Soapmaking

I started this thread so long ago, so I wanted to post a little update. Back then, I only did cold process but for the last few years I've done mainly hot process, except for salt bars.

We use only my homemade soap in bathing, washing dishes, shampoo, etc. I like to use liquid soap in soap dispensers in the bathroom and kitchen and that's a bit of a different process. Today I made some more liquid soap, and thought I would post a picture:


Liquid soap is a hot process, and the paste is made and then diluted with distilled water. It's a bit different because the ingredients differ in how they act, and you can use far more castor oil (for example) but less saturated oils. It also uses potassium hydroxide (caustic potash) instead of sodium hydroxide. Homemade liquid soap tends to be very thin, almost like water, so my "secret" is to use a mix of both types of lye, to get a liquid soap with some body.

I have a yard sale crock pot I purchased just for hot process soapmaking.

I'd like to be able to make a really good mechanic's soap with a lot of scrubbing material for when I get done working on cars and whatnot. We have something at work that is very good at cleaning, smells almost neutral, and leaves my hands feeling soft and not dry.

I have to admit Yooper, I don't wear the eye protection, gloves, etc. when handling the lye. (as I typed this, I realized i've got a 12" scar on my right forearm from a chemical burn I got last weekend - trisodium phosphate).

Hey, gloves are almost mandatory

passedpawn said:

I have to admit Yooper, I don't wear the eye protection, gloves, etc. when handling the lye. (as I typed this, I realized i've got a 12" scar on my right forearm from a chemical burn I got last weekend - trisodium phosphate).

Click to expand...

I often don't- but this particular recipe and technique is very "splashy" and I learned the hard way to try to protect myself with long sleeves and gloves and googles with liquid soap making!

You're wicked smaht

Melana said:

You're wicked smaht

Click to expand...

Well, if I really was wicked smaht, I wouldn't have had to learn that one the hard way..................

After sitting in the crockpot overnight, the soap is ready to be put in jars and sequestered: (sorry for the sideways photo- I can't fix it no matter how I try!)


The soap is not clear (yet) but as it sits it will drop clear and there will be some sediment on the bottom. The jars here are the same exact recipe, but made about a year apart:



If you are interested in making liquid soaps, gels, body wash, etc, it's fun and uses the same equipment as bar soap, except for the different form of lye (potassium hydroxide, KOH). There are some differences, but nothing really difficult to manage.

Yooper said:

The jars here are the same exact recipe, but made about a year apart:

Click to expand...

Wow, just like bottling beer - let it sit long enough and you'll be rewarded with beautiful clear product!

I went to Michael's and got some fragrance and some coloring. I've only used essential oils and powered coloring.

Any advise for this stuff?
It's Not essential oil
I'm looking to make something to give out at Christmas. The spice cake and cinnamon smell like Christmas and was thinking of using those. Only have 1/2 OZ of each for 2 bread loaf size bars. I could do one and one or mix together in one loaf pan (1 oz) if 1/2 oz isn't enough for one bread pan

Takes a lot more fragrance than you'd think. In my (minimal) experience at least 1oz per loaf (which is about 40oz for the mold I made).

What is your weight in oil?

Melana said:

What is your weight in oil?

Click to expand...

I think I answered my own question digging back on the thread.

As for the liquid coloring, Do I just keep dropping the color in drop by drop while mixing till I get the color right...is it that simple?

•80% olive Oil
•20% coconut Oil
Or, to make about 4.5 lbs of soap, you would use:•40 oz. olive oil
•10 oz. coconut oil
•16 oz. water
•6.9 oz. lye
•Between 1.5 and 2.2 oz of fragrance or essential oil, according to your preference

Yes, adding color is that simple. Make sure it's CP safe colorant

After discussing lamb tallow with Melana And changing my mind about the recipe about 10 times, I decided to make this:

Lamb tallow 30%
Deer tallow 30%
Olive oil 27%
Castor oil. 5%
Coconut oil. 8%

I added 1 teaspoon of table sugar per pound of oils to my lye water to help with bubbles, and added Cedarwood, Rosewood, and rosemary essential oils.

I’ve never worked with lamb tallow before so this will be a new one for me!
View attachment 420676

I just heard that I have deer tallow headed my way along with beef. I love my local farmers!

TyTanium said:

Thank you. This is awesome. I am a 27-year-old male who is now interested in soapmaking. What have you done.

Click to expand...

I'll 2nd that! Except for being 32...

Oh you boys are too cute

So... What would be a nice, easy going, good looking ( Christmas nears!) recipe for a soap that would be ready to use in around a month?

Impossible task?

And what about those olive oil recommendations, I would like to go with extra native Virgin olive oil (if I use olive oil) , as this is not chemically treated as opposed to the one recommended at the beginning of this thread.


Sry, if this has been asked before... But... You know... 50 pages....

Thanks!

Miraculix said:

So... What would be a nice, easy going, good looking ( Christmas nears!) recipe for a soap that would be ready to use in around a month?

Click to expand...

You could have a soap that was passable in a month, but it would be better after 6 weeks or more. Soap has to cure for a while before it reaches it's potential.

One soap I like a lot is as follows:

33% Tallow
33% Coconut Oil
33% Palm Kernel Oil

It's a nice hard hand and bath soap that serves as a great base for additives as you see fit.

Miraculix said:

And what about those olive oil recommendations, I would like to go with extra native Virgin olive oil (if I use olive oil) , as this is not chemically treated as opposed to the one recommended at the beginning of this thread.

Click to expand...

It would be a bit of a waste to use culinary olive oil for soap. I mean look at the nasty stuff (lye) you are mixing with it! Some of the best soaps made in the world are made with 100% Pomace Olive Oil and aside from the color you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from any made with virgin. There's a higher level of unsaponifiable materials in Pomace, so this actually could add to them being milder/better on the skin.

If you are dead set on doing that, there's no harm. There's an ever so slight difference in saponification numbers (184-196 for virgin, 182-193 for pomace) so in very large batches you will want to make sure your soap calculator takes account of that. In a smaller batch it's within the margin of error.

Miraculix said:

I'll 2nd that! Except for being 32...

Click to expand...

Funny. Actually, Ty is 32 also. That post you quoted was from 5 years ago.

When we have vistitors (pretty common for Floridians), I offer to make beer or soap or cheese or sausage or roast coffee. Adults and kids will want to do one of these. My brother and his wife visited 2 months ago and she and I made soap, which she took home with her. We had fun doing it.

I expect to do this some more over Thanksgiving - have a bunch of people coming.

LBussy said:

You could have a soap that was passable in a month, but it would be better after 6 weeks or more. Soap has to cure for a while before it reaches it's potential.

One soap I like a lot is as follows:

33% Tallow
33% Coconut Oil
33% Palm Kernel Oil

It's a nice hard hand and bath soap that serves as a great base for additives as you see fit.


It would be a bit of a waste to use culinary olive oil for soap. I mean look at the nasty stuff (lye) you are mixing with it! Some of the best soaps made in the world are made with 100% Pomace Olive Oil and aside from the color you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart from any made with virgin. There's a higher level of unsaponifiable materials in Pomace, so this actually could add to them being milder/better on the skin.

If you are dead set on doing that, there's no harm. There's an ever so slight difference in saponification numbers (184-196 for virgin, 182-193 for pomace) so in very large batches you will want to make sure your soap calculator takes account of that. In a smaller batch it's within the margin of error.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the input! Money wise, it doesn't make much of a difference for me if I buy extra virgin or the other olive oil.

Thanks for the recipe but I think I would prefer (I cannot believe that I am actually writing this) something completely vegetarian.

I just had a quick look at an UK online shop called thesoapkitchen, they seem to have everything I will need.

How about removing the tallow in your recipe and replacing it with olive oil and a bit of shea butter? Do you think this might work?

Hahaha, maybe I should go the same route I went when I started brewing... Instead of smash beers it is sos , single oil soaps to get to know the base ingredients

Miraculix said:

How about removing the tallow in your recipe and replacing it with olive oil and a bit of shea butter? Do you think this might work?

Click to expand...

100% Olive Oil (called a Castille formally) is a great soap for that matter. It takes a good year to come into it's own, but it's worth doing.

For that recipe I'd probably sub more PKO for the Tallow.

Miraculix said:

Hahaha, maybe I should go the same route I went when I started brewing... Instead of smash beers it is sos , single oil soaps to get to know the base ingredients

Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea. There's a book that helps a person approach soapmaking from a more structured standpoint:


Scientific Soapmaking: The Chemistry of the Cold Process
by Kevin M. Dunn

I recommend it highly if you want to know "why."

Miraculix said:

So... What would be a nice, easy going, good looking ( Christmas nears!) recipe for a soap that would be ready to use in around a month?

Impossible task?

And what about those olive oil recommendations, I would like to go with extra native Virgin olive oil (if I use olive oil) , as this is not chemically treated as opposed to the one recommended at the beginning of this thread.


Sry, if this has been asked before... But... You know... 50 pages....

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Around the holidays, I do buy a lot of melt and pour bases from Brambleberry. I can bang out lots of very nice soaps quickly and easily that are ready to use. Just a thought. I do it every year.

By using animal fats you are reducing the waste that normally would head off to a landfill.

If you're dead set on vegan use a mix of coconut, olive, and castor.

Melana said:

By using animal fats you are reducing the waste that normally would head off to a landfill.

If you're dead set on vegan use a mix of coconut, olive, and castor.

Click to expand...

I know that a quicker soap could be done with safflower or canola oil. I've never used those but I know you have, and wondered if you had a recommendation on those "other" seed oils?

Safflower and rapeseed are good to soap with however you need to use less than 20% because they tend to cause DOS.

Melana said:

Safflower and rapeseed are good to soap with however you need to use less than 20% because they tend to cause DOS.

Click to expand...

Forgive me for my lack of knowledge but what is dos?

I was wondering too. Guessing not "Denial of Soap."

leftcontact said:

I was wondering too. Guessing not "Denial of Soap."

Click to expand...

I think I found it!

Google "soapqueen dreaded orange spots"

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm taking a chance. I have about 6 bricks of bees wax that I'm not sure how to use. I remember someone made chapstick on here which I will try. I also saw someone at a craft fair yesterday selling "lotion bars" that looked like soap but were solid bars of hand lotion. She said they use bees wax, so I might dig up a recipe?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

rhoadsrage said:

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm taking a chance. I have about 6 bricks of bees wax that I'm not sure how to use. I remember someone made chapstick on here which I will try. I also saw someone at a craft fair yesterday selling "lotion bars" that looked like soap but were solid bars of hand lotion. She said they use bees wax, so I might dig up a recipe?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

I just saw this. I just made lotion bars about an hour ago.

It's super easy. I used Altoid tins to hold the lotion bars, but you can use anything you want. One time, for myself, I used an old deodorant container. It was awesome, as I just turned it higher as it was used. Even old chapstick containers will work, although small.

If you use Altoid tins, those are easy but line them with freezer paper so you can pop them out and peel when they are hardened, and put them back in.

Just think- 1/3 beeswax, 1/3 "hard" (solid) oils/butters, 1/3 soft oils and you can make your own recipe easily.

Each tin held:
.5 ounce Beeswax
.5 ounce cocoa butter (.5 ounce shea butter subbed in the other one)
.25 ounce sweet almond oil
.25 ounce jojoba

Melt wax and add cocoa butter to melt, add liquid oils, then fragrance or essential oils and pour into lined tin. When firm, take off the lining and place in the tin.
I do this all in a pyrex measuring cup, so I can pour it right from the microwave until the molds.

It's great for being in a purse or a drawer. It's firm, but melts on contact with skin so it's not messy like lotion.

And my favorite lip balm:
.25 ounce beeswax
.33 ounce shea butter
.33 ounce cocca butter
.40 ounce sweet almond oil
2 vitamin E capsules (poked with a pin and squeeze)
10 drops peppermint essential oil.

Weigh ingredients, and melt the butters and oils with the beeswax in the microwave. Add the essential oil and pour into small (carmex) jars or tubes. This will harden when it cools.

Because of the coccoa butter, added with the peppermint, it has a chocolate/mint aroma. Bob even likes this!

Thanks that worked great. I used 1:1:1 bees wax, coco butter, and coconut oil. I had liquid vit. E and most recipes online said to add 1 tsp even though their fat amounts varied quite a bit.

But wow I have never melted bees wax before, we also made some candles, and I left a little bit i the Pyrex measuring cup. After that cooled it is bullet proof. I couldn't scrape it out, so I ran it through the dish washer and it didn't budge.

I like the lip balm though.

microwave the beeswax in the container and wipe out with paper towels.

Yooper said:

I started this thread so long ago, so I wanted to post a little update. Back then, I only did cold process but for the last few years I've done mainly hot process, except for salt bars.

We use only my homemade soap in bathing, washing dishes, shampoo, etc. I like to use liquid soap in soap dispensers in the bathroom and kitchen and that's a bit of a different process. Today I made some more liquid soap, and thought I would post a picture:
View attachment 420109

Liquid soap is a hot process, and the paste is made and then diluted with distilled water. It's a bit different because the ingredients differ in how they act, and you can use far more castor oil (for example) but less saturated oils. It also uses potassium hydroxide (caustic potash) instead of sodium hydroxide. Homemade liquid soap tends to be very thin, almost like water, so my "secret" is to use a mix of both types of lye, to get a liquid soap with some body.

Click to expand...

Would you mind describing your process for liquid soap, maybe on an example recipe that you like as a shower gel and shampoo? I am going to order my stuff next week and I want to do some hard and some liquid soap. I will start with the one recipe suggested here a few posts above this one and I will (for now) stick to plant based oils.

I got a crockpot, if this should be a necessary thing to use.

One animal fat I could think of using is gee. Anybody did soap with clarified butter?

Edit: according to some soap making forum, ghee soap smells like baby vomit. So ghee is off the table!

One thing I'd point out to people new to real soap is that it leaves soap scum semi-often - certainly more so than people are used to with regular liquid hand "soaps" and shampoos which are really detergents. If you have even mildly hard water and use soap for your hair, it does leave a residue. Likewise dishes (especially glasses) sometimes suffer.

Yeah do not use ghee.

Tallow makes a GREAT hard soap (think Ivory soap). LArd does as well but benefits from at least a touch of fragrance in my opinion. Never made liquid soaps, have used others'.

The easiest way to make liquid soap is to make a liquid glycerin soap. Once you master that, making another liquid soap is easy. You need to use KOH instead of NaOH, a different lye formula. I'd probably start with this:

Once you get it down, the next step is to mix KOH and NaOH, to make hybrid soaps like cream soap and gels and bodywash.

Yooper said:

The easiest way to make liquid soap is to make a liquid glycerin soap. Once you master that, making another liquid soap is easy. You need to use KOH instead of NaOH, a different lye formula. I'd probably start with this:

Once you get it down, the next step is to mix KOH and NaOH, to make hybrid soaps like cream soap and gels and bodywash.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

Yes, exactly those mixed soaps is what i'm after. At what ratios are you mixng KOH and NaOH to get a nice shower gel-ish consistency?

Miraculix said:

Thanks!

Yes, exactly those mixed soaps is what i'm after. At what ratios are you mixng KOH and NaOH to get a nice shower gel-ish consistency?

Click to expand...

I don't remember offhand (my notes are at home, and I'm in Florida), but it's about 60/40 for the thicker ones. Also, some oils require more dilution than others when diluting the paste, like olive oil. So I read up on some of the combinations of oils that will dilute at a lower percentage of water as well.