[TheForge] Harden & temper

[peter fels]

We have a 5 gallon carboy of the stuff, probably 25 years old, that we've never used, and probably won't.
Phoebe ordered it for some process she'd researched, but when it came,we had a little discussion about handling the stuff,
and just how nasty it really was.
Know anyone in the central CA coast who wants it,cheap?

On Jun 17, 2011, at 12:11 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:

> 
> 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/                        ^^-^^
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