Briefly describe your process of making the soap and add any details that others may pick up on to learn too. The newbies will be intrigued I'm sure.
Ok, let's see how many members can make a quality soap today.
- Thread starter alex2363
- Start date
What a great thread idea, Alex. About the only things I know about making soap is that you start with some stuff that isn't soap, and you're supposed to wind up with some soap.
I'm subscribed and eagerly awaiting some learning!
I'm subscribed and eagerly awaiting some learning!
I like this thread idea too, although I'd like to point out that soap making is not without it's hazzards. Make sure you guys and gals know what you're doing. 
Great thread, Alex. Subscribing.
- Thread starter
- #5
I like this thread idea too, although I'd like to point out that soap making is not without it's hazzards. Make sure you guys and gals know what you're doing.
Good looking out, I'm sure members will appreciate the word of caution.
I wouldn't even attempt this, Alex, and I'll just keep buying my soaps from my favourite artisan! She is a true artisan with her soaps and scents. 
Before I adventure out into making my own soaps, I'm more curious as to how to make my own essential oils. Nonetheless, subscribed.
Excellent thred, I haven't made soaps from scratch yet but I have blended two or more soaps together in the hopes of having the best of both world. The better performing soaps don't seem to have much of a scent, other soaps smell great but don't have enough glide or can be finicky, I'm still experimenting with as many soaps as I can afford. Currently using Proraso Green, TOBS, Fuzzy Face Energy and Chelsea's Fresh and Linnen. I also have four hybrids, two have turned out very good and two are terrible.
This is something that interested me too, initially.
Finding out that it takes 40-60,000 roses to make one ounce of rose essential oil made me realize that maybe that's something best left to the experts, as when you're using a couple of ounces of essential oils per batch of soap, that's a LOT of foliage to store and process.
(And that's not even getting into the potential issues you'd have with the BATFE if you decided to distill your own plant products into drinkable form, which is a whole other story.)
- Thread starter
- #10
Come on now...we all are interested.
Step 1. After careful research here and on other sites, decide on lanolin or shea or other superfat
Step 2, More research, decide on fragrance profile required, essential oils or fragrance oils
Step 3. Look at what is involved with making soap and think no way will I ever get around to it. I'd ended up with a few kilos of Sodium Hydroxide sitting around the house.
Step 4. Go to Mystic Water website
Step 5. Order soaps that meet Steps 1 and 2.
Step 2, More research, decide on fragrance profile required, essential oils or fragrance oils
Step 3. Look at what is involved with making soap and think no way will I ever get around to it. I'd ended up with a few kilos of Sodium Hydroxide sitting around the house.
Step 4. Go to Mystic Water website
Step 5. Order soaps that meet Steps 1 and 2.
Step 1: Decide what characteristics you want from your soap (eg: Barrier, Cushion, Density, Slickness, Latherability, etc.).
Step 2: Decide what consistency you want your soap to be (eg: Hard/Puck, Soft, Croap, etc.).
Step 3: Assemble the ingredients necessary.
Step 4: Create soap!
In all seriousness, take the ingredient list of a soap that you love and tweak it to make the improvements you'd want to see.
Step 2: Decide what consistency you want your soap to be (eg: Hard/Puck, Soft, Croap, etc.).
Step 3: Assemble the ingredients necessary.
Step 4: Create soap!
In all seriousness, take the ingredient list of a soap that you love and tweak it to make the improvements you'd want to see.
Was thinking about just that today, and how the KOH and/or NaOH must be completely neutralized. Anyone know how the pros do their quality control?
Which pro's? Most amateur soapers just overfat sufficiently to create more than enough buffer than they'd ever require. MdC does the tongue zap test. You can dissolve the soap and ph test. There's probably a few dozen ways you could test ph if you really wanted to look into it. The "pro's" as in commercial houses buy premade soap pellets and blend them in specific ratios to create the soaps they want. There's no chance of having excess lye. I believe a couple commercial soaps even add small quantities of raw lye into the mix for whatever reason (hardening, increasing pH, I really couldn't say).
- Thread starter
- #15
Have you created any particular soaps?
One hopes one is joking
One owes it to oneself to try IanS soaps cuz they are fabulous.
My grandmothers made soap, as did most rural women in their day. It was harsh on skin and clothes, and had a bad reputation. Of course, the reason it was harsh was the lye not consumed in the process, which made it highly alkaline. Yet others who made their own soap had a much better product. This was because it had a more neutral PH.
With this in mind, to me the pros are those who make soap on scale to sell, whether it's artisan or cranked out at a factory. Obviously, a highly alkaline soap isn't going to do, particularly for shaving, and letting it out the door is going to be bad for business. So I was thinking there was an element of quality control through sampling.
Looking on-line, I found the "zap" test, PH strips, PH solution, and PH meters. Sticking one's tongue to soap doesn't seem very precise, at least not for a consistent product, and it turns out there's issues with how soaps interact with PH strips that can give false readings. PH solution seems to be what soap companies used a century or so ago, while PH meters no longer seem to be expensive, even if they do require calibration before each batch.
This leads to questions of when to test the soap (it's got to cure to give time for the lye and/or potash and fat to interact), whether that time is different for hot press and cold press; how much soap to how much water; where the soap is sampled; and how many samples per batch.
No, I'm not thinking of doing this professionally.
BTW, I think I listed the wrong chemical. I was thinking potassium hydroxide was produced by wood ash leaching, but it was potassium carbonate (CK2O3). Sorry.
When I was just making soap for fun, the zap test was fine.
For commercial sales though, I use a few steps to make sure that the lye is properly neutralized.
1. Make sure the recipe is "superfatted" by a few percentage points to make sure that there is more than enough oil to neutralize all the lye in the soap. (It doesn't matter how fancy your test/measuring equipment is on the back end if the ingredients aren't correct on the front end. To quote W. Edwards Deming, "You can't inspect quality into a product."
2. Use a fairly lengthy cook time, to ensure that the saponification process is complete. (This is the advantage of the hot process method. The saponification process is complete at the end of the cooking period, unlike the cold process method which requires waiting for days / weeks for the soap to cure.)
3. pH test the final product. This is done as primarily as a confirmation that the soap is good to go. Since the process and ingredients are pretty consistent from batch to batch, there really shouldn't be any surprises at this stage.
Another tip for those of you making soap at home is to focus on KOH as your lye. It can be a little trickier to find, but it makes for a MUCH slicker lather, especially for those of you with hard water.
Can you overcook the soap? Meaning if you let the saponification process go on much longer than normal, do bad things happen to the soap?
It depends on how you're cooking it, and how long you're cooking it for. This is actually one of the less exciting parts of hot process soapmaking, as during the process, you're essentially sitting there for a couple of hours letting it cook and stirring it every so often, and keeping an eye on it.
Like pretty much anything else, if you let it go too long unattended, or use too high a heat, you can scorch it, which causes bad things to happen. It shouldn't be an issue if you're paying attention and exercising common sense, but I wouldn't set the soap to cook then go see a screening of Laurence of Arabia and hope for the best.
