Please Post Sources of High Purity NaOH Sodium Hydroxide for Candle or Soap Making

[Twilight]

Note: Please dont post names of specific vendors, just ideas of the kinds of places which might have it....

Since sodium hydroxide which had been available as Red Devil Lye is no longer being sold due to the meth crowd causing problems in their communities, OTC sodium hydroxide seems to be very difficult if not impossible to find.

Some suggestions for NaOH I have read are either pH adjusters for swimming pools or aquariums but all I could find locally is sodium carbonate for both uses. Because of the difficulty I went through I thought I'd post this and tell you the best place to find NaOH if you don't mind ordering it through the mail are the online auction web sites. The biggie has lots of listings for it.

[sLiPpErYiMbAcK]

right........... home improvement stores still carry 100% lye....search harder!

[persona]

Brujo, it would be wonderful if this was actually the case, but alas they have actually stopped manufacturing the product.

There are substitutes available however... please don't post them as this is how they get pulled off the shelves to begin with... You really didn't look hard enough though. NaOH is not a "shady" chemical, additionally if one was so inclined one could even purify Drano crystal... but I don't know why one would.

EDIT: Good Hunting!

[TheAngryGolfer]

Originally Posted by Brujo de la Colonia

Or you could simply type "Red Devil Lye" into Google, and you'll be assaulted with an army of vendors that will gladly mail it to you.

actually, if you google red devil lye the first link is one from a soap-making website about how its been discontinued.

there are vendors that sell their own brands online. and there are other brands still being sold in hardware stores. but red devil is not being manufactured anymore.

[Winder]

There are many instances when ammonia in water (non-sudsy) will substitute for the more harsh sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide.

[Quantumbrujo]

All you need to make sodium hydroxide is salt that hasn't been iodized like rock salt from any pharmacy.A car battery charger,two bowls,a facetowel or any rag,and two carbon or graphite rods(as electrodes) go to the "Orange Spice" thread where I posted how to make it not long ago.

[Quantumbrujo]

Here I made it easy for you and copy and pasted my post.

Just get pure lye and don't anything that isn't NaOH or KOH.If you really can't find lye it can be easily made.Here's how: put two bowls side by side fill each one with a super-saturated salt solution(NaCl).Use rock salt(any pharmacy)cause table salt is iodized.Bridge the two bowls with a rag or towel that's wet with the same saturated solution(to cunduct electricity from one bowl to the other)put the positive of a car battery charger with carbon or graphite rod connected to it in one bowl and the negative also with carbon or graphite rod in the other one.Power up,you'll see bubbles coming off the carbon rods.I don't remember if it's the positive or the negative,but one of the two is chlorine gas(very toxic so do this outdoors) that's the salt losing the chlorine atoms and they're being replaced by oxygen and hydrogen(OH) that are binding to the sodium giving you NaOH and what was a salt solution is now a lye solution.evap it and collect your lye crystals .Leave the power on till no more bubbles come off the rods by the way.It's as easy as that.


for the carbon rods you can shave all the wood away from those super thick carpenter's pencils

[catfish]

alright quantumbrujo!
that's an awesome tek!
this post will be made a sticky1
cfg

[redshadow]

very cool Quantumbrujo . props man... one question though; can you use something in replace of the carbon rods or is it the carbon that casue the Cl to seperate from the Na? also, if you dont have a car battery charger could you use a car battery with jumper cables or does it not have enough juice? does the voltage have to do with anyings as well, 12v DC?

[Quantumbrujo]

Why would you wanna replace the carbon? Thick pencils or thick leads like Brujo suggested are easy as hell to get.Yeah a car battery would work fine.I think the higher the voltage the faster the reaction,but being an exothermic reaction,too hot too fast might cause it to bubble over.Plus a 12 volt source like a car battery or a charger is so readilty available. it's a covenient voltage to work with and it works well.Why change it.