My projects, I realized, define my life and separate me from reality. When I am working on something, I am totally focused and nothing else matters, so all the evil of the world temporarily fades from my mind. Although, that’s not entirely true. When I am thinking about an article, I often read and re-read sources, and I sometimes mutter under my breath as my subconscious formulates my viewpoint. I am careful not to have one of my creative avenues bleed over into the other and destroy it – imagine if I started trying to make art that represented how I feel about the Palestine situation; it would not be pretty. I want to make elegant-ish cooking knives, not killing tools.
So, instead of working on the doors (I’ll comment on their status below) I took a down-day on Sunday, stayed home (it was 90 out and I have no AC) and mostly sat in my office under the fan. I’ve been down to my last few drops of laundry soap, so I decided, finally, that it was time to make more.
Making soap is a bit messy because if you’re not careful it’ll boil over and then you have some clean-up to do. A bit of windex and a paper towel cuts it right off, but once the soap is fully cured, it’s cleanup in water.
It’s really easy to make; I’d like to encourage any of you who have been considering it to just give it a shot! There’s not much that can go wrong – you just measure stuff into the pot and heat it up, stirring regularly. I set an alarm for every 10 minutes and play Fallout.
Liquid soap is (duh!) all about managing the water-level in the mix. That’s not a big deal, you just need to be careful not to dry it out and burn it, or turn it into a “soap volcano” by making it boil hard. Simmer slowly, stir often, and if you add more water, make sure it’s hot water so you don’t get soap volcano. (Adding cold water to boiling soap makes it foam like crazy; I don’t get that at all, I’d expect the opposite reaction but that’s not what you get)
After you cook it down into a ropy gelatinous mess, then you rehydrate it with a bunch of near-boiling water. Then, you stir the ropy gel into the water until it melts – a couple hours off and on – and bottle it off. That’s it! Can you stir with a spoon? You can make soap.
That’s it. I let it cool in the pot for a couple hours (do not put boiling water in polypropylene jars, they will melt) then pour it off. If I am concerned about the little “head” of foam I use a gravy separator to clear a bottle, but generally I don’t care. Since I use less than a tablespoon per load of laundry, that’s a pretty long-term supply. I also put scent in some and use it as shampoo, from a big dispenser in my shower.
Now, on to the status of other projects. I have the forge body on my shop bench and have been cutting pieces off an L-bar. The plan is to weld pieces of the L-bar all over the inside of the body, so there’s something for the cement liner to lock onto. That’s all ongoing. It’s very relaxing to hear the bandsaw chewing away in the other room while I paint.
The painting is going … apace, and that pace is slow. I’ve got a routine down, which means I’ll be done and I can forget the whole thing fairly soon. So far each door has 2 coats of paint and I still have 3/4 of a gal of paint left. My plan is to just use it up. I’d love to stop but it’d be stupid to just let the stuff go to waste. Once I have the paint done, I think the rest will go fairly fast.
Meanwhile, I have been stubbing together the propane feed controls (cutoff valve and pressure regulator on the wall) and forge controls (PIC, K-type thermocouple, and slow-open propane valve). I think I will do all that when I have the jacket cast completely on the inside of the forge body. I’ve been thinking what kind of form I need to build and I’m not happy with the options that have been leaping to my mind.
It’s driving me nuts how slowly I work on things, lately. I am blaming the clot-busters. I swear I do feel lazy and a bit woozy all the time, but maybe it’s just an excuse.
Making soap is something I have toyed with off and on a couple of times. The thing that holds me back is the sheer amount of cleanup if I fuck up. Well, that and the fact that the only things that seem to hold my dandruff in check are shampoos with coal tar or shampoos with selenium sulfide. Neither of which I know where to get “human grade” quantities of.
Hope the clot-busters are helping the leg?
Speculating: The cold water would sink faster than hot water. Temperature of the boiling soap increases with depth, and if the water hits a region with temp higher than boiling point of water, you’d have bubbles forming deep in the mixture.
Cut yourself a break. Embrace the damage done and the need to rest. Take a day off without any energy draining guilt, recriminations about what you ‘should’ be doing, or anxiousness. Take a day, or three, and luxuriate in the decadent laziness. See how little you can do and how little you can care about it. Try seventy-two hours of feet-up-mind-in-neutral. Go for the big reset.
Then … once you have fully, deeply, gratuitously, explored the depths of idleness and carelessness … get back to work.
Just a thought.
James@1
It might be that soap/shampoo is *causing* the dandruff problem. At least that is what I found.
There’s a lot of weird stuff in shampoo, so once upon a time I resolved to try the baking soda and vinegar method. (i.e. wash with a baking soda solution, rinse with a vinegar solution.) That’s a lot of faffing about in the shower, which lead me to the next experiment of not using anything at all to wash my hair except warm water.
After 3-4 weeks, my hair became less greasy, and my dandruff mostly disappeared. Now I wash my hair every 2-3 days and haven’t used shampoo or soap on it for years.
I have been thinking about making soap. It does sound interesting and I have had the pleasure of having homemade soap for washing and it does work marvelously well.
I too do feel tired and low-energy all the time and I am too contemplating whether it is some underlying illness or whether I am just lazy. And I just do not know.
But blood clots are no small problem, so please take things slowly whilst you recover. Fingers crossed!
What happens if you get the proportions wrong and accidentally dissolve yourself in the shower?
Meanwhile I have just come to realise that all lamp fittings in the world are made with an M10-1.0 thread, but all other things in the world that you might want to attach them to come with an M10-1.5 thread (if they come in M10 at all), and there are NO EXCEPTIONS.
you missed the important bit; which Fallout are you playing?
Also, you’re ageing.
I only make cold process soap ( a misnomer as you are still working with with high temperatures as you pour water over the NaOH crystals) and it’s fast and pretty fail proof. Just remember basic safety precautions (gloves, goggles(!!!!).
Actually I’m about to make another batch, since it’s still too cold to break out the epoxy resin…
Oh, forgot to mention: since the glycerin stays n your soap when doing a cold process, it’s a treat to your skin.
This one goes into the “Deep or Derp?” file.
Reusable Soap
I know of one person who got one thing badly wrong with some home-made soap once.
He calculated the correct quantities to use based on sodium hydroxide decahydrate (molar mass = 220). Then ordered anhydrous sodium hydroxide (molar mass = 40).
You didn’t need to use much of it!
If you are feeling woozy then doing thing slowly is not lazy, it is wise and the only safe way to do anything; with safe being both for you, and for the projects you are working on. It’s all too easy to feel guilt for being lazy when we slow down, whether because of drugs we are prescribed or because we are older or both, but it doesn’t achieve anything except to waste energy. Use that energy instead to practise not feeling guilty about being unable to get as much done as you could premeds and age, and to work out what you want to do with the level of oomph you now have.
Says the woman who has a lot of difficultty accepting how little she can do on too many days. ;-)
@James
“Making soap is something I have toyed with off and on a couple of times. The thing that holds me back is the sheer amount of cleanup if I fuck up.”
Go for it!
I usually do small batches of ~400gr as I do not really use that much soap and I heat the stuff over a water bath (like melting chocolate). It is probably a bit slower, but seems to very reliable. No soap-plosions or anything bad, since I started a couple of years ago.
@Marcus:
Thanks for introducing me to soap making, I found it to be a rather relaxing hobby. Similar to baking, but with less calories!
Take care,
nastes
nastes@#15:
“Making soap is something I have toyed with off and on a couple of times. The thing that holds me back is the sheer amount of cleanup if I fuck up.”
Go for it!
Let me echo nastes! It’s easy and fun.
The worst-case cleanup is not bad.It’s soap, after all! There is this weird thing that soap is hard to clean up with water (it gets foamy and spreads all over everything) but a bit of windex and a paper towel picks it right up.
James@#1:
Making soap is something I have toyed with off and on a couple of times. The thing that holds me back is the sheer amount of cleanup if I fuck up. Well, that and the fact that the only things that seem to hold my dandruff in check are shampoos with coal tar or shampoos with selenium sulfide. Neither of which I know where to get “human grade” quantities of.
You can actually buy human grade coal tar on ebay, and probably amazon. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable just guessing at a dose, though, I’d have to do a lot of testing (basically, start with liquid soap and keep adding it until the desired effect was observed)
I also have to raise a paw in solidarity with rsmith@#4 – it may be that your cure is part of the problem. But you could make your own liquid soap and experiment. I wonder if I should post the recipe for my sea kelp and champagne vinegar conditioner…?
Sunday Afternoon@#2:
Hope the clot-busters are helping the leg?
Yeah!
I’m gonna grab a bit of coffee and maybe write a posting about it.
dangerousbeans@#8:
you missed the important bit; which Fallout are you playing?
Fallout 4 in survival mode, no mods.
It’s pretty incredible in survival mode, once you get the hang of it. On the other hand, once I get my hands on a decent long rifle, I am pretty much unstoppable. I have developed a technique in which I position land mines in a series of waves, then use a long shot to “pull” a boss into the mine-field. It’s a fun exercise in tactics.
I’ve been meaning to write a piece about some of the tactical things I have realized between this, and watching Anna play Cyberpunk 2077 – if you are dealing with a mediocre game AI, you can basically use a predictable process (I call it “corner fighting”) to wipe out any size of enemy forces.
John Morales@#9:
Also, you’re ageing.
Uh, thanks?