[TheForge] Re: Harden & temper

[Mike Spencer]

Bruce wrote:

> I don't suggest novices even make a solution of lye without wearing
> a moon suit.  (OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but not all that
> much.)  Lye + water = HOT lye solution, spalling droplets of caustic
> into the air that you can smell and which irritate the eyes.  Lye +
> ice + water is less foreboding.  I have dealt with lye all my
> career, and do so now as a when making soap and for some cleaning,
> so I know whereof I speak.  Lye, solid or solution, will destroy
> your eyes if it comes into contact with them.  It can wreck havoc
> with mucous tissue.  Given a little time, it will melt your skin
> like the Wicked Witch of the West was melted by water.  Do NOT
> underestmate the hazards of lye.

For once, I agree completely with Bruce's hazard warning.

I keep telling people this -- people who, say, casually use lye to
strip old furniture.

I wear a face shield and rubber gloves whenever I do *anything* with
lye and have vinegar and eye-wash at hand as well.

> Lye can also be considered a "component" of soap, if you look at it
> that way.

Well, only in the same way that nitric acid is a "component" of black
powder.  Unless the soap was improperly made, that is.

When I was small, my mother always used diluted vinegar as a last
rinse after washing her hair because "it gets the last of the soap
out."  I never undestood that till I was old enough to realize that
she had been taught, circa 1910, how to wash her hair by her Grannie
and her Grannie made the family's soap in a kettle in the yard.
Despite her best efforts with the technology available in rural Texas
in 1900, there was always some un-reacted lye in the soap, enough to
make a mess of your hair if left after a wash.  The vinegar rinse
neutralized it.

Also the reason, probably, that getting soap on your eyes was a bad
thing and that the tradition of punishing pottymouths with soap in the
mouth was appropriately  noxious.


FWIW,
- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^