how to make soap?

Answer 1

Soaps are made by a process called saponification. It can be made through a cold process, hot process or through a continuous process. Commercial soaps are made by a continuous process in a large vat.



The hot process to make soap was used by pioneers in the nineteenth century in a large kettle over an open fire. Soapmaking was an unwelcome chore to the women who had to stir kitchen drippings, lye and ashes over an open fire. It was a hot smelly job and the soaps created were often so harsh they would burn the skin. Sometimes the women could make the soap a little more fragrant by adding flower and scents.


The soaps that you can make at home with today's process, the cold process, will be all natural, gentler and kinder to your skin.


To begin making soap you need to have a large stainless steel or unchipped enamel pot at least 8 quarts in size. You will need two plastic pitchers for mixing and pouring and a long handled spoon. A kitchen scale, two kitchen thermometers and safety glasses or goggles. It is a good idea to wear rubber gloves. And finally, soap molds.


You can purchase soap molds at most craft stores. Soapmaking is becoming a popular craft and finding good molds is getting easier. If you are unable to find molds made specifially for soap, then you can use ones for candy or candle making. Or you can make your own molds out of empty micro-wave food conatiners, ice cream containers or cheese containers. Other things that make good molds are gelatin molds, plastic eggs, tart pans, sardine cans, and small plastic drawer organizers. Anything you use as a mold must be extra thick plastic or stainless steel. They need to hold up to high heat. A flexible mold is preferable so you can pop out the finished soap easier.


All natural home made soaps are made with a fat such as, beef fat, lard, tallow, palm oil, olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter or shortenings. You will also use store bought lye as a hardner. You can purchase lye at a hardware store or some grocery stores near the drain cleaners. It is a caustic substance so be careful while handling it.


Adding color and fragrance to your soap with additives makes them more personalized and luxuriuos. You can add honey, oatmeal, almond oil, aloe vera gel, avocados, bran, buttermilk, flowers, cinnamon, cloves, cornmeal, kelp, lemons, milk, myrrh, nutmeg, pectin, vitamin E oil, and to name a few. Coloring your soaps will be done with liquid fabric dyes or candle dye. Food colorings can be used but they do not hold up well in storage.


The first step to making soap is called rendering, unless you purchase ready made tallow.


The fat that you have chosen is melted down to get the impurities out of it. You strain the finished product to get the tallow. This part of the soap making process is smelly, hot and messy.


The next step to making your own soap is measuring the ingredients and weighing the lye. You mix the ingredients and boil in your pot at a temperature of 100 degrees. Pour into your molds and allow it to cool.


With soap making at home becoming a popular craft, there is an easier way to make soap. Most craft stores now carry large blocks of premade glycerin soap that can be melted in the microwave. You choose your own fragrance, colors and additives to put in the soap once it is melted and then pour it into soap molds. You can add small toy figures into the center of the translucent glycerin soaps to personalize them for friends and family.


Now that you know both options for soap making, choose which one suits your style, time and temperament!

Answer 2

You are far better off to simply buy car wash soap. Do not use dish washing soap or laundry soap. This is too harsh and will strip off the wax.

I use Turtle Wax Zip Wax Car Wash. About $8 for a 64 ounce bottle. I own 2 cars and motorcycle. A 64 ounce bottle will last me over a year. I highly doubt you could make anything similar for less money. This car wash soap applies a coat of wax each time I wash my car.

Most of the major automotive car polish companies make similar products that work just as well as the Turtle Wax soap. You can find this at just about any major automotive parts store. I get the Turtle Wax soap at Wal-Mart.

Answer 3

Soap is made by heating a fat or oil with 'lye' - NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide), but other related chemicals can be used - for instance if you soak wood fire ashes in water. You can use beef fat, etc, olive oil, coconut oil, etc.

You can easily find the recipes all over the net, but heating NaOH with fat is potentially dangerous, and you can get seriously hurt - not only the heat, but the NaOH can burn or blind you.

Take safety precautions - leather gloves eye protection, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap may help you.

Answer 4

This site tells you how to make your own soap at home:
http://www.meltandpour.com/howtomakesoap.htm

Have fun.

Answer 5

mix water with instant soap

Answer 6

Buy Safeguard. Break it to pieces. Put the pieces back together.

Answer 7

A craft store can tell you everything.

Answer 8

i want to learn how 2

Answer 9

yes i use washing up liquid

Answer 10

Okay! Right here, I found one cool recipe, enjoy!


24 ounces of Olive Oil (Pomace or other inexpensive olive oil)
24 ounces of Coconut Oil
38 ounces of Lard
12 ounces of Lye
32 ounces of Water
1.6 ounces of Soap Crafters Cold Process Soap Fragrance

Trace will happen in about 1 hour if you are hand stirring. It'll happen in about 5 to ten minutes if you are using a stick blender..

This is in the harder category of soap bars. Rich and creamy lather.
The olive oil lends a yellowish/greenish tinge to the color if you are using a lower grade olive oil. The higher grades will produce an off-white bar. The coconut oil adds a wonderful lathering agent to this soap.








I hope this works! Good luck! :)




Another great soap recipe I found was....






An accurate scale , it needs to weight down to 1/10th of an ounce
A stainless steel pot or enamel painted pot
A plastic or stainless steel spoon
2 Rubber Maid Plastic Pitchers, at least one needs the lid.
(make sure you write "LYE & Dangerous" all over the pitchers)
Rubber gloves
Goggles to protect your eyes
A heavy Apron
A thermometer which reads as low as 90 degrees and higher than 200.
A stick Blender (used for making milk shakes in a glass)
A corrugated box, approximately 8"x8"x9"
A small size plastic trash can liner.
OR instead of a the box method, enough SoapCrafters.com Molds to hold Seven Pounds of soap

Supplies you will need :
(All ingredients are weighed, even the water)
11.2 ounces of lye. (I use Red Devil brand, you can get this in the drain opener section of your supermarket)
32 ounces of water
1 Pound of Olive Oil (any type will do, the cheaper the better)
3 Pounds of Lard
1 Pound of Coconut Oil (76 degree)
1.4 ounces of Soap Crafters Signature Line Fragrance

Directions:
Put on your gloves and goggles. Read the warning label on the lye. It is a caustic and dangerous substance. It makes wonderful soap, but it is not your friend as it will burn a hole in you.

The first thing you need to do is put your scale in your sink, place the empty container on it, THEN turn on the scale, THEN start pouring your water in.

Weigh 32 ounces of COLD water in a plastic container. Never use hot water to mix with lye, it will volcano!
Very slowly, pour the lye into the cold water. Make sure you leave everything in the sink. It is safer that way. Lye has a lot of static cling, so spills are easy to do.
You'll notice the lye reacts with the cold water and it gets very hot. It'll also give off a gas, that's why you should be outside. Don't breathe the fumes. When it is stirred, put the cap on the lye solution and bring it back inside.

Let your lye sit in a safe place (out of the reach of everyone including pets) until it cools off to room temperature. This will take two to three hours. You can make this lye solution the day before. Lye solution is a very dangerous substance, it can cause death if ingested. Make sure everyone in the house knows what it is and it is not to be touched.
When the lye gets back down to room temperature you're ready to start making your soap, start weighing out your fats.
Put your weighed fats into a stainless steel container or porcelain (enamel) painted pot.
Put the pot full of fats on the stove. Heat on the stove, stirring often. Keep a close eye on it because it reaches temperature somewhat quickly. Stir well before taking its temperature. You're looking for a temperature between 120 and 130 degree Fahrenheit. Always wear your gloves and goggles when working with the lye!
Always clean your thermometer before using it.
When your fats reach between 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit, put your pot in your sink. If you made the lye solution the day before, it is now at room temperature. Put on your gloves and goggles. Very carefully and slowly pour the lye solution into the fats.
Use a large spoon (slotted spoon works best) to stir it in. Hold your head back while pouring to avoid any splash back getting you. In this photo we are adding the lye solution to the fats.
Once the lye solution is mixed in, (a couple of minutes), use the stick blender, use it off and on (continuous use will blow it up, I know). Blend for a minute, stir with a spoon for a minute, that kind of thing. You should come to a very thick soap with this equipment, probably in about 5 minutes
You will see changes in your creation. It will immediately start to become more opaque. It will become thicker and more opaque as time goes on. This is the mixture changing into soap. The lye, water and fats are turning into something completely different. SOAP! If you weighed accurately and had your temperatures accurate, then the bowl the mixture is in will stay warm to the touch.
If you don't have a stick blender, you can stir with that spoon for about 1-1/2 hours. A stick blender costs about $20 or less, I highly recommend it. Your wrist will thank you!
Stick blenders do have their disadvantages, they tend to give a soap that's done being stirred, but it is still so raw, the soap may burn your skin. When I used to hand stir, I didn't have this problem. But it really isn't much of problem. You should be using gloves!
Stick blenders also tend to cause overheating of the soap from time to time. But this really isn't much of a problem unless you really overdo the mixing.
After one hour of stirring, (If you're using a stick blender, this point will happen about five minutes into stirring), you'll notice that if you drop some of the mixture from your spoon onto the surface, that it kind of dents the surface. It looks very thick and this particular recipe that you're making has a light tan color.
Now is the time to use your stick blender to stir in the SoapCrafters Colorant if you are using one. Stir in your weighed SoapCrafters Fragrance that is cold process certified.Do this with a spoon, do not use a stick blender to stir in fragrance.
Immediately pour your soap into your molds. The molds we sell at SoapCrafters.com do not need any oil or grease on them. :)

Let it sit undisturbed in a warm room for 24 hours. As the chemical reaction is taking place it generates heat. If you put your hand on the side of the box in about 1 hour, you will feel its warmth.

Twenty-four hours are up. HURRAY! It should still be a little warm to the touch. You can now remove your bars from the mold! They should just pop right out. If you have to struggle, then put the mold in the freezer for 3 hours. Take it out and use a blow dryer on the back of the mold. When condensation forms, it will slip right out.

If you used the box for a mold, just pull the plastic liner out of the box, remove it from the soap and cut into bars.

The soap should have a nice, solid consistency. It may be a little oily to the touch. But it should be the same texture throughout. It will resemble a cheese, like monterey jack, and have a similar texture.

If you are going to melt the soap, now it is ready for shredding. If you're not going to melt it, just cut into bars and let the bars cure for 4 weeks or more for the best soap. You can use it in a day or two, but a well cured soap lasts so much longer and has better lather. So go ahead and use a bar, but let all the other bars dry in the open air for over a month.

To be sure that your soap making project went well, purchase some ph testing papers from SoapCrafters.com. A good soap will fall in the 7-9 category. A successful batch does not burn the skin in use. It is rich, bubbly, creamy soap that is extremely gentle to the skin. The reason I give this recipe is that it is the only soap that I can use on my overly sensitive skin. It keeps me from scratching all winter long. :) If you're seeking out soap making, I'm guess you're having problems with the detergent bars/harsh soaps in the store too! So enjoy!

Notes
When your soap is almost thick enough and you're hand stirring, now is the time to weigh out your essential oil in a very small bowl (not a plastic one because the essential oils will mar it) or shot glass. You want to weigh this now, because if you had weighed it before all that stirring, you're missing some of it. Pure essential oils are not stable. They evaporate away rather quickly. So weigh your essential oil or fragrance and pour it into your mixture. Stir well with a spoon. A stick blender used to stir in scenting material may seize your batch of soap! (If you will be using this soap for soap crafting, do not add any essential oil nor fragrance.)

If you'd like to avoid that white powder that forms on top of soap, you can put a layer of plastic wrap right on top of the soap. It needs to be touching the soap. That way the air won't react with the soap making what we call 'soda ash'. But that step isn't necessary, you can just scrape that white powder off when the soap is done. This step can also cause soap to overheat in the molds.

Overheated soap has a bit of a rind appearance around the edges. You probably wouldn't notice it unless you cut into the soap. Overheating is also the main cause of a soap's scent disappearing. The soap can sour up to 200 degrees in the mold due to insulating it and this will cook your fragrance or essential oils. Many people who have instructions on the internet mistakenly think this 'gel stage' is a disirable event, it is not. Originally it was talked about in Liquid Soapmaking by Catherine Failor. She was discussing a HOT process of soap making. Cold process soap making should not go through this stage. If your soap overheats, then remove whatever insulation you have on it and move it to a cooler spot. The soap is still great to use, it just has lost it's scent typically and has a rind appearance in the soap.

The most common problems
There are no "air bubbles" in soap usually, but a stick blender can actually cause little tiny empty holes in the soap. If you have bubbles in your soap, and there is liquid in them then they are really lye pockets and this is not safe to use. You might be able to save it by crafting it.

If there are tiny pin holes with no liquid in them through the texture of the soap, these are caused by overstirring with a stick blender. They are nothing to be concerned about. :)

Gone Cold.: If your soap goes cold during the first 24 hours or turns to mush, you probably lost the saponification process. There can be a lot of reasons for this. Your weights of oils, or lye may have been off causing a bad batch and Mother Nature shut down your operation. Or your temperature was not high enough with the fats and it just lost temperature. Or it just caught a chill. :) After thinking long and hard about what you did during weighing, and if you're sure your weighing was correct, then pour it into your soap pot, put it on the stove. Heat it while stirring constantly. When it reaches 130, remove from heat, pour back into a fresh mold. This is what I call 'kick starting' it.