Very Lye heavy. Can I salvage? Rebatch?

[42things]

Anyone?

Here's the amounts i used

625 gm Evoo (22 oz)

750 mL water (3 cups)

210 gm Lye (7.4 oz)

I was dumb and followed a recipe that did not involve weights so these weights are after the fact.

I ran it through the lye calculator for the amount of Evoo I should have only had

84.66 gm Lye (3 oz)

156 to 234 mL of water (5.3 oz - 8 oz)

So, any experienced soapers out there can you help me?

The soap at this stage is just a paste, it's not set at all, it's like super thick pudding so it wouldn't be difficult to "melt" it down since it hasn't hardened yet.

 

[dubnica]

I would play with soapcalc to find out how much more oil you should add to get it right. Otherwise I would just toss it and learn form the experiance - it is good to run every recipe you find through the soapcalc first.
I hope this works out for you.

 

[dagmar88]

I'd toss it and run your next recipe through a good calculator...

 

[MissMori]

You could try re-batching it. I'm not sure it will work, but you can always try.

 

[judymoody]

I'm no expert but I think that to rebatch you would have to calculate the amount of OO that would correspond to the amount of lye you used - just looking this would be more than the quantity that you originally used. Then you'd have to cook it in a crockpot or double boiler. It might work, it might not. It might be better to do a new batch with a greater chance of success than to throw good ingredients at a bad batch. Your call. If you do rebatch, let us know how it works!

Also if you haven't rebatched before, look for a good tutorial. The soap will go through various stages and the final product will be gloppier than CP soap. I think there's a tutorial on this forum and somebody recently posted a series of photos of the HP process at every step of the way.

Good luck with your project!

 

[42things]

well just in case anyone's interested.

It did totally harden overnight...

I turned it out of the mold just to see if there were lye pockets or anything and it's hard and solid all the way through.

except one tiny spot on the edge.

and the top edges are really soft... weird.



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[ToniD]

I'm interested. Do you mean it hardened without doing anything to it, or did you rebatch it? If so how?

 

[judymoody]

It's a nice pretty color. But given the amount of lye you used (assuming you didn't rebatch) the final product is likely to be lye heavy even if you can't see visible lye. They are likely to be very harsh because you used more than twice the amount necessary to saponify the oil.

 

[dubnica]

WOW...at this point I would just toss it. You can't use it and at this point you cannot rebatch it.

 

[IrishLass]

Don't throw it out! You actually can rebatch it! Granted, you probably won't know the exact superfat% that your finished rebtached soap will end up having, but it will be safe to use. I have done it and it works very well. I learned it a while ago from another soaper named Bunny and have only needed to do it once. This is basically how you do it:

Grate your soap up and melt it in a covered crockpot or in a covered pot in the oven or on the stove (whichever you prefer). Gradually add oil to the melted soap one teaspoon at a time (and a tiny bit of water if needed to prevent drying out), stirring well after each addition until it does not zap anymore. At the point of no zap you can mold it. Unmold when cooled and hardened.

and the top edges are really soft... weird.

If your top edges are still soft, that just means that your soap probably went through partial gel. No biggie, it'll harden up just like the rest of your soap.

HTH!
IrishLass

 

[42things]

I'm interested. Do you mean it hardened without doing anything to it, or did you rebatch it? If so how?

No I haven't rebatched it yet.

 

[42things]

I appreciate everyone's advice... so much!

I'll let you know what I do.

If I do end up rebatching (i know I know, I could be throwing good ingr. after bad) I'll probably just end up using the final product for laundry soap anyway.... just to be safe... but whatever I do I'll post a final product pic here.

and yes the colour is a lovely creamy light yellow, like butter... so pretty.

 

[42things]

so I did rebatch and i think it went well... here's what I did.

I grated it on the finest side of the grater (you'd be surprised at the fact that this is faster than using the larger side) and the stuff basically turned to powder with a few chunks.

I did add a bit of water to enable me to mix it easier, I threw 22oz of lard and 9.6oz of coconut oil in and put it on low heat in the oven, stirring every 15 min or so...

once it was all melty I used my stick blender to smooth it out as much as possible with a thick liquid like that.

I returned it to the oven stirring it now and again until it got really thick.... almost too thick to stir.

at that point I poured it in my mold (cardboard box lined with parchment) covered it and put it back in the oven for about an hour.

Then I wrapped it in towels and put it in the basement (warmest place in the house)

When I was cleaning up it produced some pretty good suds so I'm glad about that.

This morning, I went to check on it as I wanted to cut it before it got too hard. It had solidified to about the consistency of butter in the fridge so i went ahead and cut it and covered it again. I tried a sliver of it to see how it worked and it worked really nice, still seems a bit caustic though which I think will be fine after a few weeks cure time.

I blogged about it too and it has pictures in case you want to see.

http://42-things.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... tures.html

 

[ToniD]

What an adventure! It was interesting reading your blog. Thanks for sharing.

 

[42things]

Thanks ToniD