[TheForge] Harden & temper

[Bruce Freeman]

What" stuff," Pete?  A lye solution?  (What concentration?)  I can't
envision solid lye being put in a carboy.

Don't let us frighten you away from using lye at all.  Cold solutions
of lye are much less dangerous than when there's any heat involved.
You still want to keep them out of your eyes, and to minimize skin
contact (and immediately wash it off and treat with vinegar).  but I
use lye quite a bit, especially recently.  Think of it like red hot
metal.  You don't want that anywhere near your eyes either, and it's a
LOT more destructive to skin than is lye, which you can wash away and
neutralize.

Nonetheless, washing soda is a good, powerful caustic which is less
dangerous than lye.  Wear gloves while
using it and keep it out of your eyes, but I would guess that you've
got a  wee bit of time to wash it from  your eyes if you do get it in
them.  Lye gives you almost no such time (unless it's very dilute).


On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 3:26 PM, peter fels <artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
> 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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-- 
Bruce
NJ