Boiling frames using lye

[Ronnie Elliott]

I have quiet a few frames i want to boil with lye. I never have done it. Does lye, and aluminum work fine together? How much lye does it take for maybe 10-15 gallons of water?

[Todd Zeiner]

Make sure to read up on the subject well before you start. Lye is very serious stuff. It reacts with water and will cause spash burns if not done correctly.

With 3 kids in my house, I won't have the stuff around at all.

[Dan Williamson]

Where can I find lye? My wife wants to use it to make soap and I don't know where to buy it.

Thanks,

Dan

[magnet-man]

Lye can be purchased as drain cleaner. Get the stuff without the aluminum flakes, so don't use Draino. Red Devil has one which is pure lye.

Or you can try eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:FSEL:US:1&Item=7505865406

[chemistbert]

DO NOT use lye with aluminium! It will eat Aluminium in a hurry.
Anyone who wants an MSDS on NaOH (lye) can send me a private message and I will be happy to mail them one.
Please be careful. Never mix water into the lye, always add the lye to the water. Keep in mind that when using solid lye you probably won't have to heat the water any to get it to boiling, the reaction of water and lye creates bunches of heat.

[MountainCamp]

Here are two links:
The first is for MSDS searches in general. The second is MSDS for lye.

www.msdssearch.com/msdssearch.htm (http://www.msdssearch.com/msdssearch.htm)

www.mallchem.com/msds/englishhtml/s4034.htm (http://www.mallchem.com/msds/englishhtml/s4034.htm)

[Walt McBride]

ETP Rooter, for steralizing AFB tainted equipment 1lb. lye or sodium hydroxide / 10 gal. water in a STEEL container at a rolling boil for 15 min. If you are cleaning frames of wax and heated honey ( say frames from the wax melter) no AFB contact, 1lb. lye / 10 gal. water@ 190F. for 5 min. Rinse with hose. Put in sun to dry.
Walt

[odfrank]

Renovating frames by boiling in lye water is many times the work and expense of makng new frames, and you still end up with an old frame. I now toss them and make new ones.

[GaSteve]

>the reaction of water and lye creates bunches of heat

I remember a high school chemistry experiment where we purposely mixed lye and water in a styrofoam cup (in a large glass container) and the cup melted into a puddle of goo. Apparently that's how Drano works. The heat of the reaction of the lye with the water stuck in the sink melts the grease in the drain and unclogs the sink.

[Michael Bush]

>The heat of the reaction of the lye with the water stuck in the sink melts the grease and goo in the drain and unclogs the sink.

That combined with dissolving the hair and soponification of the grease which makes it water soluable. But they (the makers of Draino) do add the metal to add accelerate all of that.

[Hillbillynursery]

I make lye soap. One of the best places to get it is Fred's. If you get to know the manager he may let you get over the legal limit. Most states have put a limit on the amount of lye you can purchase because it is used in making meth. I found another source but with shipping it would cost me the same if not a bit more for a 30 pound pail. Since I do not make soap to sell the limit from Fred's has been just fine(as of now I need some molds made which is next project after getting frames and hives built). The manager and I have talked and if I need more quanity it is possible. BTW the simple oatmeal bar is one of the best.

[Sundance]

I agree with odfrank........ burn the frames and build new. Scorch the boxes.

[chemistbert]

Someone contacted me about an MSDS and I lost it. Please send me another private message. Sorry!

[coffeemonkey52]

As another chemist worrying over the safety of my fellow beekeepers, I must strongly urge you to follow Chemistbert's advise: don't use lye (sodium hydroxide) and aluminum. I just finished deleting a loooooong way back to this point to erase a little experiment I described that was intended to demonstrate the magnitude of danger associated with the reaction between concentrated sodium hydroxide solution and aluminum. I won't describe the experiment because what you create in the end is a bomb - a bomb that derives it's explosive power from the energy of that reaction. Even though any twelve year old kid could find the instructions on the internet in about five minutes I'm not going to be the one to post that kind of stuff. About the frames: I would rather burn everything and build from scratch. Heck, I'd rather buy it all from Mann Lake at full price if it meant I wouldn't have to work with boiling lye. Take it from someone who knows from personal experience: a bad chemical burn from sodium hydroxide will make you wish you were never born. Even if you are extremely cautious about direct contact with skin I still would never take the chance of exposure to fumes. A strong whiff will put you on your knees. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happens when it spatters in your eye. I know, I know - people have made soap from the stuff for a long, long time and still do. My Grandmother showed my how to do it for a science project in 9th grade. I thought it was so cool to learn "the old ways" as she called it. Even so, don't work with conc. lye. It's especially crazy if you plan to boil the stuff.

By the way - that soap is the best stain remover you can imagine. My mother remembers Grandma using bacon drippings and all kinds of waste fats for soap when she was a child. They didn't throw away anything. We kept the soap I made and my mom used it to wash the grass stains from my football pants and jersey. It worked better than anything - bleach, Shout, you name it. The other mothers would actually ask her how she could get my clothes so clean. I played both sides of the ball so they weren't clean because I sat on the bench without getting dirty. Not only did the stuff get the job done, the bars we made were rock-hard and lasted forever. That stuff was awesome. However, she learned the hard way to always wear gloves. If she didn't her hands would be burning, raw, red, and cracking within a couple hours of exposure, basically because the soap was dissolving her skin. NERD ALERT: if you picked up on my usage of the word "basically" and suspected a pun, you are a chemistry nerd. Like me.

Don't use boiling lye.

[coffeemonkey52]

Two more thoughts:

It isn't heat of reaction that breaks up the clog. It is a chemical reaction. I've forgotten most of what I once learned in organic but I think it is base-catalyzed hydrolysis of esters and fatty acids that busts up greasy clogs. The stuff dissolves hair pretty fast, too, but I couldn't wager a guess on that reaction and I doubt anyone cares.

Hillbillynursery - As I mentioned, you can't buy a better soap than the stuff you can make at home, but my football days are long over and the toughest stains I have now are from coffee. Good ol' Tide is working just fine for me. However, I'd be curious to see how your recipe compares to the one I got from my Grandma. I hope I could still find it.

[Hillbillynursery]

Did you or your family grate any of it and use it in the wash instead of Tide? You will get alot whiter whites when using lye soap. I pour the soap into a gallon icecream bucket after I pour my molds for hand bars. I pop this out and grate it to use in the laundry. I sent you the calculator page for the recipies. My grandmother actually made the lye from hard wood ash which came from the wood stove they heated and cooked with. That soap had either to much lye or not enough alot of the time because of no real measurement. I am wanting to try making my own lye in the future and use pH test to tell me the strength. Grandma's strength test was how fast it would eat through a chicken feather.