Soap Making

[stuartcnz]

On our last trip to the States, we stopped off in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, one day, and did the touristy walk around the shops. In one of the shops we were given a lavender/lemon scented goats milk soap sample, which we saved until we got home. When we tried it, I discovered that it was a much nicer soap to use than any I had used before. So, I decided to find out what was involved in making it.

The long and short of it, is that I have developed an interest in making plant oil soaps. A little over a week ago, I made my first batch of unsented Castile, which is a straight olive oil soap. It is curing now.



I made this batch in a non stick pizza tray, and used a pizza cutting wheel to cut it. The results are looking very promising. It was made in the kitchen of my bus.

Below are some photo's of the equipment I used.







The ingrediants in this soap were very simple, distilled water, sodium hydroxide (99% pure), and olive oil.

In future I will become more adventurous with my ingredients, with other oils, goats milk, and essential oils for nice smells. But I felt it needs to be done in small steps, this is after all chemistry.

[Dennis The Bus Dweller]

Nice, This is gonna be a good thread. Keep us posted

[Stealth Camper]

Do you plan on trying lard? Standard lye soap recipe...

That stuff is great! There is a little amusement park type thing - arts and crafts fair with rides operating full time - east of me in Missouri (Silver Dollar City). And they have a cave!! Anyway, one of the crafts is soap making, and I make it a point to go there every year or so to see all the crafts, and in particular to buy a dozen bars of lye soap. Just incredible stuff.

Keep us posted...in particular about the method to make. How long you cook it, etc, would be great - I suspect olive oil would be a little different than lard.

[stuartcnz]

No Lard! The soap I make is done cold, so requires the fats to be liquid at room temperature. My preference at this stage is to use olive oil as the base oil, as it is easy to get, is liquid at room temperature and has a long history in quality soap making.

Another oil that is commonly used, that I will be avoiding is palm oil, due to the ecological devestation that is being reaped, by current growing methods.

[stuartcnz]

Essentialy, the way I made this batch of soap, and expect to do future versions is to carefully weigh the ingrediants, which in this case was just olive oil, distilled water and sodium hydroxide. Then I put the oil into my mixing pot, then start making the Lye solution, by adding the sodium hydroxide into the water (Slowly and never the other way around), then add the Lye to the oil, while mixing. Once it gets to the point of saponification (emulsifies and starts to thicken) I pour it into the moulds. In this case the mould was a non stick pizza pan. The next day I removed it from the pan and cut it into pieces with a pizza cutting wheel and put the pieces into a cardboard box, and turn them once per day.

[GoodClue]

I wonder if Coconut Oil would work? ... love to cook with extra virgin coconut oil, use more than olive oil now ... tho both not cheap ...

[stuartcnz]

From what I have read, coconut oil gives more suds, than olive oil. In fact a lot of people add coconut oil to olive oil soaps (about 20% I think) to make a more suddzy bar.

[Stealth Camper]

That sounds pretty good. May have to try it this weekend. Wonder why it doesn't take any "cooking"?

Am I just missing the weights used? Or are they not here?

[stuartcnz]

For the weights, I used the soap calculator at http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp You can work out different oil combinations on it too.

Just remember that sodium hydroxide is a seriously caustic chemical, so use all cover up protection, as you don't get a second chance with it.

Potasium hydroxide can be used instead, for liquid soaps, but my understanding is that it is worth becomming comfortable using sodium hydroxide in soap making first. Potasium hydroxide probably also carries the same health risks as well.

If you are going to do it, it is well worth having a stick mixer for mixing. It can be done by hand, but apparently takes a looong time.