Troubleshooting making soap

There will most definitely be a time when you mess up in your measuring, like what happened to me yesterday.   I had measured out all my pots with the oils and was about to put them on the stove when I noticed that one of the larger pots of oil appeared to have a noticeably lesser amount of oils.  What to do?

This is where you get creative in a different way.  I knew that I had measured out the coconut and palm oils accurately.  But having to weigh the olive oil in two parts can leave the door open for errors.  But I can't put the pot full of oils on the scale as it has a 13 lb maximum, besides, the pots are slightly different and would not weigh the same. 

So I calculate that the fuller one would have the accurate amount of oils, being 320 ounces, according to my recipe.  I measure, in two parts, the oils in the second pot and discover and lower amount of 229 ounces.  To figure this out, I had to pour approximately half of the oils from the large stock pot into a medium sized container, weigh it, get the number, and pour that into a third container (in this case, an empty coconut pail).  Then I pour the other half of the oils into the medium container and weighed that, together they weigh the 229.  Pour both back into the large stock pot, measure out the missing amount of oils on the scale and add to the stock pot.   Disaster averted. 

There will be measuring accidents, some you can sort out and fix and some you can't fix.  Do your best, keep the possibly bad soap, and see what happens.  I made a Bug Repellent soap last year and I still have no idea where I went wrong.  This soap would not set.  It was soft for months, but I cut it into bars, to help allow it to cure, but that didn't really help.   Eight months later, I was to be at a music festival with my soap booth and decided that I would take this soft in the center soap and sell it super cheap.  It was actually quite popular.  People were at this festival, a lot were camping or RVing, they were outdoors where bugs were, and they were getting a bar of natural soap for a whole 50 cents.  I suggested they cut slices off around where the more solid edges were and continue to allow the center to harden, whenever that would be. 

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