Mailbag Monday - Candle & Soap Making Questions (and answers!)

A poster in the Candle and Soap Making Forum wrote, Has anyone mastered adding milks or heavy creams to their hot process soaps. I have coconut milk, goats milk but I always end up using powder. I would like to use the liquid milks though.

Angela writes, I have been experimenting again with varying recipes to get a feel for how different ingredients will react. I tried using green tea. I am not sure if it was the green tea or if my temperature was a little high, but, when I added the green tea to the oils, I hit the blender pulse about 3 times and it was instantly set up. Just got it poured into the mold. It was like it passed the trace stage. I usually try to keep my temperature at about 100-110. Is it just trial and error with the temps and the variations of liquids? And can you let the lye and oils get too cold before mixing?

Sam from Paso Robles writes, “My son came home asking if he could make a rush light which is evidently some sort of primitive candle. First of all, what's a rush light, and how can you make one?”

Mary writes, “I’m wondering if regular salt or kosher salt will work in bath salt instead of sea salt?”

Marie from Kansas City writes, “What does phototoxic mean? I had a customer ask if my lotion contained any essential oils that were phototoxic? I’m always careful to understand all of my ingredients...but I didn’t have a good answer for her. Does it matter in soap as well or just lotion?”

Vicki from Amity, Oregon wrote in with more of an answer than a question, or rather an answer to the question that I've posed several times when we were discussing candle making safety - "Is it ever safe to leave melting wax unattended...and just what do they mean by "unattended"?"

Christina writes "I have two young children and wanted to make soap from home. Once soap has traced and is poured, are there any airborne dangers from the lye that I should be aware of while soap is resting and curing?"

Dolores from Panama writes "I want to extract essential oils and use them in candles. In my backyard I have orange, lemon and ylang-ylang trees. I'm extracting with 95º alcohol, changing the material 6 times. Can I use it with candles?"

Jill writes "My fiance and I were looking at a milk carton that I was drinking out of the other night (one of the little half pint "school milk" sized ones) and wondered if we could use it as a candle mold. I've read that you can, because it is waxed on the inside and would hold up to the heat of the melted wax being poured into it. Then we noticed (and I could feel) a seam at the bottom of the container, wouldn't that seam get transferred onto your candle?"

A reader and frequent poster to the Candle and Soap Making Forum wrote about a company that had said that castor oil was poisonous...and that "... they only use sulfated castor, because regular castor has some kind of toxin in it. I did a ton of research about different oils before I started making soap, and I still read articles when I see them about the properties of oils, and I have NEVER seen anything bad written about regular castor oil, in fact I use it all the time, as I assume pretty much everybody does! I know that castor beans are a poison if ingested, (saw that on Trauma, Life in the ER or something like that!) but never anything bad about just the oil."