"Soap Making Procedure" ... How It's Done!

The soap making procedure is a mystery to many. It's a wonder how fats and oils combine to make hard bars that lather when wet!

What's the appeal of the soap making procedure? Commercial soaps are usually drying and many are actually synthetic detergents. Hand-crafted soap will work better. It has a special, moisturizing luxury feel. Plus you have the option of customizing it with different ingredients ... especially scents in literally infinite variety.

This gives you a basic soap making procedure with a recipe to put it all together.

Our specialty is milk soap. We made over 30,000 bars of soap like this in our kitchen sink over a four-year period. We sold all that soap at craft shows and festivals and through our own catalog. Though you can make soap using water instead of milk, you'll like the milk soap better ... guaranteed!!! This recipe will work with water instead of the milk.

Lightly Lavender Milk Soap Recipe

11.3 ounces (320 grams) Coconut Oil

11.7 ounces (330 grams) Palm Oil

19.4 ounces (550 grams) Olive Oil

6.1 ounces (175 grams) Sodium Hydroxide

15.5 ounces (440 grams) Whole Milk

2 1/3 Tablespoons Lavender Essential Oil

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil ( or almond oil )

Now for some "inside information". To make any soap, you mix fats and an alkali or lye. All soap is made that way. The cured product is harmless. You can brush your teeth with it. You can even eat it. It won't hurt you! The correct soap making procedure insures that.

But the lye and the uncured soap mixture are very caustic. It will burn your skin. It will blind you if it gets in your eyes! You absolutely must wear goggles when you make soap and it's best to wear rubber gloves and long sleeves too.

Equipment You'll Need

2 Stainless Steel Pans

1 Plastic Pan

Rubber Spatula

Thermometer (90-200 degree F Range)

Scale For Weighing Material

Molds For Soap (Plastic Tub?)

Hand Held Stick Blender (Optional)

The Step-by-Step Soap Making Procedure

1. Weigh oils and combine in stainless steel pan.

2. Heat slowly until everything melts. Cool to about 110 degrees. Do not include the scent oil or the small amount of olive oil.

3. Weigh lye in a plastic container. Remember the gloves and goggles.

4. Weigh milk and pour into a separate stainless steel pan.

5. Put 2-3 inches of water in your sink and add ice cubes. Put your pan with milk into ice water.

6. Slowly pour the lye into the milk. Take twenty minutes to do this, stirring all the while. Monitor the milk temperature and keep it below 150 degrees so it doesn't burn. When all the lye is added, let the mixture cool until it is 110 degrees.

7. Add the lye/milk mixture to the oils, stirring while you do so; now stir the soap mixture until it begins to gel. It's time to stop stirring when a thin stream of soap drizzled on top of the soap
mixture lays on top. This is called tracing. If stirring by hand this may take 45 minutes. To speed things up the trick is to use your hand blender to stir the soap for 30 seconds, let it rest for a minute and repeat until it traces.

8. Add scent oils and the extra olive oil.

9. Pour into prepared molds. Let sit for 24 hours. Remove from molds. Cut into bars and set aside to cure for 4 weeks.

This is the basic soap making procedure. Lots of natural soap making books are out there, but most of them make it so complicated that it's tough to get going. Even if you consult some of those books, you can come back to these instructions for the basics. Give this recipe a try. You'll be pleased with the results.

Resources

There are insider "secrets" for the soap making procedure and marketing that are hard to find. Find out more about them here: Click Here!

Al Bullington writes about rural living and small business topics from his homestead in the country. He has made and sold about 35,000 bars of natural soap so far!