. The gods of soaping sure were smiling on me.

Now if you had a video of that reaction you could use it as a good warning and visual aid.
Wow.
You got lucky in a nice way.
Lye is not our friend.

So lucky! Seriously wish I'd filmed it somehow, it truly was a spectacular reaction. And one I'd be happy to never ever duplicate.

You got very lucky. I never add my homey to my lye. Always add it to my oils before the lye. Lesson learned.

Definitely lesson learned! I wound up adding my honey at thin trace/emulsification. I'll have to try adding it to the oils before the lye next time. I'm starting to think I got honey and sugar mixed up in my head because I can definitely find reference to people putting sugar in their lye water (before the lye) and I think my brain just switched it around. Thankfully all I got was a scare and a reminder to think things through better, rather than some nasty burns.