Honey, I think we're better off separated...

Ugh.

I hate when I lose a batch of soap. All the work, all the expensive oils and ingredients wasted. Makes me a crazy person. I'm also a giant moron, because this one could have been prevented. Months back, I got a bad lot of sodium hydroxide. At the same exact time, my digital scale battery was on the verge of dying and causing some wonky measurements. After a couple of failed batches, I checked the battery, replaced it and all was right in the world again. I figured there was more of a chance that the mismeasurements from the scale caused the batch failures than the likelihood of several pounds of bad lye so I set the cans off to the side, bought new lye and carried on with successful soap. Why I didn't throw them away right then is a testament to my inner goober but also a glaring example of my cheap-assedness. :)

Yesterday, I ran out of lye again, and thought "Ahh what the hell - the lye is probably okay, and it was just the bad battery before" and proceeded to use it in my soap tonight. Yeah, you can probably guess what happened, eh?

Total separation. .  Notice the layer of clear liquid floating on the top of the soap, glimmering my the light of my dining room chandelier.  Ahhhh ambiance.

I've tilted the mold to one side in this next picture so you can see just how much liquid rolled to the back side of the mold. 

So....this batch is a bust.  Damn.  Lesson learned, but I still cringe that it happened because I know better.  I should have 86'd that lye months ago but I  was too cheap to just toss it. 

So how many of you have gotten bad lye and soap disasters because of it?  Share your horror stories in the comments section.
Thanks for reading...

::plays a haunting rendition of Taps:::