The DOS Initiation

The soap that I thought had Dreaded Orange Spots, (DOS) has turned out to be one of the best soaps I’ve ever made. The scent is intoxicating, the lather luxurious, and it leaves my skin feeling conditioned and pliant. It’s so good, in fact, that I’m saving it. There are five bars left, and I plan to enjoy them, one by one, observing how they change over several months. I don’t even know if they ever really had DOS, or if the discoloration was caused by something else. I cut the spots away, and the remaining soap is luxurious and soothing to my skin.

But I did have another incident of DOS that was rather embarrassing – so much that I hesitate to tell the story. On the soap lists, I’ve seen several soap makers claim they’ve never had DOS, and I tend to wonder if that’s true or if they are simply attempting to cultivate the reputation of a Superior Soapcrafter. Next they’ll be saying they’ve never had to rebatch a botched soap!

Here is the thing about soap making – you can read the books and the websites, watch the tutorials, lurk on the lists – but when it comes right down to it, there is simply nothing like experience. Several times I made a stupid mistake, and then realized that it was the exact unwanted the result I was warned about in a book or on a list. And I’m usually a pretty quick study.

In addition to the rapture of luxury soap and the romance of DIY, I am also motivated by thrift. I’ve thrown away so many pounds of animal fat from cooking and paid so much money for good soap! So it was only natural that during my first soap making adventures I thought it would be a good opportunity to use up that old shortening in the pantry and those essential oils lying around the house. I don’t use shortening much anymore, and it smelled slightly stale. But I figured, it’s only soap, right?

Wrong. Within weeks the soap made from the shortening had developed orange spots. To my chagrin I had given some of it away to friends, and I can only hope that they used it up before the spots appeared. Once I saw the orange spots, I considered throwing it away, but then I thought it might improve if I rebatched it with some fresh oils. It didn’t. The oxidation that caused the DOS simply spread to the new batch like leprosy.

Months later, I decided to grate a bar of the rebatched DOS soap and use it to make laundry soap. I even added extra lye to compensate for the extra “happy skin” oils in the soap. At first it was okay, but as I got down to the bottom of the bucket, a weird thing started to happen to my laundry. It started to come out of the dryer smelling like cooking oil – this despite the fact that I always add fragrant essential oils to the wash. For weeks my underwear smelled like it belongs to a fry cook. I finally fixed the problem with a new batch of laundry soap made with fresh ingredients and 0% super fat, and a very heavy dose of floral fragrance oil. This made my underwear smell like it belongs to an exotic dancer, which is much better than a fry cook.

Just now, cleaning out the closet where I store my soap making supplies, I came across the last three bars of DOS soap. The original essential oil fragrance has faded, and strangely, so has the stale oil smell. The bars are hard, and the DOS actually looks rather interesting. I had cut the soap with a steel guitar string, and the DOS made curved streaks in the soap, following the lines cut with the string. I washed my hands with it, and the lather is extraordinarily creamy. My skin felt comfortable after using the soap. The stale smell is there – faintly – but it’s really not offensive and it’s blunted by a mild soapy smell. It isn’t a fragrance I would strive for, and it’s not something I would use to prepare for a night out with my husband, but it’s not bad enough to make me want to wash my hands with something else to get rid of the odor. I placed it on my kitchen soap dish. Even now that I have plenty of soap, I still don’t want to waste any.

These days, when I read on the lists where a new soap maker wants to rebatch a soap with DOS or use it to make laundry soap, I think about warning them. Then I decide against it. First off, what happened to me might not happen to them. I really don’t know. And secondly, if it does happen, there is nothing like the experience to really understand the process. It’s like an initiation.