What type of lye

If you ever see glycerin as an ingredient in soap, be skeptical. It usually means that the naturally occurring glycerin has been removed and a tiny amount has been added back in. The same could possibly be true for those with fragrance sensitivities. It may not be the fragrance that irritates, but rather, the lack of adequate glycerin.

Debra is a master gardener, a certified herbalist, a natural living instructor, and more. She taught Matt and Betsy how to make soap so they decided to bring her on as a staff writer! Debra recently started an organic herb farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina. You can even purchase her handmade products on Amazon!

If you rely solely upon this advice you do so at your own risk. And learn how to make yummy strawberry leaf tea. A clay pot heater is a simple and effective emergency heat source. Learn how to make them and which candles to use for minimal soot and ash. Yes it was very scary after reading all the warnings and precautions but so glad I did it.

As long as your careful it is very easy and fun. Going to make another batch very soon. I started off trying hand milled soap making and love the how creative you can be.

Now I will be using my own soap for re batching! Thanks for all the all the great tips. Love your site! Many of my students see me years later and are telling me how they are either still making soap or making it again after not doing it for a while. I started out like you with one or two batches, making it for family and friends. Then I started teaching soap making at the local community college, and now I own a business that makes in excess of bars a month.

It can happen! This is a fantastic article! Yep, Lisa, Cassandra is right. I was being careful today and little did I know there was a tiny hole in my glove. Some of the raw soap got under a fingernail and started to burn a bit. I took the glove off, washed my hands, put some vinegar on a cotton swab and held it there for a few minutes.

Just remember to always be prepared! Thanks for the great info about lye. It was scientific without going over my head!! Good for you, Colleen! You will get questions like that. I read your article and saw that companies refer to lye by other names such as sodium cocoate. What is the difference if any between sodium cocoate and sodium cocoyle?

For something that seems so simple, bar soap making is actually full of complexities, and there is a lot of misinformation out there. A question we hear fairly often is if we use lye to make our cold process soap. The answer is— Yes! Lye has a reputation for being dangerous. Lye is a highly alkaline chemical solution. As an alkali, lye solution is highly basic. If you remember your high school chemistry days, pH exists on a scale from 0 to Acids are at the lower of the spectrum, while bases, also known as alkaline substances, are at the higher end.

Both strong acids and strong bases are caustic and can damage human skin, which is why lye has a reputation for being dangerous. If lye comes in contact with your skin, it begins to react with surface oils—a painful prospect! However, that only applies to liquid lye, the pure chemical solution.

What is lye used for? This chemical is essential to a variety of industrial purposes, the most famous of which is making homemade soap. Others include:. Back in the day, our ancestors made old fashioned lye soap by boiling wood ash. Then, lye was skimmed off the top. In addition, some ancient soap makers made an alkali from sodium bicarbonate baking soda and calcium oxide. Both of these methods yielded inconsistent lye that made it more difficult to measure its potency and accurately calculate the amount of fat that had to be added to make safe soap.

Salt NaCl is dissolved into water. Salt crystals fall to the bottom of the container. Electricity is then run through the rods. Attracted by the charge, crystals of lye attach themselves to the rods. After that, the liquid is poured off and allowed to evaporate until nothing but lye crystals remain. Then, this lye can be used for a variety of purposes, including making soap batter. What is lye soap? The short answer is that all soap is lye soap.

True soap bars cannot exist without lye. Bar soap is made through a chemical process known as saponification sapo is Latin for soap :. A lye solution is combined with oil or fat to cause a chemical reaction. This reaction breaks down the fats or oils into fatty acid chains and the lye mixture is neutralized in the process.

Lye can react with oils and fats in a heated environment or a cold environment. Through a hot process method, soaps can go from liquid form to a solid bar form in minutes. I made some lavender infused oil using grapeseed oil and dried lavender from my garden. It has a mild lavender scent. Will the aroma come out? Or should I used the infused oil another way? My grandmother used to make soap using Lye and used leftover cooking oil and it was not very pretty with no aroma but lathered beautifully, gentle on the skin and great for spot cleaning clothes.

Hi Sofia, Yes, you can use infused oils in soap. Some melt-and-pour soaps are true soaps with other additives to allow them to melt well lots of glycerin or propylene glycol or some other solvent. Others will be detergent-based bars.

Hi, nice post…I have a question, how do you make a mild soap that is not irritating the eye? I mean for making a tear-free soap. I find out that lye is the problem. Most of the oil is not irritating to eye, but when you add lye, even if it is a very small amount of lye, it will irritating the eye. I did a lot of experiment in skincare product…and it would be fun if we can share thoughts. I believe there must be something we can both learn from each other. Hi Agie, I removed your contact information for your privacy.

I talk more about tear-free shampoos in my baby wash and shampoo recipe. Thank you for the information! My question is whether or not it makes sense to use nice oils that will be good for the hair or skin to mix with the lye if the final product has completely different chemical properties from the initial ingredients. Would using expensive oil like castor, argan, etc.

I have seen soap making videos where they use expensive oils and I am wondering if its just a waste since the oils are completely different once they have reacted with the lye. I hope my question makes sense, thank you in advance! Hi Sarah, Yes, of course that makes sense. The interesting thing with soap is that the properties of the oils change completely in soap. So, some people add their expensive oils at the end, in the hopes that those will be the unreacted ones.

I tend to save them for my homemade lotions and moisturizers instead. Thank you, very informative page. I have some very basic questions- what exactly does the ingredient of lye do to make soap able to clean? Is it what kills the germs? Breaks up dirt? Dissolves virus envelopes? Is the point of the added fat just to make it safe for us or is it actually needed for cleaning? Hi Alicia, Did you read the post fully? They complete a chemical reaction that makes soap.

You need both the fat and the lye to react together. So, yes, they are both necessary. I hope that makes more sense to you now. My question is, I want to make bars of different scents shower, laundry, dish, etc.

Would you recommend following your original measurements and split the end mixture then add essential oil OR cut the measurements completely in half and do a separate batch? You can then mix in different scents to each half. Thank you for your thorough, well-researched and clear posts. Thanks so much for your comment, Tamar! Yes, I have a hard time with scents, too. I have issues just walking by certain stores. Although I do still love scented shampoo and hair products, so I often add lavender to those.

I want people making their own stuff! Your email address will not be published. What is Lye? Can I Make Soap Without it? Learn more here.

I made potash with ashes from the fireplace soaked in water. The soap that I made with potash is a light gray color. It has since hardened more. Natural soaps are made with lye. My pure Castile soap could also be called sodium olivate. Potassium hydroxide, the type of lye used for making liquid soaps, is often sold in flakes.

Sodium hydroxide, the lye most often used for bar soaps, is often sold in beads. You can see that sodium hydroxide is at the very bottom of the scale.