Adam Engelhart

Soap: A mixture, and walnut

September 5th, 2006

I thought I was just going to make single-oil soaps, but coconut and olive oil soaps have interestingly complementary properties, so perhaps half-and-half . . .

50 g olive oil
50 g coconut oil
38 g water
16.2 g lye (the arithmetic mean of the numbers used in the last entry)

The mixed oil looked like this:

,

and the lye looked like this:

.

For completeness, the plain lye looked like this:

Earlier, Lauren asked whether you just dumped everything in the blender and turned it on–and yep, that’s about all there is to it. There are only a couple caveats:

• When you mix the lye into the water, it will heat up. Let it cool down a bit before you mix it into the oil. About 90 or 100 degrees Fahrenheit is good. This doesn’t matter too much, as long as you don’t dump it into the oil immediately after adding the lye.
• Add the lye solution to the oil, and not the other way around.
• The lye solution gives off nasty vapors. They don’t have a smell as such, just a stinging sensation. Have a window open, don’t lean over the lye solution, and you should be fine.
• You must wear goggles and look like an Intepid Soap Warrior from an anime cartoon, comme ça:
  

As for this soap, it was about halfway between the two oils, in the amount of time it took to thicken, the ease of pouring it into the tray, and in color and smell. As for the others, the olive-oil soap was a little bit stiffer, while the coconut-oil one was already quite hard.

When it was in the blender, it looked like this:

And, after I poured it, like this:

Well, so much for the first few classic soapmaking oils. Part of the fun here was going to be using really strange things, so let’s start with . . . walnut!

I just noticed that this can is labeled “ROASTED WALNUT OiL”. The funky capitalization makes me think of “BiL”, the fannish abbreviation for Minneapolitan folk-rockers Boiled in Lead. Anyway.

The can gives it a sort of wood-shop feel. Unsurprisingly, walnut oil has a nutty smell.

Walnut oil’s saponification value is a fairly standard 0.135:

100 g walnut oil
38 g water
13.5 g lye.

I was expecting the walnut oil to be darker in color, for some reason. Maybe it was the woodshop metaphor.

Joe and Jane came over shortly before I made the walnut oil soap. Once it was in the tray, we went out to dinner and to meet up with Robin, who was in town for a family reunion.

After I got back, I cracked off a bit of the coconut-oil soap that was hanging over the edge of the tray and washed my hands with it. It worked! I made soap! This is really cool!

The next day, the mustardy color of the olive-oil soap had abated somewhat, and it was a bit harder. Here’s a picture of the tray:

I took the soaps out of the ice-cube tray. The coconut-oil and coconut-olive soaps popped right out with a little persuasion. I didn’t pop the others out as much as I scooped them, with a knife.

The olive-oil soap was the consistency of soft peanut butter. The walnut-oil soap was harder, but not by much.

I spread these two out on a plate in hopes that I could dry them out a bit. (By the way, my drying rack is also made by Ingvar Kamprad Scientific Supply.)

I cleaned up shop and went on to to the next day’s soapmaking.

Prior: Olive and coconut oils.

Next: Videos.

Entry Filed under: Soap