Beginner's Guide
Read these instructions through a couple of times before proceeding.
Have all equipment and
ingredients on hand and ready to use.
Warning: Keep children and animals away. Lye is very caustic and can
cause serious injury or even
death, if swallowed. Lye in your eyes can cause blindness, so be sure
to wear your goggles. If you
should splash some lye or raw soap into your eye, grab a cup and IMMEDIATELY
pour large
amounts of cool water into your eye continuously for 10 minutes, or
longer. This may save your eye.
Visit your nearest hospital emergency room or if you are alone, call
911. If you should splash lye or
raw soap onto your skin, rinse immediately with cool water. Usually
it will stop stinging soon
thereafter, if you are quick to do this. For more serious skin burns,
seek medical care immediately. If
lye is accidently swallowed, do not induce vomiting, call a poison
control center or 911 for further
instructions, get to emergency fast. This is why it is important to
have your lye containers labeled.
Equipment you will need:
(Most equipment available at Walmart or Kmart)
1 - Pair of safety goggles. (Important)
1 - Pair of Neoprene rubber gloves or dish washing gloves at the very least.
2 - Half gallon Rubbermaid type plastic pitchers (dishwasher safe). One for water, one for lye.
2 - Sturdy plastic stirring spoons, one for oils, one for lye/water
mix. Wooden spoons are ok in a
pinch, but you'll see that after a few uses the lye will break down
the wood and cause it to splinter.
2 - Glass (not aluminum) candy thermometers.
1 - Large enameled spaghetti pot to melt oils in. (15 qt. would work).
Don't use aluminum pots,
only stainless steel or enameled.
1- Old blanket, preferably wool. You can find these at thrift stores if you don't have any.
1 - Kitchen food scale. Preferably as accurate as you can afford. Eventually
you will want to invest
in a nice digital scale if you plan on making soap for the long haul.
1- Saran type food wrap.
Ideas for Soap Molds:
Plastic boxes, cardboard boxes, Rubbermaid brand kitchen drawer organizers,
cardboard shoe
boxes lined with plastic garbage bags, plastic shoe and sweater boxes,
wooden flower boxes.
Michaels craft stores or Hobby Lobbies sell unfinished wooden boxes
which are normally used for
decorative painting. You have line wood with plastic wrap, freezer
wrap or just a plain old plastic
garbage bag.
You'll know your a soapaholic when you start seeing "mold" potential
in everyday objects. :)
If you want round soaps (some call them hockey pucks), white PVC pipes,
found at plumbing
supply and home improvement stores, can be cut into 10"-12" lengths
and stood upright. It's easier
to have them cut them for you, if at all possible. You can sometimes
find the flat ends that go on the
pipes, or you can seal the ends very tightly with saran wrap and tape.
You could also pour 1/2" of
melted pariffin into a sweater box, and stand the PVC pipes into the
pariffin until cool. Once the
soap has set up, it is sometimes difficult getting the soap out of
the PVC pipe. Greasing the pipes
with pam cooking spray, vaseline or shortening before you pour, might
help or you can place them in
the freezer for 1/2 hour, then take them out and let them sit at room
temperature for 1/2 hour, which
is enough to form a light water condensation between the soap and the
pipe, to make the soap slide
out. Occasionally, the soap will shoot out like a cannon, with
just a small amount of elbow grease,
so beware! Wait at least 32 hours after pouring your soap, before placing
it in the freezer, or your
soap may not properly saponify. A wooden dowel rod can be used as a
plunger along with any
round disc. shaped object that you might have on hand that will fit
into the inside of the pipe.
Vinyl gutters will work, but they tend to warp from the heat of saponification,
after the first couple of
uses. Small, individual fancy molds aren't recommended, because they
don't maintain the heat that is
necessary for proper saponification (the chemical reaction) unless
you have something warm, like a
heating pad, underneath, to maintain the temperature of the soap. These
fancy molds are better
suited to melt and pour soaps, rather than cold process soaps. You
can line rectangular molds with
freezer or saran type wrap for easier removal of your soap. Spraying
a light coat of Pam cooking
spray onto your mold also helps. Any wood mold must be lined or the
lye will eat at the wood,
eventually ruining your mold. You can use plastic garbage bags, saran
type wrap or freezer wrap to
line or whatever works best for you. Kelsei's Creations makes some
nice wooden molds in a few
different sizes, some come with dividers so you don't have to cut the
soap when it's done.
Optional but helpful would be a Braun or Rival type stick blender. The
consensus among
soapmakers is that Braun works well and doesn't burn out as easy as
some other brands.
DO NOT USE ANYTHING ALUMINUM - Lye has a chemical reaction with alumium.
Whatever you use, as far as equipment, must become dedicated to soapmaking
only. For safety
sake, label all your equipment, with a black permanent marker, to show
that it is for soapmaking
only, especially the lye container. Try to wear long sleeve shirts,
slacks and shoes, in case the lye
splashes. Lab coats work well.
If you are concerned with what lye can do to your kitchen counter and
sink, then line all working
areas with old newspapers. Keeping the pitcher with the lye water in
your sink is a good idea, in
case it should spill.
Here is a Recipe for Basic Vegan Soap
(makes about 2 lbs.of finished soap)
Note: When trying to figure how much finish soap a recipe
will yield, you add all the ingredients except for the water. The water
will eventually evaporate as the
soap bars age.
16 oz. Vegetable shortening (Crisco recommended for best results)
7 oz. Olive oil (regular or pomace, not extra virgin)
7 oz. White coconut oil - available at health food stores or middle
eastern markets. This is
expensive, but you can mail order to get much lower prices.
1 oz. Cocoa butter - available at K-Marts, pharmacies or in drug stores
for around $1.29 an
ounce. It usually comes in a little push up tube, in the 1 oz. size.
You can also mail order for lower
prices.
4 oz. Red Devil brand 100% lye (NaOH) sodium hydroxide - try home improvement
or hardware
stores. Usually comes in 12 oz. cans for aprox. $2.00/can.
12 oz. Soft water (rainwater, store purchased distilled water, melted
snow) - minerals in hard tap
water aren't good for soapmaking.
1 oz. Fragrance or essential oil (optional)
1 Tablespoon Uncooked Oatmeal Pulverized in the blender (optional)
1 Tablespoon Dried, finely crushed herbs (optional)
1. Have your mold ready to pour into. Place these molds on top of your
spread out old blanket on
the floor. Make sure they are level so you don't get lopsided soap.
2. Weigh out the oils and place in the enamel spaghetti pot. Put the
pot on the stove burner. Hook
thermometer on the side of the pot. Turn on your burner to low and
melt the oils gently until they are
liquid. Don't let the oils reach a higher temperature than 125F. Stir
the melted oils gently until they
are blended together well. Set aside to cool. Cool oils down to 100F
- 115F.
3. Weigh out the water and place in one of the plastic pitchers. Place in kitchen sink.
Note: For goatmilk soap or any other milk soap, you can instead, use
half of the amount of water
called for in a recipe and replace it with milk. You will then add
this half (the milk half) to the pot of
soap when the soap begins to trace later on.
4. Put on your gloves and goggles. Open a window and put on your kitchen fan. Weigh out the lye in the other plastic pitcher. Don't forget to account for the weight of the pitcher.
5. Carefully pour the lye into the pitcher with the water (half the
water called for when making milk
soap), while stirring to dissolve. Keep your face back away from the
pitcher as you're pouring and
stirring, as lye fumes are caustic. Cover your nose and mouth with
a cloth (bandana) if possible. Stir
until you feel that the lye has all dissolved, around 3 - 5 minutes.
It is good to place and leave this
pitcher in the sink while you're stirring in case it accidentally tips
over.
You may prefer to do this lye/water step outdoors but make sure the
pitcher is out of reach of
children or curious animals. Putting the lid on the pitcher will also
keep the bugs and blowing debris
out.
6. Hook the other thermometer onto the lye/water pitcher. This mixture
could get very hot, like
upwards of 180F because of the exothermic chemical reaction of mixing
NaOH (lye) with H2O
(water). Now you need to let this mix cool down to around 100F - 115F.
This can take about 45
minutes to an hour to cool. You can speed this up if necessary by placing
the pitcher into your sink
filled with cool water. Be careful if you do this as the pitcher can
tip over more easily. Some people
do step 6 before step 2, since it takes so long for the lye/water mix
to cool down. This isn't
recommended until you've had some practice at soapmaking.
I still like to wait until the very last to mess with the lye, so I
measure everything out first, including
the water and get my oils fairly melted before I weigh and pour my
lye into the water.
7. When the oils in your pot and the pitcher with the lye water mix
have both cooled to temps in the
range of 100F - 115F, it is time to pour and stir the lye/water mix
into the pot of oils. The idea is to
have both the lye/water mix and the oil mix within 5 degrees of each
other when you are mixing them
together. If your lye/water mix gets too cool, you can gently heat
it up again in the microwave, 15
seconds at a time to match the oil temps, but be careful not to overheat
or spill this in the process.
Puting the lye/water in the microwave is kind of risky, so be very
careful. It's so much easier to heat
the oils up, rather than the lye/water. It is kind of a balancing act
getting both temps within 5 degrees
of each other, but this will come easier as you make more batches.
There are some soapmakers that
believe mixing temperatures aren't all that critical. This is
something that you can determine on your
own, after you've made soap for awhile, but when first starting out,
it's good to stay within the range
of 100F - 115F.
8. When the oils and lye/water are in the right temperature range, slowly
pour the lye/water mix into
the oil mix that is in the enamel pot, while stirring at the same time.
Stir this liquid raw soap for a
good 10 minutes. You can now leave, and come back to check on it and
stir for five minutes, once
every 5 - 20 minutes. In other words, you don't have to keep stirring
it the whole time, but you do
want to keep your eye on it and stir it occasionally for 5 minutes
at a time, kind of on the theory that
"a watched pot never boils". If you do want to stir the whole time,
that is no problem either. You are
trying to achieve what is referred to as "trace". This stage of the
process is when the mix begins to
thicken up. You will know you have achieved "trace" when you can take
some of the mixture on
your spoon, drizzle it across the top, like icing, and you are able
to see a noticeable trail that the
drizzle has left on top of the soap.
This trail will take a second or two to sink back down in to the soap.
The raw soap is sometimes still
soupy at this point. Once it reaches trace, the longer you wait, the
thicker the soap will get. Getting
to this stage can take hours, but usually happens sooner than this.
After you achieve a good trace,
you are ready to pour into your molds. If you leave the pot, for say
5-10 minutes and come back
and see a layer of oil that has surfaced to the top, you need to wait
and stir more, even though you
thought you had achieved trace. This is false trace. True trace is
when all the oil and all the lye have
reacted together and there is no separation. The best time to pour
into your mold is as soon as you
can after your soap has reached true trace. Learning about "true trace"
sometimes comes from
experience. If your soap has thickened up and is no longer separating
(lye on the bottom, oil on the
top), and you see a trail when you drizzle, then mostly likely you
are ready to pour into your mold.
Now you don't want to wait too long either, like past the custard looking
stage, as you may end up
with hardened soap in the pan, unless "that is what you mean to do".
:)
Optional: If you have a stick type blender, you can speed this "trace"
up. Once you have added your
lye/water to the oils, you can stick blend for around a minute or so.
After you use the stick blender,
you want to go back to hand stirring with the spoon so as to get the
little bubbles out that the stick
blender created. If you don't hand stir after using the stick blender,
these little bubbles can become
trapped as the soap begins to thicken. These little bubbles will be
noticeable in your finished soap.
Stick blenders are a blessing and do save a lot of time if used just
for a minute or two. Stick blenders
can burn out if turned on for a long time.....I do realize that letting
go of that blender button is very
hard for most, but you MUST take control of yourself and just say "no".
:)
9. Once your soap has just started to trace, you can add fragrance oils,
essential oils, or other
additives such as dried herbs or oatmeal, at this point (add your milk
now if you are making milk
soap). Some fragrance oils may cause your soap to thicken up quickly,
so you want to be ready to
get this mix poured in the mold as soon as you can after you've blended
your fragrance in well. Don't
use any fragrance that might contain alcohol, as this can ruin your
soap, causing it to curdle. Essential
oils (plant oils) usually don't accelerate trace as much as fragrance
oils (synthetic blends) do. Clove
and cinnamin oil are known to accelerate trace.
10.Once your soap has a good trace, you can pour it into your prepared
mold. Cover with saran
type wrap so that the wrap neatly lays on the soap with as few wrinkles
as possible (this can also
take practice). Wrap your mold completely with the blanket to insulate.
Some people refer to this as
"putting your soap to bed".
11. Let this soap "setup" for 24 hours. Don't be in a hurry by peeking
at it, because when you open
up the blanket, you are letting precious heat out that is needed for
proper saponification. You can
feel the blanket on the outside and it will get warmer and stay warm
while it is undergoing its
metamorphosis. It's best to wait. On some occasions, it may still be
warm after 24 hours. You'll
know it is soap when it is no longer warm. During saponfication the
soap will get very hot, and go
through a semi-transparent gel stage.
If you peek, you would see this.....but don't peek......well if you
must, make it fast then.
12. After 24 hours, you can unwrap the mold from the blanket. Use your
rubber gloves! If the soap
is hard, then you can unmold. If it is still a bit soft, it is best
to wrap it back up and wait a few hours
longer. There is no hurry on unmolding it, although you wouldn't want
to wait more than a week or it
might be too hard to cut up. You can cut the soap into bars with a
knife, a drywall trowel, or a metal
kitchen scraper. Wire type cheese board cutters also will work. If
you experience trouble unmolding,
let the soap sit for a day or two. The soap shrinks as it cures because
of water evaporation.
13. Place your bars onto enamel coated wire racks to cure for a minimum
of 3 weeks. This time is
necessary for the ph level of the soap to come down and also for the
water in the soap to evaporate.
Occasionally "soda ash", a very thin powdery substance, will have formed
on top. This can be
scrapped or washed off and is basically harmless to your skin. Some
handmade soaps are sold with
this soda ash, to give it a totally handmade appeal, this is up to
you. If your soap looks chalky or
crumbly throughout or in portions (aside from the soda ash), you may
have used too much lye and
the soap is not good for skin use but can be grated and used for laundry
soap. The object is to get a
smooth, even looking soap throughout. You can always cut away bumps,
dents or soda ash with a
potato peeler. Fancy fabric store buttons can be used to push a design
into the bar after the bar has
cured for a few days. The longer the soap cures, the better it is.
6-8 weeks cure time is ideal, but not
necessary. Wait 2 weeks at the very least before you sell it.
Now you are ready to enjoy using your own creation!
SOAP & BATH BOMBS
Comments?
Questions?
Email Me