Wonderful peaceful day here in Jonesville. Our big event for the day was making our own soap. Diane had made some with friends last week.. and I’d made some recently.. so we decided to make some together. It’s good clean fun !

The process starts with pure sodium hydroxide.. or Lye.. as it’s also called. It’s used to unclog drains among other things. It’s nasty stuff. toxic, caustic and reactive..

We got our safety glasses  and gloves on and measured the stuff out.

 (Note.. always add lye to water.. NEVER add water to lye.. it splatters violently !)

As soon as you add it to water it starts a pretty amazing exothermic reaction.. the water quickly heats up to a near boil..

While we waited for the lye solution to cool, we went in and measured out our fats.. We were using a mix of olive oil, coconut oil and hydrogenated palm oil (crisco).. I’ve also made it from lard in the past. (yuck)   Here’s us thawingign the coconut oil.. when you see what it does in the fridge, you realize what this stuff might do in your arteries..

We melted all the fats together

Then cooled them to a lukewarm 80 degrees F.

We then took the fat outside and poured it into our soap bucket

Then Diane added the Lye solutin that we’d also cooled to 80 degrees F.

We then started blending it with a hand mixer.. It immediately started to react and become soap through the process of ‘saponification’

Miraculously it began to set in just about 10 minutes.. compared to the 3 hours both dinae and I had to wait in our last two batches.. must have been the highly hydrogenated oils we were using in this batch

It was soon the consistency of stiff cake batter. Diane added coloring (we used the spice Tumeric) .. and some scent we’d found..

THen Diane poured it into a cardboard box we’d lined with wax paper

It was already so thick we had to spread it ourselves.

We added a SamStone for the final touch !

Then we wrapped it up and put it away to cure for a week. I’ll let you all knwo how it comes out !

That was pretty much the day.. except that I finally got around to cleaning up my lab a bit.. Here it is before..

Here it is after.. not a huge difference.. .. but it helps

12:30 AM and I’m just home from NY.. It took me 7 hours to do the normal 5 hour run due to weather. It was incredible !.. There were the most amazing lightening storms nearly tthe whole why back. I saw 2 lightning strikes.. even almost caught one on camera. I was taking a picture of something else when lightening hit the top of a gas station. THere was a HUGE shower of sparks… I just missed it with my camera. A bit later I wateched a huge television  antenna get hit. I also saw a bunch of ligthening bolts between clowds. it was a great natural fireworks show. . ..

Then there were some great rainbows as the light was fading 

The drive back.. while long, was peaceful.. I spent a good deal of it on the phone. It’s amazing what you can think of to talk abotu for 7 hours including:

– I spoke with Dave H. about concertina. northumbrian pipes, steam powered robots . chemotherapy and H2, 02 explosive devices
– I spoke with Glenn W and his family as they drove around Syndney Australia.. we all sang scary songs together
– I spoke with Brother Billy about the vaguraies of TV editors, burning man, robotics, video editing and solid modeling
– I spoke with Jim E about server IO circuits, office politcs, strategy. friends and enemies
– I spoke with max abotu traffic, exits, and dinner
– spoke with Maggie D about solar pannels and ammeters
– I left a message for Ang abotu Anatollian hounds
– I spoke with Davd D about Burning man, discreet cosine transforms,  walsh patterns, spatial to audio frequency transformations, chamber music and gamalons
– I spoke with Vlad B about flowers, TV producers, death and recovvoery (We were talkign abotu a friend of his whos son had just died. He asked me how long it took to be ‘over’ Sam’s death.. I told him.. I’d let him know )
– I left a message for Allison W about her phone and septic systems
– I spoke with Morgan H about pirates, TV people, Russians,  India, freinds, birthdays , septic systems, rivers and bondage
– I spke to diane abotu Max, Gabe, soap, palm oile. Sodium hydroxide, and staples
– I spoke wiht Homer about shear strength, clutches, kazantzakis, fund raising, my brother projections systems, speed contolers.
– spoke with freind Scott abotu CO2 lasers, diode lasers, transverse waves , EM fields, slivowitz, LED’s , and makerfaire
– I spoke with Prtap P about cloud computers and other high performance computers,
– I spoke with Erc L about TV stuff, tesla coils and michael jackson
I spoke wiht mom about the Museum of scince, Smit college, Engineering ethics careers, and global warming and TV
– I spoke with dad abotu careers , what we both wanted to be when we grew up

I must admit.. I was pretty board.. here’s my world for thsoe hours

now I’m home and ready to selep .. Max just got here.  we’re all under one rooof again !  I like that.. Gnite folks. Nite Sam !
-me