Homemade Soap

[Mimi]

(Colporteur posted that he was going to make soap in another thread)



Colporteur, let me know how the soap turns out.

[colporteur]

CP, my mother-in-law made her soap for years, but it was a recipe including bacon drippings and lye.  Whatever do you use to replace that?  I never could see how bacon drippings could be used to make something to clean!

Soap needs some oil. I suppose bacon grease was readily available and they probably liked the smell. Coconut and other oils work perfectly fine and have a wonderful odor.

You can add things for color and odor such a Lavender.  I'm thinking we will never buy soap again unless we cannot get some of the ingredients. One afternoon's work and you have soap for a year.

[Richard Myers]

Poorly made soap can 'burn' your skin. The production of safe soap takes time and patience, and comes with the resulting experience.

I have purchased the implements and the material to make soap. This goes back at least four years now. Still no soap. I have purchased the oil, the lye, and the scales twice. Do not know where any of this is now. So....we want you to encourage us in this process dear brother. Why is it important to make your own soap? Because if you have a shortage of that which is the root of all evil, then you end up buying that which is made from Mad Cows and other such creatures. The skin has hundreds of thousands of little "mouths" that not only excrete matter, but will allow some things to enter the bloodstream. We do not want Mad Cows getting a ride into our blood. And...what happens when you can't buy soap? That day may come! Soap is not a luxury, even if some think they do not need it. We do!

So, for those who are blessed with much of the "root of all evil" you can just go to the health food store and buy soap made from vegetable oil. BTW, glycerine  can be either animal or vegetable. This clean soap is much more expensive than is the Mad Cow soap. So, we still use mad cow soap and I am anxious to change over.

Share with us your recipe and how it is that we are to make this "clean" soap. Lye is dangerous, so please take note all who want to do this. Eye protection and other cautions need to be followed. Let us hear from our resident expert. How do we make soap?

A little more on soap for the uninitiated. In Europe it has been a custom among some to discard soap. Some think it is not good to wash with it. This is of Satanic origin. Many can reason this out when they have had experience in washing dishes. When one cooks with the carcass of an animal, he needs to use plenty of soap. Why? Because the grease does not easily leave the pots and pans without it. Oil or grease and water do not mix. But, if we take a little soap and water, now the grease and oil will mix with the water and soap and it easily leaves the dishes. The same applies to our bodies. If the impurities consist of oil or fat, then they need something to enable the water to remove them. Impurities that are mingled with oil are found on our skin. Some given off through our pores, other comes from contact with the world. Soap is the God given solution that will allow water to carry away these impurities. Otherwise they will be absorbed through the skin into the blood stream. Soap is to be seen as a great blessing through which our bodies may be kept clean.

Now, we need clean soap!

[Mimi]

Yes - I want to know, too! My favorite soap is Shea Butter. It is creamy, smooth, smells good and is from a nut - the best ones are from Africa, but I'll take plain, clean soap, so educate us, Brother Colporteur!

Richard - we need implements? A pot and a mold is too simplistic?

[colporteur]

Whatever you spend on instruments will come back to you financially as soap making will save quite a bit of money. A stainless steel pot or even an iron pot (not aluminum) will work fine. A stick blender is very helpful but not required. Vinegar on hand is important as the lye will burn you if splashed and the vinegar will neutralize the lye. I recommend the DVD The Art of soap Making. You can google and find it. It is pleasant to watch as a mother from the south and her grown daughters take you step by step through the process. They are a conservsative group dressed like women and nice to listen to. It is nice to see someone illustrate how to make the soap. The lye and the oil will react as though you were boiling it. We borrowed the DVD and gave it back but will purchase one, so presently I do not have the recipes. It is very easy to do but like any recipe there is a procedure. It does not amount to much more than blending the ingredients in a certain order and then pouring the soap into a big pan like a cake pan and covering for a few hours. Then cutting it up like brownies. To make really hard bar soap you need to let the soap cure for a couple of weeks and then grate it, heat it and add water and then pout it into molds. This makes for really hard bar soap like we use. This is so much cheaper and if one makes soap in large quantities if there is a soap shortage or we cannot buy or sell, it would be a God send. That's the best I can do at present. We have not made soap yet but are collecting the ingredients. Laundry soap is as easy as grating the bar soap and adding it to the washer.

[Vicki]

Are you going to make your own lye? I read recently that it is made by straining water through wood ash. The book was a child's history book so it didn't say much except that wood ashes were placed in a leaky wooden barrel that was propped off the ground. Another container was placed under the barrel to catch the drippings. Water was put in the barrel over several days to collect enough drippings.

It would be "fun" (to use that word in a loose sort of way) to make it all from scratch like the pioneers - with the exception of using a better oil than pig fat. The beef fat (tallow) they used for candles.

Autumn was a busy season for the pioneers what with hunting, slaughtering their own animals, preserving the meat, making candles & soap from animal fat, continuing to hand sew clothing & blankets and storing garden produce. Here I thought I was busy just preserving the garden!

[Sister Dee]

I don't know if I'm up to actually making my own soap. I have been making liquid hand soap from glycerine bar soap for several years now.  This has saved me quite a bit of money as well as being healthier. 

I was using bar soap (not glycerine) to make liquid laundry soap, but quit that after awhile.  Our clothes started smelling strange!    Maybe it was because I was using Ivory and it contains animal products.     Also, it was recommended to add baking soda to each load of wash.  Money-wise I wasn't coming out a whole lot farther ahead this way, so I went back to using store-bought.   

[colporteur]

I was not planning to make my own lye although it would be good to learn how to do this. We have plenty of ashes. The less we have to depend  on the stores the better.

[Richard Myers]

I will dig up my notes and post them.  There is a lot of information online. In taking a look, I discovered that it is getting harder to find lye. I guess is it used in the manufacture of meth.  So, maybe we will have to make our own lye before long. Water and ash produces lye. Again, a caution. Lye is dangerous.

Some items that will be needed:

Protective gloves, a must.
Protective goggles
Wooden or plastic spoon, large
Plastic container
Stainless steel, enameled, or glass pot
Thermometer
Molds and plastic wrap
Scales, to measure ingredients. Accurate similar to postage scale. Hold off until we know about the availability of commercial lye
I purchased a hand stirrer. No aluminum as cp has pointed out.
Vegetable Oil,  try to get without additives.  Some oil will smell, like olive, if you like.  cocoa butter, cotton seed, coconut, etc.  
Lye
colorant, optional
fragrant oil or other fragrance, optional....not perfume

As I remember, it will take some time for the soap to cure, (3-6 weeks) the lye will leach out of the soap. So, don't expect to use soap immediately.

I am excited that others are interested in this project. I really want to get it done. Can't afford the vegetable soaps.  Many of our people are in the same boat. Animal products are getting more riskier by the day.

More later.

[Richard Myers]

General Procedure For Making Soap

CAUTION!!!!!   Lye is dangerous. Handle with extreme caution. Wear safety goggles and gloves to protect skin and eyes from accidental splashes. Mixture will develop heat. Until comfortable with the procedure, keep children away.


Step 1 Dissolve 12 oz. lye in 32 oz. softened water in a plastic or glass bowl. If at all possible, do this outside or under an exhaust fan.

Step 2 Add the lye to the water, not vice versa. Pour the lye slowly and in a steady stream, and stir constantly with a plastic spoon. Mixture will become very hot!!

Step 3  Set the mixture aside to cool. The mixture will heat up considerably due to the lye reacting with fats in the oils. This is called saponification.

Step 4   Melt 24 oz. coconut oil and 38 oz. solid vegetable shortening in a stainless steel pot.
 
Step 5   Add 25 oz. olive oil (not virgin) and any fragrance oils you want to use.

Step 6  Allow the oils to cool.

Step 7  Grease the soap mold with Crisco.

Step 8  When both the oil and lye mixtures have cooled to room temperature, slowly combine them, adding the lye to the oils.

Step 9  Stir slowly and constantly. If you see bubbles, stir more slowly.

Step 10  Drizzle the soap into the pot once in a while. When it keeps its shape momentarily before sinking into the rest of the mix (tracing), it's time to add whatever extras you want.

Step 11  Stir your botanicals, grains and coloring into a cup of soap taken from the mix.

Step 12  Combine that back into the original mixture.

Step 13  Pour the soap into the mold.

Step 14  Wrap the mold in a towel and leave it undisturbed for 18 hours. The soap mixture will heat up and then cool down. Avoid uncovering it until it's cooled.

Step 15  Allow the soap to sit in the uncovered mold for another 12 hours.

Step 16  Loosen the sides by wiggling the mold a little.

Step 17  Turn the mold over onto a clean counter.
 
Step 18  Cut the soap into bars with a knife. Some people use a miter box to make square corners.

Step 19  Allow the bars to cure for three to four weeks before using. Smaller bars cure faster than larger ones.

 Homemade Soap


Never allow your curing soap to sit in a drafty area as this will make your finished product hard and,flinty. I cover mine with several thicknesses of newspaper and then cover with a folded blanket for several days.

Make sure your molds are at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. If the mold is too thin, it will cause the soap to curl. If it is too thick, it will make the soap too big and it will be difficult to hold. To add scent to your soap, add the scented oil right before you pour the soap into your molds. Any of the scented oils will do. I like to use the vanilla scent for my own personal use, but any that you prefer will do great. Try using a fruity or flower scent. Sometimes kids like the smell of peppermint and this works great too.
You will need to add about 2 tablespoons of the scented oil to each batch. Add more if stronger scent is desired. The scented oils that you add can be of help in treating skin disorders. Lavender oil is an excellent astringent. Adding olive or almond oil is great for dry skin. Thyme oil acts as a deodorant aid. If you prefer, you don't need to add any oils. The plain soap alone is great for your skin because it has no artificial additives in it.

When adding the lye to the cold water, do so slowly and carefully. Don't make soap when the kids are around, unless they are older and understand the dangers. Keep pets away, also. Wear rubber gloves and do not breathe in the fumes. The mixture will heat up when you are pouring the lye in the water so be sure to use very cold water. Stir very slowly to avoid splattering and burning yourself. The splatters will also cause damage to countertops so you may want to do this procedure outdoors. Making the soap outdoors will also cut down on the fumes.

If you happen to splash any of the solution on your skin, rinse off immediately with water and then rinse the area with vinegar. Vinegar will neutralize the lye some what. Continue stirring until the lye crystals are completely dissolved. You will need to place the jar in a pan (or sink) filled with cold water to bring, the temperature of the lye solution back down to 90-95 degrees. After that temperature is reached, slowly add the lye solution to the oil.

[Richard Myers]

Different kinds of oil may be used. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Consider the smell of the oil when making soap. Also, I think that one needs to consider the freshness of the oil. Rancid oil would not be good.

Also consider ways to color the soap and to add fragrance.

I recall studying into making lye and discovered that there are people who make their own lye. In the process I discovered that when dumping my ashes around my rose bushes in a pile, I was subjecting them to the possibility of having a lye pit at their base.   And if you have an ash can, you do not want to put it on the porch. Have friend whose house burned down from the hot ashes, but another danger is when it rains, you can create lye in the ash pot. Things we never knew and therefore did not know that God was protecting us in our ignorance.

[Richard Myers]

Making Lye

Collect ash from hardwood trees, not pine. Place sand and gravel in the bottom of a clay flower pot or plastic container with a hole in the bottom. Place ten cups of tightly packed cold ashes on top of this. Pour 1/2 gallon of boiling distilled or rain water on top of the ash, carefully. The water will become lye water as it comes out of the hole. Catch it with a Plastic container. Continue pouring boiling water until you get 1 gallon of lye water. Caution: Lye water is caustic and it will burn your skin. Be extremely careful and wear rubber gloves when handling lye water. Make it outdoors.

It is important to follow the same procedure each time so that the strength of the lye water will be the same for each batch of soap. Better to use commercial lye if available.

If we use the lye water, we want to boil two gallons of lye water down to 3/4 of a cup. This is now what we will call "concentrated lye water". If we use this lye water for our soap, then we will use 3/4 cup of concentrated lye water for every 2 cups of vegetable oil. If we change the amount of ash used to make our gallon of lye water, then it will change our concentration of lye water. We need to be consistent. The success of our soap making is going to depend upon the ratio of lye to oil. If we are consistent in our lye water process, then we can repeat our recipe each time we make soap.

[Richard Myers]

CAUTION!!!!!   Lye is dangerous. Handle with extreme caution. Wear safety goggles and gloves to protect skin and eyes from accidental splashes. Mixture will develop heat. Until comfortable with the procedure, keep children away.

Another recipe that reveals the process:

    10 1/4 ounces of lye crystals
    4 cups cold water
    27 ounces of coconut oil
    34 ounces of olive oil
    3 cups of vegetable shortening (not lard or butter or margarine) 1 tablespoon scented oil
    1 glass container
    1 large enamel or stainless steel pan
    1 wooden spoon

Measure 10 1/4 ounces of lye into a plastic container. Slowly and cautiously add the lye to 4 cups of cold water in a plastic or glass container. Stir until lye crystals are completely dissolved. Mixture will become hot! Place the jar in a shallow pan of cold water to start bringing the temperature of the lye water down between 95-98 degrees.

Melt shortening in stainless pan. Add olive oil and the coconut oil. You may need to place this in cold water to bring the temperature to between 95-98 degrees. If either solution is too hot or too cold, you may have to heat it up or cool it down to proper temperatures. When both solutions are ready, slowly add the lye solution to the oils in a steady stream, stirring constantly.

Keep stirring until the mixture traces. This means that the spoon lifted from the soap mixture will be able to trace a design on the creamy soap. This design will stay visible for several seconds before disappearing. If you have stirred for about 30 minutes and the soap does not trace well, it is still able to be used. It will just take a little more time to harden after you pour it into the molds. Before pouring into the molds, add the scented oils. Cover your molds with a folded blanket and place them on a level surface, sheltered from any drafts.

Allow to set for 24 hours. Uncover and allow to set another 24 hours. If your scale and thermometer read correctly, you should have a batch of beautiful soap. Carefully following instructions and having equipment that reads correctly always ensures a good batch.

This recipe makes soap that is pliable when removed from the molds. At that time, you would be able to make it into different shapes, designs, and sizes. It will be soft and be easy to shape.

[Richard Myers]

We have placed "cautions" liberally in these posts. On the other hand, we want to encourage you to make your own soap. Did you know that lye is used in curing olives?    You can make soap when you have time and are careful.

[colporteur]

I heard a story once about a jealous husband and a cheating wife. They were in a bar and the husband exchanged her drink for a glass of something mixed with lye.  She downed the drink. It was ugly and she died as a result.

[Richard Myers]

Simple hard soap making has seven main steps to it:

   1. Getting the right mixture of lye and grease, called "proving".
   2. "Boiling down" -removing unwanted water, and checking for what is called "doneness".
   3. Treating with salt to remove water, impurities, and glycerine, a process called "graining".
   4. Adding colourings and or perfumes.
   5. Pouring into moulds, called "setting".
   6. Breaking the "green" soap out of the moulds and splitting it into finished sizes.
   7. Drying and airing the "green" soap.

Freshly made soap is called "green soap". It is not green in colour. But is dangerous to touch until dried and aired for a few weeks.

[Richard Myers]

I have been posting from my notes and some information gathered on the net. I notice that in one recipe they tell to form the soft soap. I need to clarify how that is done, since my understanding is that it takes some time for the lye to dissipate from the "green" soap.

cp, what do you have on this? How long does the lye remain in the soap? How can the soap be tested to know when the lye is gone and the soap safe to use?

This is like gardening. You don't want to wait to learn to do such things when you have no choice. Today, is the day to learn how to do it. There is a "little time of trouble" coming. For some, it may be already here.

[Esther 7]

I'll be posting a recipe for homemade laundry soap that does not use lye. I believe it uses Borax, washing soda, and Fels Naptha bar soap. If you make the liquid recipe it is very concentrated and makes 640 loads worth. It takes an evening and is well worth the cost of ingredients and time involved. The ingredients cost less than ten dollars for 640 loads! Quite useful in penny pinching.

[Richard Myers]

Thanks for the recipe, dear sister. Making laundry soap with Fels Naptha sounds like a good way to obtain a cheaper laundry detergent. It is a good idea if one wants to use regular soap for washing clothes. It surely is not the same as putting soap on our skin. There is a caution for using Fels Naptha, though. Care needs to be taken with using it for a bath soap. It is not intended for that purpose and has warnings on the label. It is a detergent soap for  other cleaning uses.

[Richard Myers]

Have you thought of buying glycerin soap? Glycerin, also known as glycerine, or glycerol is a by-product of soap making and bio-diesel production. You will also find that it is an additive to many soaps. It can be made from cow or pig fat. In other words if you think that glycerin soap is animal free, it could be or it may not be. It depends on how it was made.