Just made my first batch of soap

[Laughlvn]

...and it seems to be curing nicely, but it's still very soft. Used olive oil, caustic soda and a bit of rapeseed oil. Anyone have much experience doing this?

[pamela]

it may take it a while to harden up well.
I used to use that method but later opted for a cooked soap that I make in a crock pot!

LOL

sounds like you will have a wonderful and luxurious soap.
did you scent it at all?

sometimes, I have made castile soap like that and when it was done, stored it in a box with lavender blossoms.
soap is fat and fat likes to absorb odors. It gives it just a mild fragrance.

[PostApocalypticTribe]

All the soap I've made has used coconut oil and it cures for about two weeks. Never tried any with rapeseed oil. Let me know how it turns out.

[urbanfarmer]

CONGRATS! Very cool! Keep us posted on how it ends up.

A couple of years ago I had planned to make and sell soap at my husband's birdhouse booth at the local farmer's market. Unfortunately he passed away, but I spent about a thousand dollars buying all the materials and ingredients. Even bred my pygmy doe for goat's milk soap. She lost the baby and I had to pay for a $2000. goat Cesarean. Now all the materials just sit in storage.

Who are the soap makers here?

[mtlouie]

Congratulations!!

[Laughlvn]

Thanks for all the encouragement. I scented it with some old essential lilac oil, which seems to have worked out fine. Just a teaspoon or so, in one litre of oil. (85% olive, 15 rapeseed)

Still, it's too soft to cut up in bars, so I'll leave it for a few days and see what happens.

I suppose these procedures will get a little more tricky when we have to extract lye from wood ashes, regarding concentration and such.

Tough with that caesarean, and sorry about your husband. But do give it a shot, the basics were remarkably easy.

[Chickengirl]

olive oil soap will take a while to cure - I'd leave it about 8 weeks before using

but it should be firm enough to cut up after about 24 hours.

I need to make up some soap very shortly so it cures in time for christmas

how much caustic  and water did you use? if it is still too soft to cut at 24 hours after putting in a mold you may have used too much water.

let us know how it goes, I love a good soap chat 

[urbanfarmer]

I suppose these procedures will get a little more tricky when we have to extract lye from wood ashes, regarding concentration and such.

Tough with that caesarean, and sorry about your husband. But do give it a shot, the basics were remarkably easy.

Thanks! I really should give a whirl. From what I have read, the lye soap the early pioneers made from lard and wood ashes was more like brown dishwashing soap than bar soap. But I could be wrong.

[wordnerd]

I thought you had to use lye (wood ashes) to make soap
I am planning on trying to make it - as soon as I can get the materials I need
Clove oil will be the scent I use. I LOVE clove oil!

[Chickengirl]

you use the caustic soda to make the lye water

it's easier to get the strength right then, you weigh the ingredients, instead of floating an egg in it and hoping 

but yes, they used to drip rainwater through wood ashes (and some woods were better than others, cant remember which atm though) to make lye water, and would float the aforementioned egg in to judge strength. But it is usually very harsh lye - one reason washerwomen used to have raw hands and arms - caustic/lye BURNS skin 

[urbanfarmer]

I thought the lye was rendered (pun intended) inert after the soapification process. 

[Chickengirl]

yeah it is, as long as you get the fat/oil to lye ratio right.

too much lye means that the fats aren't able to convert it via saponification, so some remains in the soap. Too little means that there is excess fat, and the soap goes rancid really quickly.

And it is hard to accurately judge the strength of lyewater made via wood ash, so often the soap used for laundry was very harsh - got things clean, and ate your skin 

Different fats/oils need different amounts of lye too - there are a heap of lye calculators online basically they are just charts with a range of different oils and fats, and the amount of lye you need per ounce of fat. Very handy to have!

[urbanfarmer]

Thought I would throw this in for grins. I bought several blocks of handmade soap one year, sliced and wrapped them. I used the holiday cards I had saved to make labels and sent them back to encourage recycling.

First I sketched around a bar to get an idea of the length and widths
 
Then I made a template out of stiff paper stock which included the trim and fold marks

Then I laid the template over the opened greeting card and trimmed all the way around with a straight edge and xacto knife

Before lifting the template off, I scored across the card to facilitate folding. Large paper clips work just fine.

After folding it around the soap, the back is sealed with any kind of sticker

This works best over soap that has been wrapped in tissue paper so it won't slip out.

Anyway, it was cheap and simple to do.

I also scanned a bunch of old music sheets that were out of copyright and worked in Photoshop to reuse the letters and embellishments.


I was ready to go, and someday maybe I will try again, but hopefully just for fun, not because there is no soap to be bought.

[pamela]

CONGRATS! Very cool! Keep us posted on how it ends up.

A couple of years ago I had planned to make and sell soap at my husband's birdhouse booth at the local farmer's market. Unfortunately he passed away, but I spent about a thousand dollars buying all the materials and ingredients. Even bred my pygmy doe for goat's milk soap. She lost the baby and I had to pay for a $2000. goat Cesarean. Now all the materials just sit in storage.

Who are the soap makers here?

I started making soap in 1975 and used to sell a lot of soap at the flea market and things like that.
I love making soap!
I've used about every kind of fat imaginable, even some buffalo fat!
It's a great skill to have for post peak.
p.s. sorry about your husband urbanfarmer.

[Broil]

If you want to do it from ashes and animals, here's good ol' Grandpappy to tell you how:  http://grandpappy.info/wsoap.htm