# Curious: best how-to-make soap recipe?



## MeanDean (Apr 16, 2002)

I was discussing soap with my daughter - such topics are of monumental importance to grade-schoolers - and I mentioned "_back in your great granmother's day, they used to make their own soap._"

At which point I was posed a the questions to which I have little answer "_... how do you make soap? Can we make some?_"

So I figure, what better place to ask than here on HT - is there a "_how-to-make soap recipe_" that's easy enough that my daughter and I can do as a as a fun "_do-it-yourself_" weekend project?

Even if not, what do YOU say is the best recipe for making soap? Inquiring minds want to know.


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## CraftyDiva (Aug 26, 2003)

Try...............http://homesteadingtoday.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=77


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## MeanDean (Apr 16, 2002)

CraftyDiva said:


> Try...............http://homesteadingtoday.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=77


Doh! Wrong forum - thanks for the hat tip ...

... moving it right about .... now!


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i guess you should decide how accurately you wish to emulate our ancestors. i imagine things changed quite a bit when sodium hydroxide, what we know of today as "lye", was mass produced and available to the public. before that, folks had to drip water through wood ashes and collect the potassium hydroxide lye that comes from the ashes. wood ash lye makes a much softer, or even liquid soap that is a bit different than the hard bars we have today. salt can be added to help harden the soap, but back in the day salt had other important uses and may have come at quite a price. if you fast forward to the era of our grandparents and their parents, sodium hydroxide was plentiful and soaping had advanced to what we are familiar with today.

i would suggest using the most common oils present today and then cheat by adding coconut oil for a better lather...as long as no one who uses the soap is allergic to coconut oil. lard and tallow will work fine. (a little aside about coconut oil...my sister-in-law is allergic to coconut oil, so i made her special soap using palm kernel oil in place of the coconut. she loved it, but that didn't stop my brother from using his coconut oil soap. fast forward to the master bedroom where SIL begins itching and swelling from simply rubbing against her husband and his coconit oil residue laden body... anyhow, be sure no one in the family is allergic to coconut oil if you choose to use it.)

you can make soap as simple or complicated as you desire with good results either way. you can make a one oil soap or a combo of several oils. one trip to walmart will get you lard, coconut oil and olive oil. you can get lye at lowe's. *it needs to be 100% pure sodium hydroxide*, so be careful not to get a drain cleaner that contains aluminum flakes or other nasty ingredients.

it is really fun when the chemistry begins to work and you see oils turning into soap. it is quite rewarding to unmold and cut the loaf into bars. have fun!


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

Dean,
You'll want to get an accurate electronic scale & a stick blender. Always wear eye protection.

My soap making page has pictures making soap and a few recipes using oils commonly found at grocery stores.

http://www.mullerslanefarm.com/soapmaking.html


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## S.A.J. (Jun 22, 2007)

Meloc, Umm... I think you forgot the "How To" in your post. I was very interested when I started reading then I got to the end and realized that there wasn't a recipe to say how much or how to make soap?! Can you use wood ash from fireplaces? And how do you do the drip thingy too? Thanks


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## MeanDean (Apr 16, 2002)

S.A.J. said:


> Meloc, Umm... I think you forgot the "How To" in your post. I was very interested when I started reading then I got to the end and realized that there wasn't a recipe to say how much or how to make soap?! Can you use wood ash from fireplaces? And how do you do the drip thingy too? Thanks


See, I'm so ignorant on the topic - I wouldn't have noticed that not-so minor detail.


MullersLaneFarm said:


> Dean,
> You'll want to get an accurate electronic scale & a stick blender. Always wear eye protection.
> 
> My soap making page has pictures making soap and a few recipes using oils commonly found at grocery stores.
> ...


Cooool ... pictures! thanks


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## Jillis (Sep 11, 2005)

I wouldn't make lye soap with a grade-school-age child. However, if you want a fun soap-making project, you could get some melt and pour base and make some soap with that far more cheaply and safely than getting all the necessary equipment and supplies you would need to make soap using lye. 
Just my feelings on the matter. One little spill could be disasterous. 

Jill~


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

S.A.J. said:


> Meloc, Umm... I think you forgot the "How To" in your post. I was very interested when I started reading then I got to the end and realized that there wasn't a recipe to say how much or how to make soap?! Can you use wood ash from fireplaces? And how do you do the drip thingy too? Thanks



that was kind of the point. there is more to soapmaking than to follow a single recipe. with the aid of one or more of about a dozen soap lye calculators, any recipe you can imagine is possible. maybe you only have one oil, or maybe you have a little of this and a little of that...you need a lye calculator. you can make soap with many oils. maybe one single oil makes a super foamy/bubbly lather, but is also drying to your skin. maybe another leaves your skin feeling nice and silky, but it really doesn't clean as well as you like. 

if you give a person a single recipe...add "x" amount of oil and "y" amount of lye. stir for "x" amount of time at "y" temperature...yada yada, they have learned to read and measure. if you teach the proper use of the tools, people can actually learn to soap and not to cook following a single recipe.

decide what you want to make and why. do you use one oil only just to experience the saponification of a single oil, or do you wish to use a little of this and a little of that because you have it on hand? do you wish a balanced soap with moderate qualities across the board, or do you want a scrubby, bubbly cleansing soap. perhaps you want a heavily superfatted soap or one made with oils that have skin conditioning properties.

this is the approach i would use. choose a process method...hot process (cooking) or cold process (melting the oils and combining with the lye solution at a lower temperature). i would choose oils that are easy to find. i would get some coconut oil, lard and olive oil. tallow is good, but that requires you to render it from the fat. maybe a first timer wouldn't want to do that. the "i need a recipe" part may come into play at this point. how much of each oil and why? this is not my ideal "recipe", but it helps to balance some of the qualities of the oils...lets say 25% coconut oil, 25% olive oil and 50% lard. if you wish to make 4 lbs. of soap, that comes to 1 lb. coconut, 1 lb. olive oil and 2 lbs. lard. plug those values into one of the many calculators and find out how much lye you need to combine with how much water to make the lye solution. process the soap according to the process method you choose.

personally, i prefer the cold process as i have had troubles "cooking" soap. others view hot process as the easy and fool-proof method...go figure i would go against the grain. i find cold process using a stick blender so much easier.


so, research the process methods and decide which path you wish to follow. reasearch the properties of oils and decide which oils you wish to use. then you can go and build a custom recipe tailored to your needs.


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## MeanDean (Apr 16, 2002)

MELOC said:


> so, research the process methods and decide which path you wish to follow. reasearch the properties of oils and decide which oils you wish to use. then you can go and build a custom recipe tailored to your needs.


I think that was the point of my original post?

Hoping some experts here would provide some instruction and direction.

So enumerate methods please, please, please.

I'm all ears (w/out soapy wax buildup).


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i'm not trying to be vague or a pain in any way. visit http://www.mullerslanefarm.com/soapmaking.html and study a little bit about both hot and cold processing methods of making soap. decide which method is best for you. some like to use a crock pot and some like to use a pot on the stove. some folks even bake it in an oven. i prefer cold process and a stick blender. perhaps hot process is something that reminds one of a more traditional method, i.e. stirring a kettle full of soap over an open flame, and that is what they strive to emulate. is the goal to make soap or to experience one or more of the techniques of making it? 

when i began, i was more interested in the traditional method of dripping water through wood ashes to get potassium hydroxide lye. i dripped and cooked and ended up with a soft soap. it was cool, but i wanted a better soap, so i tried CP with sodium hydroxide. i stirred and stirred for three hours per batch. it made a nice soap, but it took forever. i decided to try a stick blender. that worked really well and took less time, so i decided to stick with that method. i have tried hot process, but i didn't have great success like others. some folks think it is easy-peasy. i think CP with a stick is easy-peasy. i like how CP gives me time to cut bars before they harden. i like how CP allows me to use fragrances i couldn't use with HP...or at least not so easily. 

since soap making can be a bit dangerous and you will most likely study up on it just a bit, why not research a bit longer and then decide which method of process you prefer? once you choose a path, asking for a recipe is more a question of choosing the end qualities of soap by choosing the percentage of each oil and not a "how to" about soap making in general. come back and ask for a CP recipe for just lard or a HP recipe for lard, olive oil and coconut oil. someone can then help you balance the recipe if you use more than one oil, and they can help you with questions about a particular process. once you get used to a particular method, you can then plug any amount of any oils you choose into an online lye calculator to get your very own recipe.


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## halfpint (Jan 24, 2005)

My suggestion for a 1st soap recipe would be to make a lard/tallow based soap using the cold process . This will be fairly inexpensive, and get you the experience you need to see what 'trace' looks like as well as each step of the soapmaking process. You can add essential oils at trace, but I'd suggest for a first batch to keep it simple. If you don't want to wash with this soap, it makes great laundry detergent. After that you can branch out and try your own recipes. For a pure lard/tallow you would need to put your weight of tallow into a soap calculator and the calculator will give you the amount of lye (I would probably use a 7% excess fat) and water you should use. I have run my numbers by hand a few times, just so I knew I could do it, but I always check them with a calculator. The sage has a good calculator http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php, but there are others out there.

If you stir by hand, it will take much longer than if you have a stick blender. Depending on my formulation a stick blender usually takes from 2-15 minutes, most of the time around 5 minutes. The few times I've hand blended (except for pine tar soap), it's taken me at least an hour of stirring.

When I started soapmaking, I had a good scientific balance scale, so used that. However when using several oils, that gets a little time consuming, so I later purchased a good postal scale. An accurate scale is a must. Follow the instructions on the Mullerslanefarm website listed above.

My daughter is nine and I don't let her make soap with me (although she does make her own soap petals and glycerine soaps for friends). I just don't want to take the risk. When I let her begin to help will depend largely on her maturity, but is still several years away.

For a 1 lb lard recipe you would need:
1 lb lard
2.06 oz lye
5 oz distilled water, then follow the instructions on the Mullerslanefarm website. Make sure your pots are stainless steel, and that your mixing spoons are steel or wood. Absolutely no aluminum!
Dawn


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## MeanDean (Apr 16, 2002)

Thanks all for the useful info!

If we get to the project (a_s/per the whims and interests of most grade-schoolers_) ... we'll take pictures ... and have fun.


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