Sciencemadness Discussion Board - the end of Red Devil Lye

the end of Red Devil Lye

Polverone - 7-9-2005 at 19:37

I have it on good authority that Red Devil lye, every American's favorite source of OTC NaOH, is no longer being distributed to retailers. Somebody on a soapmaking forum was mentioning that grocery stores in her area didn't seem to have it anymore. They weren't getting restocked. She called up the manufacturer and was told it was no longer being made or distributed as of September 1.

I wonder why it was discontinued. Liability? Lack of profitability? Negative association with those evil, house-exploding, baby-eating meth cooks?

I further wonder if anyone else will take up selling sodium hydroxide through retail outlets, or if it will go the way of the dodo and of nitric acid from the corner drugstore.

woelen - 7-9-2005 at 22:39

This sounds bad. As I mentioned in another thread, over here in The Netherlands concerned people also are discussing the banning of solid NaOH (and also 97% H2SO4) for the general public. These chemicals are thought to be too corrosive and dangerous in the hands of untrained people, they are not idiot-proof

. Another reason that concerned people mention for banning is that in the last few months some young boys made NaOH/Al mixes in capped bottles and left these alone in shopping places :mad:

.

[Edited on 8-9-2005 by woelen]

Magpie - 7-9-2005 at 22:40

It looks like another US institution has been killed. I can't imagine that it wasn't profitable as I haven't seen any competitor's product on the shelves. Also the soapmakers are missing it already and it is only September 7. So there is a healthy demand.

I wouldn't be surprised if liability concerns and/or government pressures aren't involved. As I reported earlier Simplot has opted out of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer business recently due to those concerns.

Thanks for the warning. I'm going to pickup a couple lbs of Red Devil tommorrow.

ChemHack - 8-9-2005 at 03:49

Can we have some independent confirmation of this rumor?

Blind Angel - 8-9-2005 at 04:20

this kind of thing didn't help:
http://www.mamasite.net/catalog/booklets/red_devil_lye.shtml
and i'm pretty sure that you can confirm by yourself by calling. Meh, it's bad, but still NaOH is easily available, it's not necessarly available in store but you can order it by the kg over eBay or any good chemical supplier w/o suspicion (yet).

Stil, let us mourn this other victim of the drug war.

S.C. Wack - 8-9-2005 at 04:32

As far as grocery stores in this area (two different states, pop. >500,000), it is true. Some stopped selling it two years ago, the rest that carried it in recent history stopped doing so a few months ago. Still to be found elsewhere for a higher price, but perhaps soon we could be talking about boiling alkali carbonate and agricultural lime for OTC-ness. Well, we'll see.

vulture - 8-9-2005 at 09:43

Well, apparently, the EU is gonna send some disaster relief ships to Louisiania. You guys want me to throw in a few tons of NaOH?

Say for declogging the sewer system in New Orleans?

Polverone - 8-9-2005 at 09:50

Here's the forum that had the announcement: http://www.soapdishforum.com/forum/
You'll see the administrator has posted a sticky notice at the top of each forum about the discontinuation. You can find a couple of threads about it if you do a forum search for red devil lye.

Here's what one of the people on the site, a bulk reseller of sodium hydroxide for soap production, said:

Quote:

Red Devil issued a statement a few weeks ago saying that they will no longer be selling to distributors as of Sept 1st. The reason is most of their outlets no longer will carry it due to liability issues surrounding meth production. Their sales for this product have been steadily decreasing over the last 18 months and it is no longer in their best interests to continue manufacturing it. They introduced a replacement product on the market that contains no lye.

This will not affect our supply as we purchase from bulk manufacturers. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us.

Multiple soapers have apparently called the manufacturer to register their displeasure. <A HREF="http://www.reckittbenckiser.com/">Reckitt Benckiser</A>, the manufacturer, no longer mentions the product on their site as far as I can tell.

Someone in one of those soap forum threads said that Lowes carries another 100% sodium hydroxide product that isn't Red Devil, but didn't mention a name.

Fleaker - 8-9-2005 at 13:21

Now not even soda lye! What is it coming to?

I mean sure, there are other sources for it, but it's just so convenient to run out to the hardware store and get some.

I heard tell that potassium permanganate at large home improvement stores may soon be removed/replaced.

chloric1 - 8-9-2005 at 15:07

Although the Menard's in better areas always seems to have permanganate, the one closest to my house has not stocked for 1 year and they just now got it back on there shelves. At $16.99 for 5 pounds I can hardly pass it up!

have no fear those chemicals are still here...

((Blasta)) - 8-9-2005 at 15:14

Well maybe not for general public use...but man, if you were to go to any major janitorial outfit you could easily buy both products! I can get both pure NaOH and 93% H2SO4 for cheap prices.

cyclonite4 - 11-9-2005 at 19:11

Man, that is sad. I hope the same doesn't happen in Australia. I've noticed that oxalic acid is becoming less common, I wonder why?

Correct me if I'm wrong (I wouldn't know, I don't cook meth), but isn't water used at some stage in meth production? If so, stock up on distilled water!

Anyways, I feel sorry for you guys (including soapmakers).

Oxalic acid

chloric1 - 12-9-2005 at 17:46

Yes I happen to have 5lb that I purchased years back and I am discovering all kinds of cool round the house stuff and workshop related projects. I made canary yellow ferrous oxalate yesterday and cleaned the 2 year old rust stains from my morter and pestle! No scrubbing absolutely brand new!! I want to try other rust stained items in my home! It is very soluble at room temp but quite soluble at 70 or 80 C :cool:

[Edited on 9/13/2005 by chloric1]

lacrima97 - 13-9-2005 at 12:50

i know of a gas station that has about 20 bottles or so of red devil lye, and bottles of pure ephedrine :-/ , it might be a crooked store though.

daeron - 13-9-2005 at 13:20

similar things have been happening all over the world-the victoms:
naoh,h2so4,fuckin hcl,KI,KBr,etc
the explenation-there was either a case where a wife poured some naoh in the soup,or someone tried to blind someone w h2so4,or simply cos it can be used for boooo druug maaaakin

we are the last generations of alchemists

quicksilver - 14-9-2005 at 06:22

RED DEVIL may have opped for another venue but in the USA a company called ROEBIC makes a "heavy-duty drain opener" that their MSDS says is technical grade Na Hydroxide and sells for $7 for one Kg in a small keg.
It is available in most lg hardware stores. This is not waste chems like some who sell H2SO4 as a black sludge but a fairly high quality chemical product. There are MANY places to buy H2SO4 as a technical grade as well. Red Devil may have sold a clean product but there are so many, many others who do as well. I actually have found almost everything as technical grade I could use in between 5 stores.
There was a thread awhile back on this subject and a fairly comete list was made but every so often it just needs to be updated. Perhaps that project should continue.

Red Devil

MadHatter - 16-9-2005 at 07:44

Chloric1, that's a great price for KMnO4 ! As for Red Devil Lye, I bought 18 LBS some
years ago to strengthen my grease cutting solutions. I still have most of it. But
I may need stock in higher bulk if any is left on the shelves at local stores. Lye is still
the principal component in many liquid drain cleaners which could probably be crystallized
out of solution, although at a higher cost. Curiously, the price of Red Devil had almost
doubled in the last few years.

The meth makers won't be deterred - build a better mouse trap, build an even better
mouse ! The manufacturers of Red Devil are kissing the DEA's ass !

I'll have to check, but ZEP brand and Roebic brand shoudl be good

lordmagnus - 10-1-2006 at 18:02

Both the ZEP drain opener crystals, and the ROEBIC drain opener should be technical grade NaOH. ROEBIC can be found at most LOEW'S HOME IMPROVEMENT, and ZEP products can be found at HOME DEPOT. I have a whole bottle of ROEBIC ROOT KILLER (Copper sulphate penta hydrate).

Magpie - 10-1-2006 at 18:12

I've been watching the inventory of Red Devil Lye at my local Safeway grocery. It was holding steady at about 12 containers since Polverone's announcement. For the last 2 days it has been zero.

Lye

MadHatter - 10-1-2006 at 18:33

Lordmagnus, I'll check that out just out of plain curiosity. There are several Home Depots,
Lowes and Ace Hardwares where I live. If it came down to it I could physically separate Drano,
despite the green color and expense.

P.S. Check your U2U

mrjeffy321 - 11-1-2006 at 10:26

Since I confirmed this Red Devil Lye discontinuation for myself, I have been covertly buying up a lot of bottle of Lye before its too late.
Sure, you could substitute another brand, but the ones I see (Roebic inparticular) are much more expensive than Red Devil.
I have found that Albersons Grovery store still sells it (assuming they havent rub out of stock) and they sell it at a discount because it is a discontinued item.

So goto your local Albertsons and stock up...just not my Albertsons [although it might be a tad suspicous to buy 10 bottles at once].

Magpie - 11-1-2006 at 13:59

My Albertson's is out also. I did find 8 containers at another large grocery store, and bought one. My inventory is now 3 ea 1lb containers.

Other than Red Devil fast becoming collectors' items tell me why I should buy up more.

vulture - 12-1-2006 at 12:51

I just hope this isn´t another scheme to have the same product reappear later with a different name and a higher price...

DeAdFX - 16-1-2006 at 21:38

Quote:

Originally posted by vulture
I just hope this isn´t another scheme to have the same product reappear later with a different name and a higher price...

I doubt this is of importance but one my lye bottles has measurement in grams and the other doesn't. The one that has the gram measurement 18oz 510grams was bought a few years back while the oz only was bought a few weeks ago.

S.C. Wack - 27-3-2006 at 15:58

Its official - the last bastion of RDL in this not small city that I live in - Ace - has recently stopped selling it at all of its many local stores. Even though it is still listed on its site, and there are two local distributors given: http://www.reckittprofessional.com/find_a_product/products/r...

guy - 24-5-2006 at 20:50

Hey. I don't know what this Red Devil Lye ban is about. I live in California and I can find this stuff in hardware stores such as Ace Hardware and grocery stores like Vons. It costs about $5.

12AX7 - 25-5-2006 at 05:30

Last time I checked, Ace still had some, but there wasn't much on shelf, either. Probably remaining stock... get it while you can.

Tim

UniversalSolvent - 2-6-2006 at 16:31

http://www.jancynmfg.com/main_line_&_drain-e-ze.htm

That "Main Line Cleaner" can be found at Home Depot. It's 100% NaOH according to the database of household chemicals, but I'm pretty sure it's liquid. Never used Red Devil, but it looks solid.

Swany - 2-6-2006 at 17:40

Feels solid, and is solid, as well. Small white prills.

My hardware stores are officially out of Red Devil.

UniversalSolvent - 2-6-2006 at 18:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Swany
Feels solid, and is solid, as well. Small white prills.

My hardware stores are officially out of Red Devil.

I missed out...

I might drop by an Ace tomorrow and horde what I can... Is Roebic any good? I know it's more expensive, but I want to be ready in case I find that Red Devil is no longer on the local shelves.

[Edited on 3-6-2006 by UniversalSolvent]

Elawr - 4-6-2006 at 21:06

I too am lamenting the demise of Red Devil Lye. About the only thing I use for general purpose cleaning around the house is a solution of 1 tspn NaOH per quart H20 in a spray bottle. Nothing cuts grease any better, even with a solution so dilute that there is little risk of serious eye injury and skin contact is well-tolerated (Although I would not recommend soaking in it for any length of time). I did buy some Zep drain opener from Home Depot recently. I was disappointed to find the product contained some kind of blue crap along with metallic granules I presume to be Al or Zn. Like what used to be in Drain-O to enhance its drain unclogging action.

[Edited on 5-6-2006 by Elawr]

Mumbles - 8-6-2006 at 12:48

I currently am employed at a hardware store. Frankly, if it wasn't for me getting to browse all the chems and theorise about what I would do with them, I may hang myself. There are other more interesting job opportunities currently being presented, but I don't want to get off on a tangent. There are at least 3 brands of pure lye we carry. We still have red devil, and are still getting stock in. Perhaps the home warehouse just has a large stock of it. I'll have to check on the other two. One is a white bottle that just says "Lye" in big letters. It says it contains 100% lye on the side. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the manufactur. The other is in a black bottle. It mentions lye no where on the bottle besides in the little warning text. It does have the traditional bottle style though. Round body, about 4" tall, safety screw cap.

mrjeffy321 - 11-6-2006 at 20:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Mumbles
I currently am employed at a hardware store.
We still have red devil, and are still getting stock in. Perhaps the home warehouse just has a large stock of it.

Really? You still get stock (and re stock) Red Devil lye...ya, you must have a warehouse full of it back at "head quarters" somewhere I suppose since it is confirmed they are not making it any more.
Where do you work (name of store), anywhere we might know?

mericad193724 - 13-6-2006 at 12:46

my local hardware store stopped selling RDL, I got the last bottle. They did get some other replacement product instead of it, also in crystal form called something like 100% Pure Dain Opener Lye. It costs about 3.99 for about 3/4 of the amount in the Red Devil Lye bottle. Whatever, its good enough for me. Also, My hardware store ran out of Sulfuric acid drain opener, any other products that have it, or good brand names I should look into? Thanks.

Mericad.

kazaa81 - 15-6-2006 at 00:35

that's bad...NaOH is a very useful chemical, as HCl and H2SO4.
About soapmakers: I think that they can use the "old" method, that involved yes fats but, instead of NaOH/KOH, just ash.
Not sure about how good is this...

triphenylphosphineoxide - 15-6-2006 at 18:45

The old method of soap making using ash works reasonably well.
However it is slower, as -CO3 is a much weaker base than -OH.
And cleaning the ash in the first place is a pain, but not as horrible as trying to wash contaiminants from soap; a process that makes a mockery of the whole idea of soap
Regarding RDL keep your eyes open some other manufacturere will probably try to fill the void.