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This article is written by a guest writer. He is my husband, a High School Science Teacher and Homemade soap maker. Enjoy the process as you read how to make soap.
When I’m not working on things around the house and developing crafts and such with my wife, I teach chemistry (and lots more) at a local school. Years ago, I implemented a new program with my students making Biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. To develop a workable process, we experimented first with fresh vegetable oil.
We could quickly tell (within hours) who had followed a carefully measured process and procedure and who didn’t. Making Biodiesel is very similar to making soap and my students who went about the process haphazardly went past the transesterification process of biodiesel, making it into the saponification process of soap. I know that is a mouthful of chemical jargon, but I wanted to provide the backstory to let you know how I got into making hot process soap.
So many students had made errors in the process that I began researching how to salvage the products and get something of value from it. My research led me to hot process soap making and we took a mess and made something positive, creating products that could be used quickly instead of weeks.
Cold process soap making is a wonderful adventure and allows you to create some very “pretty” final products. The process is fairly simple and straight forward (as is our process) but it takes a long time for the process to provide a product that is ready to use. The hot process method allows you to create soap (with many of the same recipes) in a process that allows you to use the product within days (some say hours, but I would still give it some resting time.)
Tools:
Gloves and safety glasses
Glass measure equipment
Scale that reads in grams (or convert to ounces, 1 ounce = 28.3 g)
Crockpot
Handheld blender
Devoted wooden spoon
Soap mold of your choosing (Pringles can work well!)
Cutting tools
Recipe:
128g Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) (I use 100% lye purchased form a local hardware store. It is granular drain cleaner. Read the label to be certain that it is Lye)
256g Water
290g Coconut Oil
98g Shae Butter
240g Olive Oil
240g Sunflower Oil
40g Castor Oil
14-20 ml of your preferred essential oils
Method:
Gloves and glasses are required when working with NaOH. Keep vinegar around to wipe up and neutralize any NaOH that spills onto any surface.
Measure 128g of NaOH and add to 256g of water. Mix this and allow the NaOH to fully dissolve. This mixture will release lots of heat to the surrounding environment. Be careful and be clean. I suggest even changing gloves after measuring and mixing. (It is important to measure weight. You can purchase a scale which will measure grams. Walmart has them if you have access.
Measure out and place the solid oils in a crockpot set on a medium or low heat and allow these oils to fully melt.
Measure out and place the liquid oils into the crockpot.
The oil mixture needs to be fully liquid and not overly hot. We are not seeking to deep fry anything, so (typically) enough heat to keep everything flowing is sufficient.
Add the NaOH and water mixture
Blend mixture to trace point (trace point is when the mixture appears much like pudding. It has a very slight firmness to it but is still very liquid and able to flow. If you have a metal spoon handy, it will leave a “trace” (like a thin film) on the spoon if it were dipped into the mixture and then pulled out.)
Cover and cook for 45-60 minutes
Keep an eye on the mixture as it cooks. It may be helpful to stir once or twice during the process.
Unplug the crockpot and uncover the mixture and allow it to cool a bit (maybe 8-10 minutes.)
Add your essential oils and stir.
Scoop mixture out of the crockpot and place into your mold
Allow the soap to rest for 2-3 days. You may cut it into bars at any point after it has cooled.
Allow a couple of days to assure the saponification process has gone to completion
Here are some pictures to show you the process.
Make sure to package soap after cutting. Cling wrap works nicely. Just wrap the soap and use a heat gun to seal.
The last step is packaging soap in attractive adornments. My wife will write the next article on Gift Packaging Soap. You could be making soap while you wait on learning how to gift package it.
Please leave comments about your experience making soap.
Enjoy the process!
Alan Perry
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