- Apr 16, 2007
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Someone had asked me to post pictures of me making my soap. I made 100 bars today, it took about 4 hours. Here's the pics.
4 molds that make 8 pound slabs that is then cut into 25 bars each:
Here's the molds with the ingredients for the 4 different soaps I made today:
25 pound buckets of oils. Palm, Olive, Castor and so on:
Oils ready to be heated:
Oil being heated on a propane heater:
On the other side of the fan is 4 pitchers of lye/water mixture. The fan blows the poisonous fumes out the open window:
Some of the heated oils cooling down before lye water is mixed:
The lye water and oils are at the correct temp for mixing, here I'm pouring in the lye water:
Here I'm using a stick blender to mix the oil and lye water to bring it to trace:
The soap is now at trace and I've put in the additives. This is Oatmeal Almond so I've added ground oatmeal, almond fragrance and a bit of vanilla extract for a small amount of color. I do not use artificial coloring so I use vanilla extract or ground orange peels and so on:
Mixing it all up:
Oatmeal Almond in the mold:
4 batches of soap is now in the molds. Top left: Oatmeal Almond, Top right: Southern Pine, Bottom left: Apple Jack & Orange Peel and Bottom right: Everyone's fav- Lavender & Goats Milk:
I cover the soap with wooden planks and cover everything with a blanket. The next step is saponification. This is what takes place under the blanket. The oils and lye water are mixed but not yet soap. The lye water heats up the oils in the mold to about 200 degrees or hotter. When it mixture went into the mold everything was at 130 degrees. The soap goes through a "gel stage" when it heats up. As the soap cools back down the gel slowly hardens into soap.
Here's a picture of the covered molds:
Tomorrow when the soap is hard enough to cut I'll take more pictures. Hope you enjoyed seeing what my day consists of.
4 molds that make 8 pound slabs that is then cut into 25 bars each:
Here's the molds with the ingredients for the 4 different soaps I made today:
25 pound buckets of oils. Palm, Olive, Castor and so on:
Oils ready to be heated:
Oil being heated on a propane heater:
On the other side of the fan is 4 pitchers of lye/water mixture. The fan blows the poisonous fumes out the open window:
Some of the heated oils cooling down before lye water is mixed:
The lye water and oils are at the correct temp for mixing, here I'm pouring in the lye water:
Here I'm using a stick blender to mix the oil and lye water to bring it to trace:
The soap is now at trace and I've put in the additives. This is Oatmeal Almond so I've added ground oatmeal, almond fragrance and a bit of vanilla extract for a small amount of color. I do not use artificial coloring so I use vanilla extract or ground orange peels and so on:
Mixing it all up:
Oatmeal Almond in the mold:
4 batches of soap is now in the molds. Top left: Oatmeal Almond, Top right: Southern Pine, Bottom left: Apple Jack & Orange Peel and Bottom right: Everyone's fav- Lavender & Goats Milk:
I cover the soap with wooden planks and cover everything with a blanket. The next step is saponification. This is what takes place under the blanket. The oils and lye water are mixed but not yet soap. The lye water heats up the oils in the mold to about 200 degrees or hotter. When it mixture went into the mold everything was at 130 degrees. The soap goes through a "gel stage" when it heats up. As the soap cools back down the gel slowly hardens into soap.
Here's a picture of the covered molds:
Tomorrow when the soap is hard enough to cut I'll take more pictures. Hope you enjoyed seeing what my day consists of.
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