User talk:Wildswimmer Pete

Pears soap
Hello. I think you added details about the manufacturing process, including the mention of potassium hydroxide. On the talk page I question this. Please let me know if you have any more detailed recollection than I have. I am a cost accountant, not a chemist! LynwoodF (talk) 13:23, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * In view of our recent exchange, I have modified the text again, in order to give some weight to what you are saying. LynwoodF (talk) 15:00, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks good ;-) I'll give you more details if I can remember them! Wildswimmer Pete (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This is rather peripheral to the article, so I am putting it on your personal page. It might amuse you or then again it might make you cringe. A while back I went to a lecture by a woman who had researched the lives of Andrew Pears and his successors. She did not describe the manufacturing process in huge detail, but emphasized that Pears soap was a unique product and correctly mentioned that the glycerol was left with the soap and that this was what made it transparent. Afterwards I had a word with her and she was interested to hear that I had been a cost accountant at Lever Bros at a time when Pears was made at Port Sunlight. A woman from the audience walked up to us and interrupted our conversation with something like this: "I don't buy Pears soap any more. Someone told me that they wash it in caustic soda and that's what makes it transparent." Doubly wrong! I thought it was not a good idea to point out to her that whatever soap she uses is probably made with caustic soda (not just washed in it!) That might have put her off using soap for the rest of her life. I did not recognize this rather rude woman and I do not think she was even a member of the organization which hosted the speaker. (I happen to be Vice-President of it and at one time I was Treasurer, so I tend to know faces.) LynwoodF (talk) 15:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've come across people with a phobia of caustic soda. In fact as soon caustic soda is exposed to air the carbon dioxide contained therein immediately combines with it to form harmless washing soda (Sodium carbonate). If I remember correctly the "free alk" in a given fresh sample of a soap shouldn't be more than 3% as determined by titration against phenolphthalein. Don't know what it is now, and in fact such analysis might now be automated. In fact in 1968 Works Lab had one of the first Technicon Autoanalysers in the Detergents section, and it was dutifully covered up when visitors were shown around. Amazing bit of kit, and as I'm also an electronics engineer was highly interested in the associated Honywell chart recorder which was full of..........wait for it......VALVES! Wildswimmer Pete (talk) 18:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * New little problem: Someone has decided that the soap was dried in progressively warmer "ovens", rather than progressively cooler ones, and they have found a 1954 reference to back up their contention. If this is you - there is only an IP address - that is fine by me, but if you think it was the other way round, perhaps this is another case where I need to fudge the issue in the text and add a note. We could be dealing with evolving methods. The 1954 film is describing what happened at Isleworth. LynwoodF (talk) 15:07, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Your recent edits
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Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Cold shock response
You mentioned published work on the talk page some time ago. Can you provide links? trying to improve the article and there is not a lot to work with. Cheers, &bull; &bull; &bull; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 19:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)