Quote:
Kristen,
I really depends on what type of soap you want to make. You can make the melt and pour variety or you can start from scratch and make soap from basic oil, butters, lye and water. If you start from scratch your soap will retain the natural glycerin that is removed in commercial soaps. We love our homemade soap.
For starters, go to
www.millersoap.com They have a wonderful site that has all kinds of recipes and instructional tips as well as FAQ's and trouble shooting ideas. That is where I got my start. Also, run EVERY recipe through a good lye calculator. I use two (one to determine the properties of the soap before making it and the other to resize the recipe to a certain size mold). The first is
www.soapcalc.com At the top of their homepage you can select from a couple of different calculators. I like to use the SoapCalc 9 WP...it lets you use up to 9 oils and you can calculate by either weight or percentage. Once I have gotten my recipe the way I want it, I may then move the recipe over into the following calculator to change the size of the batch to match my mold
http://www.summerbeemeadow.com/
If you want to make 100% olive oil soap, you can and I have, but it tends to be slimy with use. My next try at oilve oil soap was 85% olive oil and 15% coconut. It came out great. I usually use olive oil to some degree or other in about all of my soaps. I also like to use some castor oil for lather and bubbles.
With all the discussion lately about making laundry soap for cheap with Fels Naptha, I decided I would make a laundry bar that was 2/3 lard and 1/3 coconut. Boy did it make a hard bar. I cut it at 9 hours and was glad I did because it would have been very tough to do later. That stuff lathers up a storm....wouldn't recommend it for your face and it could be drying, but I bet it works great in the laundry.
Be warned, soap making is as addicting as chickens, but Christmas is coming and they make great gifts.
I buy olive oil, lard, coconut oil, and some others at
Wal-mart. Our local grocery store (HEB) has an All Vegetable Shortening that is 100% palm oil and I usually use that when a recipe calls for Palm oil. I have also used palm kernel (not interchangeable with palm oil) flakes and they are great too. Most of my stuff (besides the grocery store purchases) comes from
www.Texasnaturalsupply.com They are wonderful to work with and have great prices and products.
Happy soaping!!! It will be balms next....
