Soap making instruction, how to make your own soap the way our ancestors did years ago.
There are many things throughout a day we use without ever thinking about how it was made. Soap is something that I and, hopefully, everyone else uses at least once every day. Not only do we clean our bodies with it, but also we clean our homes, pets and clothing with soap. Can you imagine making your own soap? Well here is your chance to make your own soap! Ironically enough, making soap can be a messy job. Fortunately, what makes the mess will clean it up later on!
Not only can making soap be a messy job, it can also be surprisingly dangerous. There are many precautionary steps that must be taken in order to make soap. It is imperative before soap making that you obtain safety goggles and Neoprene rubber gloves. The reason that making soap is dangerous is due to the ingredients involved in the process. The main ingredient in cold soaps (the soap I will be discussing) is lye. Lye is a substance that can be very harmful to one's health if not handled properly. If lye is swallowed it is absolutely essential you call the poison control center or 911 without vomiting! Lye can cause blindness if it is accidentally splashed in your eye. You should immediately pour large quantities of cool water into the eye repeatedly for at least 10 minutes. Call 911 for this also. Lye may also cause burning if it comes into contact with your skin. You should treat this like any other burn by treating it with cool water immediately. If it is more serious, you should be brought to the hospital. If you are attempting to make your own soap it is necessary that these precautions be taken.
After making sure that you have the proper protective gear, you are ready to prepare your recipe for cleanliness! In addition to the goggles and rubber gloves, you will also need two plastic pitchers, two plastic stirring spoons, two glass candy thermometers, one large enameled or stainless steel 15 quart pot, one old blanket (preferably wool), one kitchen food scale, saran wrap, and one plastic or wooden box for a mold. As far as ingredients, there aren't very many. You will need 16 oz. Of Vegetable shortening, 7 oz. Of olive oil, 7 oz. of white coconut oil, 1 oz. of cocoa butter, 4 oz. of Red Devil Brand 100% lye and 12 oz of soft water. If you want perfumed soap you can add fragrance or essential oil. It is best that you have all of your ingredients out and ready for use, including all of your supplies.
Now it is time for the mixing of ingredients! First, you should put your molds out on the floor on top of the wool blanket making sure they are even so the soap isn't uneven! After preparing the molds, it is time to weigh out the oils. The oils are going to go in the pot and be placed on the stove at low to melt the oils slowly until they are liquefied. Do not forget to hang your thermometer on the side of the pot. Make sure you stir the oils until they are melted together, but do not stir to roughly! Do not allow the oils to get hotter than 125 degrees fahrenheit. After the oils have blended together, set them aside to cool to a temperature between 100-115 degrees fahrenheit.
Now you can put your 12 oz. of water into the one pitcher and place it in the sink (A quick and easy tip if you wanted milk soap would be to use half the water and replace it with milk. You would add the milk in a later step). Now it is time for the goggles and gloves! You may want to open a window and turn on some fans for this; it can get stinky! Weigh out the lye, without forgetting to account for the pitcher's weight and carefully pour the lye into the pitcher with the water. You have to stir this to dissolve it. You really must be careful at this point because the fumes from the lye can be quite innocuous. It usually takes around 3-5 minutes to completely dissolve the lye. Now you can hang the other thermometer in the lye to test the temperature, which may get very hot (about 180 degrees fahrenheit) because of its chemical reaction with water. It does have to cool down to around the same temperature as the oils.
The two mixtures must be within 5 degrees of each other when they are mixed together. When this occurs, carefully pour the lye/water mixture into the oil mixture that is in the pot. Stir this new "raw soap" for at least 10 minutes. It is not necessary to stir the mixture the whole time, just make sure you check on it every 5-20 minutes. This process is called achieving "trace". Trace is achieved when some of the mixture is on the spoon and it can be drizzled across the top of the mixture and leave a "trace" behind. If you were making milk soap, this is when you would add the milk. The trail from the trace would take a second or two to disappear into the mixture again. The longer the mixture is allowed to set, the thicker it will become. This can sometimes take hours.
Finally, the soap is ready to be molded! The soap should be covered with saran wrap making as little wrinkles as possible and then wrapped with a blanket to insulate the soap. After this the soap has to "setup" for at least 24 hours. This process is called saponification. The blanket will get warmer and warmer throughout the night during this time of saponification. To determine if the soap is completely saponified is when the blanket is no longer warm. Once this happens the blanket can be unwrapped. If the soap is hard, then you can unmold it using your rubber gloves. After your soap is unmolded it should be "cured" for three weeks. Curing is the process in which the soap shrinks. The longer soap ages the better. During this process, "ash" may form on the soap. Ash is just flaky soap parts. This can just be scraped off with a potato peeler along with any uneven spots.
As you can see, making soap can be a long, dangerous and messy process. If every this is tried at home, the precautions should be taken very seriously. It is important in making soap that the process if followed correctly. Thank goodness soap is something that can be bought at the supermarket anymore!
