Making Home Soap

I d always been crafty and when i found recipes for soap making in an old time homemaking book i was intrigued.

Making home soap. Making soap at home is a practical and satisfying skill to learn. Soap by definition is fat or oil mixed with an alkali. Coconut oil cup to produce good lather buy it in bulk here for soap making here olive oil cup which makes a hard and mild bar. Other liquid oil cup like almond oil grapeseed sunflower or safflower oil find them here cup lye also called 100 sodium hydroxide find it here or at local hardware stores.

Cold process mixing lye and oils together to create the saponification process involving a curing time. Making soap at home requires two types of ingredients an acid and a base. The more popular cold process takes longer than the hot process and the hot process creates more rustic style soap. The oil is from an animal or plant while the alkali is a chemical called lye.

The cold process and hot process are both techniques for making soap from scratch. Hot process mixing lye and oils together with heat to shorten the saponification process. Any type of fat will do from olive oil to lard to coconut oil but different fats give the soap different properties says angie barrett an artisan soap maker. Which soap making method is right for you melt and pour soap.

In bar soapmaking the lye is sodium hydroxide. It s easiest to clear a space in the kitchen since you ll need to heat the ingredients over the stove. These chemically react together in what is called saponification and produce the soap along with glycerin as a. Spread newspaper over a table and assemble the following equipment which can be sourced online or from your local craft store.

Whether you d like a natural alternative to store bought soap or you re a crafty person looking for a new creative venture making soap is fun and not always as difficult as you might think. Instead pre made soap bases are simply melted and molded and you don t have to touch any lye. Take a pot and fill the half of the pot with water. You ll be working with lye a dangerous chemical so make sure children and pets are not underfoot while you work.

Set up your soap making workspace. At the same time all those years ago i was unsure about some of the ingredients that the recipes called for especially tallow and lye. The melt and pour process is not soap from scratch. How to make soap at home preparation add coconut oil olive oil shea butter cocoa butter castor oil avocado oil and mang butter in a bowl.

To make soap at home you ll need the two elements for saponification. Melt and pour you are using a base that has already undergone saponification.