Yeah, I know, another damned hobby. I know there are a lot of soapmakers out there online - I was just wondering, what are the best resources? Is it really messy? Expensive to get into? I’m not thinking of making a LOT of soap, just to dabble a toe in. Gifts, you know.
I saw a documentary on it. I think it was called Fight Club.
No, no, not the soap you make out of liposuction, and not the soap you make out of genocide, the soap you make out of plants and pigs, please.
right now the most expensive part of soap making seems to be the lye.
the stuff is dirt cheap but thanks to meth heads you can no longer run down to the grocery store and pick some up with the rest of the drain cleaners.
once you score some lye all you need is
water, preferably not hard water but most tap water should be fine.
fat, I use olive oil and lard (lard makes the soap hard and last longer, olive oil does wonders for your skin)
seriously thats it for required ingredients.
you will need a stick blender, no I am not joking. you can make soap by hand mixing but expect to spend about a century mixing the stuff.
also
some measuring equipment, a scale and pint or smaller cups
stainless/plastic/wood mixing spoon and bowls
an area where kids/pets/random acts of stupid will not happen. Lye is seriously caustic and when mixed with water heats up as well. the scene in fight club with the lye on the back of Ed Nortons hand is pretty damn accurate as far as I can tell.
you will also need a mold. you can use damn near anything for this, there are people who use pvc pipe with a 2 inch diameter or so, I prefer plastic because its flexible. anything thats going to give you vaguely soap sized bars (or a long bar you can cut up later) works just fine.
the ratios can be found online all over (links to follow) as can a lot of guides but…
from personal experience
you will need to heat the oil to around 130-150f
the water+lye will heat to this range when you add the lye
as long as your lye+water blend and oils are at nearly the same temp you will be fine.
(when I say nearly I mean within say 15-20 degrees of each other) a lot of guides insist they be exactly the same temp and I have never had a problem even with 20 degrees difference. You can however shock your mix by adding anything thats to cold and the water and oils will separate.
you dont need some big ass tempered glass container to make a small batch of soap.
its a bit messy, even though you are making soap the stuff you are mixing it in will be very very oily soap doesnt really become soap for days (I wait 2 weeks before using any of my soaps and thats the shortest recommended time)
VINEGAR, get some VINEGAR YESTERDAY and keep it on hand, if you spill the lye or get it on you vinegar will neutralize it, water will just make you cry.
one other thing, they will mention “trace” as in when you mix the soap it will reach a consistency a lot like pudding. if you are using vegetable oil (or a mix of oil with a lot of veggie oil) it will take longer to trace than animal fats will, also veggie oils almost always have whats called a false trace where they turn into pudding, then you turn around to grab your molds or whatever and you turn back and they are thick liquid again, so with veggie oils blend them until they are very pudding like and leave them sit for a minute or 2 before pouring.
pure olive oil soap is very nice but doesnt last long at all. its a very soft soap (this is why I use lard as well)
for some tricks to make nice scents, add a 1/4 cup of cinnamon to a quart of olive oil and shake. leave sit for a couple weeks (shake every day if you want) and then use that to make scented soap, just make sure you leave the oil unshaken for a couple days before you make soap, you want the oil but not the cinnamon to end up in the soap. ( a little cinnamon is fine but if you use alot you end up with poop brown soap that looks like brownies and smells delicious)
for scrubby soap, add some oatmeal when the soap starts to trace and blend it in. (whole oatmeal can end up cutting you and thats not much fun)
http://waltonfeed.com/old/soaphome.html
that site has a ton of links, if you are serious then let me know and I can also send you a program that easily calculates your lye to fat ratios. (its hosted someplace online but I cant find it atm.
(edit) one super important note… NEVER ADD WATER TO LYE…always add lye to water in small amounts because if you do it the other way the lye might explode caustic stuff all over your face and make you cry. also when mixing the lye into the water dont be surprised if the water turns cloudy and the lye gets hard on the bottom, just keep slowly mixing and the water will clear and the lye will desolve. also remember its going to be HOT, in big batches the water will boil, in small batches the water will hit 160 or so pretty easily.
hmm just realized you really cant reach me, if you have any questions that dont get answered here you can email me, name is claythargic and I have a gmail account. I can send that program via email as well I think.
Also, if you don’t want to use animal products, coconut oil will make a hard soap as well. I use a blend of olive oil, coconut oil and Crisco.
In addition to the equipment already mentioned by Critical1, you might also want a good kitchen scale since off measurements and temperatures are the two things most likely to screw up a batch of soap.
For cheap molds, I mainly use loaf pans lined with plastic wrap.
Lye has become such an issue that when I run out of my current supply of Red Devil, I may just give up soapmaking, which means I’ll be spending a lot more in soap since I really like the good stuff, which I used to be able to make for about $0.80 per bar instead of paying $4-$5 per bar.
Majestic Mountain Sage is a supplier of soap and cosmetic making materials for the little guy, including dyes and perfumes and essential oils and molds and cases and stuff. I’ve used them for lip balm containers, spray bottles and glitter. They often tuck extra freebies into their shipments, like a decent sized sample of a new fragrance oil or other goodies. They have recipes and hints as well as offering very tiny quantities of things to experiment with, or larger sizes for less unit cost. You don’t have to be a professional or order professional quantities, which is nice.
I used this place for my lye
http://www.bestdeal.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?affiliate=candlesoap&Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=Essential&Category_Code=277
its 6 bucks for 2 pounds of lye…and 17 for shipping. yeah thats one hell of a bargain. /sarcasm
next time I think I will go for 8 pounds, 2 pounds of lye will make enough soap to last one person over a year but I usually give alot away.
A few other tips–don’t use your soapmaking equipment on anything else; get cheap utensils and pots and a couple of candy thermometers and mark them so you won’t accidentally use them for food.
Wear eye protection when working with the lye solution and make sure you’re in a well ventilated area–personally I always do the lye part outside. If you’re pregnant, let somebody else do the lye part.
Hemp and olive oil mixed make absolutely fabulous soap.
You have to let your soap sit and cure for at least a few weeks. If you try to use it too soon it will burn like–well, like lye! Also, the longer you let it age the harder it will get and the longer it will last when you use it.
Soapmakers never have clogged drains because the leftovers that get washed out of the pots stick to the drainpipes and the lye dissolves all the yuck down there.
If you want to scent your soaps use good essential oils, not cheapo infused stuff. It will make a huge difference in the quality of your product. Dried orange and lemon peel ground small and added to soap not only makes it smell fabulous but also makes it scrubbier. Peppermint soap is easy–just add dried ground leaves and a bit of oil to the soap mixture.
Plastic house gutter downspouts make great soap molds, they’re rectangular and some of them have wavy sides that make the soap bars look all fancy. I use a box with sand in the bottom, cut the downspout into one foot lengths, cover the sand with plastic wrap and jam the downspouts into the sand, which keeps the molds steady for filling. Use the smallest possible box and duct tape the molds together to keep the whole thing steady. When the soap has cured, it’s way easy to just push the soap out one end and use the edge of the mold as a guide to cut even bars.
Home made soap impresses the holy crap out of people and makes fabulous holiday gifts. Just make sure you start making it early enough to be able to give properly cured soap–nobody liked sloughing skin as a gift, just sayin’…
I saw a container of stuff intended to be used as a drain cleaner at my local hardware store, and the front of the container said “100% lye” while the back safety warning noted that it contains sodium hydroxide. Is this suitable, or should I be looking for something not packaged as a drain cleaner and simply labeled “lye/sodium hydroxide”?
My SIL made soap for X-mas gifts one year and apparently had too much lye in her mixture. It burned my SO’s private parts!
Lye is a household name for sodium hydroxide. They are one in the same. I’d try to use ceramic materials rather than metal when working with it, in addition to eye protection, gloves and old clothes. I’ve got plenty of shirts I wore to lab that have little holes from NaOH splatter that I didn’t notice at the time.
I saw a home made soap maker selling “lye-free” soap at the farmer’s market. How would one go about doing this? Would lye-free soap work? She had pamphlets describing how lye-free soap is better and such but I didn’t bother reading them. No I didn’t buy any of the soap either. How did people make soap before lye was available?
If you’re frightened by all the at-home chemistry involved in making soap with lye, you can buy unscented, uncolored glycerin soap and melt it, and then scent/color it and pour it into molds. It’s right here on the site that WhyNot linked to.
I used to make soap like this when I was little with my mom. I wanted to do it this Christmas for presents, but I couldn’t find it anywhere locally. It’s very easy, and it takes an afternoon or evening at most. It’s really nice if you go for a “warm” scent (honey, almond, vanilla, sandalwood) and put a little ground oatmeal in it.
Warning science content (and I’m a bit drunk).
Human tissues are generally acidic in nature, thus alkalai substances are better than acidic or neutral substances. While a soap lacking lye will not have this to work with, it will have the surfactants. The surfactants will adhere to the oils while the other end is aquious in nature and will be attracted to the water, thus pulling the oils down the drain.
I could be missinterpereting this statement, but I know from many years of experience in a lab that lye is worse than acid. First of all, how you expect that alkalai is better than neutral is beyond me. I’ve spilled strongly acidic solutions on me and I’ve spilled strongly basic solutions on me, and I prefer strongly acidic. Strongly basic solutions are nearly impossible to get off. You know this because they leave your skin slimey under water. As was previously stated, the best thing to do is rinse with vinegar. Acidic solutions pretty much rinse right off once you get the affected area under water.
You could make lye free soap with sodium carbonate. The process would take longer and you might have a problem with air bubbles, but it should work. As long as the soap maker is being carefull with the quantities of lye (ie no excess lye) it shouldn’t make a difference. With homemade soap, I would be concerned about excess lye, but since I have no idea how the process works I don’t know if this can be a problem. Soap with too much base will probably leave your skin dry and sensitive. That is certainly what happens when I get base on me in the lab.
It can be a problem. There are lye calculators out there for using sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide to help avoid burning yourself with the finished product (plus as stated before you do have to let the soap “cure” for a long time). I’m not very educated in soapmaking, though, so I don’t know if sodium carbonate has been tried much or if there are any issues with its use.
I’m talking about cleaning, not affecting living tissues. An alkalai will be better at removing dead cells and secretions than an acidic material.