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CleanWorks

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Just made my first batch of soap and made the mistake of pouring water on lye, as I poured it I used an immersion blender and backed away when I saw the smoke and let it rest for a while before I went back in and stirred some more, it didn’t spill out of the bowl luckily. I continued the rest of the process like normal blending for a long time and couldn’t really got a good trace, is the lye still toxic if I would let it cure like normal would it still be safe to use other than any cosmetic defects?
 
As long as all of the lye was completely dissolved in the water, before adding that to the oils, your soap should be fine. However, in the future, don't use a stickblender to mix your lye solution. That creates a high risk of dangerous splashes, and just isn't necessary. Simply pour the lye into the water, and stir with a heat-safe spoon or spatula made of stainless steel or silicone until the solution is clear, with no flakes or lumps.

Based on what you shared, my concern is that you might not have completely dissolved all of the lye. Lye can easily form into chunks or clumps if it it has water added to it, rather than the reverse. That could lead to a weak lye solution, which might explain the difficulty reaching trace. Did you see any white lumps or chunks in the lye solution? If so, and if you poured those into your soap, those chunks will not dissolve in the soap batter (ask me how I know). If that is the case, you should toss out the soap, because you can't possibly find every lye chunk in every bar.

However, if your lye solution was completely clear when you poured it into the oils, then your soap is probably fine, and something else was the reason for the slow trace. But we can't help you figure out what that might be, since we don't know the size of your batch, your recipe, how much water you used, or the temperature of your ingredients; all of those things will affect time to trace.

If you will post your full recipe, including the amounts of water, lye, oils, butters, all additives, EOs, FOs, etc. - EVERYthing that went into your soap, then we can help you trouble-shoot. :)
 

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