SoapCon 2016 - Cathy McGinnis 10/1-10/2

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Dr Kevin Dunn demonstrating how to test NaOH for purity, or how bad it might be, as when contaminated by ambient water.

IMG_20161001_141259945.jpg
 
Good call that I didn't go or I'd definitely would have annoyed everyone with my non-stop coughing. That would have been cool to have seen though.
 
penelopejane said:
Wow! How great for you! I would have loved to have gone! Is it possible for you to give m report or would it be too much info to transcribe? Maybe the highlights for us poor country-bound folks?

Also what shop are you opening this month?
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I'll try to do that, PJ. I think Dr. Dunn's topic was very interesting. It was about checking the purity of your NaOH. Sometimes you don't know if your NaOH is "good" or "bad" and you're afraid to use it in your soap. Or maybe you got a "bad" batch from your supplier, but have not way of knowing for sure. He taught us how to figure that out. You need some anhydrous citric acid, distilled water, phenolphthalein and your NaOH. Basically, you put the water in a clear jar, weigh out some citric acid and add a few drops of the phenolphthalein then start adding the NaOH until you get the solution to turn pink. When it stays pink, divide your weight of citric acid by the weight of the NaOH then multiply that by some number that I forget off of top of my head right now and that gives you the purity of your NaOH. The experiment was done twice, once by his "assistants" and once by me. We both ended up with a close 98. I think the first one was 98.17 and mine was 98.06 or something like that.

The point of the exercise was to determine how much water your NaOH might have absorbed. That's really where it might come in handy. If you buy a new 10 pound batch of NaOH and test the purity the day you open it and then compare that to a test on that batch when it is half empty you can see if it has absorbed any moisture from the air. If so, you can adjust your water in your recipe to take that into consideration. If your initial purity test was 100%, to make a 33.333% solution you would use 100 grams of NaOH to 200 grams of water. If your purity test six months down the road ends up 95% you would have to increase your NaOH to 105.26 grams, because it would have absorbed 5.26 grams of water. (If you used 100 grams, it would be 95 grams of NaOH and 5 grams of water.) However, you could decrease your water to 194.74 grams because the NaOH has already absorbed the 5.26 grams from the air.

Dr. Dunn did mention the reason for the lye testing was because a "company" (he didn't say which one) sold some "bad lye" and a woman had asked him to test the purity of the lye for her. He wanted anyone to be able to check the purity of their lye easily. The manufacturer or distributor should have a purity fact sheet available that lists any contaminants (mercury for example) but it will not be able to list water because that will depend on how it is stored. If the purity is 90% or below when you purchase the product, you've got a bad product and should get your money back or an exchange. However, if you test it six months after you bought it, that's pretty much your problem because you have no way of knowing when the moisture got into the product.

He also said the way to test your citric acid to make sure it is the anhydrous kind is to tare a piece of aluminum foil and then weigh some citric acid onto it. Put the citric acid into the oven on 200 degrees for one hour. Let it cool then weigh it. If it did not lose any weight, it is anhydrous. If it did lose weight, you have just made it anhydrous (it should be about 91% of its former weight). Put that in an air tight container and don't make bath bombs with it; just use it for experiments. (He's a funny guy.)

ETA: I was going to open Howling Hounds on facebook, but I'm no where near ready to do that. So I'm going to keep it on the back burner and just make soap. I'll eventually open the shop, but I've still got way too much to learn and product to make. I totally got ahead of myself. I think I let my friends' encouragement to "open a shop and sell this" get in the way of my common sense. I just need to continue doing what I'm doing and forget about attempting to sell this stuff any time soon. If it happens, it happens; but I'm not going to worry about it for another five years. 02/28/2022 to be exact. :)

earlene said:
  • If you are at the after party, find the long braided old lady. That's me. Plus I have a name tag and it says Earlene. I
Great job on the demo!
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Thanks! I was excited to meet him. I'm going to have to see if anyone got any photos of that. (I doubt it because I don't know anyone here.) I am looking forward to Clyde Yoshida's presentation tomorrow. He and Dunn are the reasons I came to the SoapCon.

I'll be at the after party. You can't miss me tomorrow. I'll have a pink T-shirt on that says "Weekend Forecast Soap Making with No Chance of House Cleaning or Cooking." I wore my blue one today. :mrgreen:
 
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Actually I do have some photos of that presentation. I'll check, but you might be in one of them. No, I just checked, I thought I took one more photo showing the two containers of pink lye solution, but I guess I didn't after all.

Anyway, tomorrow maybe we can connect. I think you were in the middle to front part of the room; I was in the back to the right as you enter the room. If I sit there again, I'll be the white haired lady with a long blondish braid (the white is more in the front & on top) and I'll probably be wearing a plaid shirt.

I talked with Clyde Yoshida for quite a while today. He's a pleasure to talk with and I am also looking forward to his presentation. I also think I would have loved having Kevin Dunn as my chemistry teacher when I was in college; he has got to be a great professor.
 
Oh, another thing Dr. Dunn mentioned that my mind perked up to was that the floaters in the lye solution are the result of Carbon Dioxide contamination of the lye, and that the CO contributes to soda ash on the surface of the soap. He said that a little of the floaters of this type are nothing to be concerned about but that when it becomes excessive the lye is not good for making soap.

He said the most important thing for preventing the caustic soda from becoming contaminated by Carbon Dioxide in the air or water in the air, is to keep in an air tight container at all times and be careful not to give it the opportunity to glom onto to either by leaving the lid off for too long or letting it just sit out after measuring your lye.

He also said you can do the same test with master batched lye if you wonder if your masterbatch has gone 'bad.'

It was such a great presentation! I thoroughly enjoyed it. And, he autographed my book for me!
 
ngian said:
Contaminated by ambient water? Can you describe when this could happen and how NaOH is affected?
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ngian, I think Teresa probably explained. But just to answer directly. As in when you leave the cap off the lye for a bit too long, especially in a humid climate, but not necessarily, Another way, if a new inexperienced soaper pours the lye from the lye container directly into the water & steam rises off the heating water while weighing it and pouring lye. I am sure no one here has ever done that but me, when I was brand new to soaping. :think:

Dr. Dunn explained that NaOH will just soak up water out of the air, and in fact will soak up water out of citric acid (not the anhydrous CA) if one leaves two containers of each respective solid (lye; CA) and in turn keep those uncovered containers in a tightly sealed container. Weighing each beforehand and afterward, the CA will have lost weight, while the NaOH will have gained weight.

Also just a bottle of dry lye while it gets used up, there is more room for air, and the air inside the bottle has some water molecules, which the lye soaks up.
 
Earlene thank you for the clarification. I didn't understand in the first place that ambient water was basically humidity in the air...

All these issues where also introduced at an older presentation by Kevin Dunn.

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=60535

I was wondering if anything new was presented at this Soapcon by him.
 
ngian: I skimmed through the video. It is the same thing that he presented here at SoapCon. I would imagine the only difference was the questions the audience had. The slides (that I saw while skimming) were even the same. (However, I couldn't shake hands and share a stage with a video. :wink:) I didn't know this video was available. This is good, because I won't remember how to do this. I'm pretty sure this experiment is in his book. I'll have to check my copy; which is sitting on my night stand at home so I wouldn't forget to take it with me to get it signed while I'm here. I've got a mind like a steel sieve!!
 
earlene said:
Actually I do have some photos of that presentation. I'll check, but you might be in one of them. No, I just checked, I thought I took one more photo showing the two containers of pink lye solution, but I guess I didn't after all.

Anyway, tomorrow maybe we can connect. I think you were in the middle to front part of the room; I was in the back to the right as you enter the room. If I sit there again, I'll be the white haired lady with a long blondish braid (the white is more in the front & on top) and I'll probably be wearing a plaid shirt.

I talked with Clyde Yoshida for quite a while today. He's a pleasure to talk with and I am also looking forward to his presentation. I also think I would have loved having Kevin Dunn as my chemistry teacher when I was in college; he has got to be a great professor.
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Jealous!! He was so popular. I never got a chance to say more than hello.
 
I had an amazing time at the SoapCon. I got to meet a lot of new people and finally put a face to one of the forum members. Earlene and I had a nice visit this evening after the convention was over. Together we discovered Kentucky beer cheese is not hummus. (I would have rather had the hummus.) I also told all of my table mates about Soap Making Forum. I cannot believe not one single one of them are members!! In fact, none of them had ever heard of the forum before I started spouting off about it. So, we should be getting some newbies soon. I shared some tips, tricks, recipes and "de funk de pits," too. I told my new friends signing up for SMF is worth it for that thread alone. (I'm vain, I know.) I've also shared TOMHs thread regarding the vinegar/acetic acid experiments. I think I've converted some to the vinegar side. I know I've converted a couple to the benefits of master batching lye.

When I get home I've got to send out some samples of a bunch of stuff to my new friends because they've never heard of or tried XXX so I'm going to give them some stuff to try before they buy. I won two prizes while I was here. One was a micro scale (or at least that's what I call it). It weighs a maximum of 400 g with a resolution of 0.01 gr. I got that for participating with the Dr. Dunn experiment. I had already purchased one a few hours earlier, so I gave it to someone at my table. Then they were doing the prize giveaways and my numbers (BOTH) were called one right after the other for the same prize (an apron, and 2 Marie Gale books: Cosmetic Labeling & 300 Years of Natural Soap & Cosmetics Recipes). I passed on the 2nd prize and told them to pick another number. Since I already own a copy of Cosmetics Labeling book, I gave that one to someone at Earlene's table. Free stuff was flowing everywhere; it was like Christmas. I had fun passing the "wealth" on to someone else.

If there's another Soaping101 SoapCon, I'm going to it.
 

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