What's Your Worse Soap Disaster?

[Fabius]

I was rushing when making my last batch. I used too much water when hydrating the clay and forgot to add the scent I wanted to use. This got me wondering what real disasters soapmakers have had.

 

[azimuth]

I forgot to boil out the beer and the entire 5 lb batch seized on me right in the pot.

 

[bodhi]

Added some uncooperative herbs and had a volcano that left me with about 1/4th of the original 10 pound batch.

 

[sistrum]

Tripped over the cat and sent six pounds of just poured soap batter flying everywhere.

 

[bodhi]

Oh no sistrum! lol (empathetic laugh!) That reminded me of the day i kicked over a pitcher of lye. What a day of disaster after disaster, lol. Bet your floors were nice and clean though

 

[sistrum]

Yep, striped that floor cleaner than new. But I think I would rather do what I did than what you did. I hope you recovered with out injury.

 

[aab1]

My worst disaster was when I used a honey soap recipe as a guideline to make my own honey soaps, I wanted as much honey as you could put in soap so I searched for honey soap recipes until I found the one with the most honey which was 17.5% of the oils, so I added that much honey to my recipe and it's been 2-4 weeks and the soap is still soft and still tests positive for excess lye with phenolphtaleen. I'll give it another month or so since it is ever so slowly getting harder and less positive on the phenolphtaleen test but if it does become usable I'll keep it for my own use.

Another bad batch was when I added wintergreen oil that caused the soap to go from light trace to thick like refrigerated butter literally instantly. They turned out rather ugly since I basically had to force the mixture into the molds by pressing it in but they are still perfectly usable for my own use, anyway I'm not sure I'd want to sell soap with wintergreen oil due to the toxicity.

 

[bodhi]

Yeah, I would definitely recommend raw soap over lye anyday, lol. clean it did though!

 

[JuliaGulia]

Yesterday I decided to try and make a cupcake soap, and keep in mind this will be my 4th batch ever making CP soap! I soaped way too hot, and as I was filling the cupcake molds my frosting completely seized up. I couldn't even pipe it out at all, and to add to it I'm pretty sure it had already began the saponification process because the frosting got up to 140 F!

 

[innerdiva73]

Forgetting to add the fragrance

 

[dixiedragon]

I was making a batch of peppermint soap. I had colored 1/2 of the batch red to do a red and white swirl like a peppermint candy. I must not have wiped down my utensils, etc, well enough before putting them in the dishwasher, b/c I come out and pink, minty foam is SHOOTING out of the bottom of the washer! I figured I might as well let it finish, so I put a roasting pan under the dishwasher to catch most of the foam and then just mopped and mopped until the dishwasher had finished running. My kitchen smelled REALLY good!

 

[stargazer44]

I have 2 I was soaping, and had just mixed red pigment into a large bowl of soap batter. And left my stick blender standing in it, and knocked it over. It spilled behind my soap table, all over my window and wooden blinds, down the wall, and into the carpet. Thankfully my soap table hides the big red stain on my light colored carpet....

And just last week I misread my recipe - left out 20oz of oil in a double batch of special order soap..... Threw it all out.

 

[MaitriBB]

Tripped over the cat and sent six pounds of just poured soap batter flying everywhere.

My cat looooves coconut oil so if I didn't throw his hiney into the garage when I soap, there'd be cat hairs in it =\

 

[MaitriBB]

I was making a batch of peppermint soap. I had colored 1/2 of the batch red to do a red and white swirl like a peppermint candy. I must not have wiped down my utensils, etc, well enough before putting them in the dishwasher, b/c I come out and pink, minty foam is SHOOTING out of the bottom of the washer! I figured I might as well let it finish, so I put a roasting pan under the dishwasher to catch most of the foam and then just mopped and mopped until the dishwasher had finished running. My kitchen smelled REALLY good!

Been there done that My husband just rolls his eyes at me and makes me go clean it up when there's good-smelling foam coming out of the dishwasher.

 

[shunt2011]

Maitri- my dog love coconut oil too...I have to yell at her to get away from it as she will lick the darn bucket. My worst just happend yesterday making a 6 lb batch and I forgot the 8 oz of Castor. I'm not rebatching it it's going to the trash...First time ever forgetting an oil.