Triumph and disaster - and a top tip for making soap with silk

[JuliaNegusuk]

I find mixing silk into lye takes ages however small I cut it, and I always need to push the resulting goo through a sieve to ensure I don't get bits of undissolved (and possibly lye rich) silk in my soaps. I was making my lavender and tussah silk soap today and swearing at the unmixable silk when I decided to try blitzing it with the stick blender before adding the lye (I always soak the silk in the liquid - in this case madder tea - before adding the lye and then adding to the oils). The gooey mess that resulted didn't inspire me with confidence but I added the lye and hey presto, a quick stir and the silk just vanished. No goo, no strands of thread, no clumpiness. I sieved as usual and it poured straight through, no residual clumps of undissolved silk to try and massage through the sieve. Brill!

Caught up in my own brilliance I then mixed it all up and poured it into my moulds, scraping it all off neatly and reached for my cornflower sprinkles, only to spot the container with my lavender oil sitting alongside it unused. I had to scrape out all of the soap batter out of the single cell moulds back into the jug to quickly blitz in the lavender oil. Luckily the batter wasn't too thick so it poured back alright. And it was all going so well!

Anyway, I am sure many of you have worked out how to best add silk to your lye yourselves, but for those who haven't try this method. It seemed to work amazingly well.

 

[Kari Howie]

I find mixing silk into lye takes ages however small I cut it, and I always need to push the resulting goo through a sieve to ensure I don't get bits of undissolved (and possibly lye rich) silk in my soaps. I was making my lavender and tussah silk soap today and swearing at the unmixable silk when I decided to try blitzing it with the stick blender before adding the lye (I always soak the silk in the liquid - in this case madder tea - before adding the lye and then adding to the oils). The gooey mess that resulted didn't inspire me with confidence but I added the lye and hey presto, a quick stir and the silk just vanished. No goo, no strands of thread, no clumpiness. I sieved as usual and it poured straight through, no residual clumps of undissolved silk to try and massage through the sieve. Brill!

Caught up in my own brilliance I then mixed it all up and poured it into my moulds, scraping it all off neatly and reached for my cornflower sprinkles, only to spot the container with my lavender oil sitting alongside it unused. I had to scrape out all of the soap batter out of the single cell moulds back into the jug to quickly blitz in the lavender oil. Luckily the batter wasn't too thick so it poured back alright. And it was all going so well!

Anyway, I am sure many of you have worked out how to best add silk to your lye yourselves, but for those who haven't try this method. It seemed to work amazingly well.

I am Definitely going to try this! I always think all the silk gets trapped in the sieve no matter how I try to squish it through. Thank you so much for the tip!

 

[Nanette]

What a good idea!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I have lots of silk fabric, including some that is very fine and sheer. Can it be used instead of the tussah silk?

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I have lots of silk fabric, including some that is very fine and sheer. Can it be used instead of the tussah silk?

Yes. At least, I think so... I've never done it but I do remember, way back when, that some soapers did just that.

I take a small ball of tussah silk and spread it open across the top of the lye solution and allow it to hydrate for 5 minutes or so. Then stir until completely dissolved. Works for me!

 

[cmzaha]

I use cocoons but cutting them up with scissors and putting them in hot lye. They dissolve quickly.

 

[earlene]

I have read of people using silk ties and adding that to the lye. They did not report any problems.

I use the same silk cocoons that Carolyn mentions. I followed her advice to cut up into small pieces and it definitely does dissolve very fast in hot lye. I did once try adding it to already cooled lye and that did create a bit of a messy silky strand mess when I tried to hurry up the dissolution process by mixing with a chop stick. The dissolving strands wanted to adhere to the chop stick and it was pain getting them off the chop stick to drop back down into the lye solution. Then I switched to another mixing tool that wouldn't dissolve in lye, and the strands kept adhering to that as well.

So the lesson learned: Pre-mix the silk in HOT lye solution OR pre-mix the silk in boiling hot water first. I have done the latter when I wanted to add silk to a master batch that didn't have silk, so I boiled the water, melted the silk, let the water silk water cool & then added that to the master batch.

I have since learned that even my scale with 0.001 gm measuring accuracy doesn't budge when I add silk to the solution, so I now just masterbatch the lye with the silk. It doesn't weigh enough to even move the weight so I am confident my MB lye measurements are as accurate as they need to be.