Soap Advisor

How to make soap from scratch

48 ounces Lard
6.2 ounces Lye (Sodium Hydroxide)
18 ounces cold water
1 ounce Soap Crafters Green Apple Fragrance Oil

Equipment needed:
A digital scale that will weigh up to six pounds or more
A glass or stainless steel thermometer
A plastic pitcher or glass jar that can hold at least 22 ounces
A stainless steel pot
A stainless steel large spoon
Enough Milkyway Soap Molds to hold 4.5 pounds of soap
A stick blender (Emulsifying blender meant for home use, usually called a Hand Blender at the department store)
PH Meter for testing soap

All ingredients need to be weighed on a digital scale. These are not volume measurements.

Lard is rendered pig fat. It doesn’t sound so good, I know, but it makes the very best soap! And it is so inexpensive! The best brand I have found is the Amour Star brand. This is the best deodorized lard I have used. The others have an odor that is really difficult to cover up. The Amour isn’t so much. One issue I have found with all lard is that they put citric acid in it. Citric acid neutralizes lye. They put it in there to keep the lard from foaming in deep fryers. For us it means that make soap is just a little bit more difficult. You will have to stir longer than normal to get it thick enough.

Your first step is to put 18 ounces of cold water into a glass or plastic container. Slowly pour in 6.2 ounces of lye. Make certain you water is cold. If you add lye to hot water it will volcano. When you mix water and lye heat it generated all on its own. Cover it and put this aside to cool down. Keep it out of the reach of everyone and every thing. If someone or something drinks it, it will be deadly.

Put your lard in a stainless steel pot and heat it until it is just about melted. Remove from heat when there are just a few slivers of lard left solid in there. Stir until those are melted too. Let it cool to about 130 degrees.

When lye solution is less than 130 degrees and lard is around 130 degrees, pour the lye solution into the melted lard. Stir with your stainless steel spoon. Start mixing with the stick blender. Use the stick blender off and on. Use the stick blender for only about one minute at a time. They are not intended for long stirring times. If you keep it on longer than that at one time it will fry the motor.

When the soap solution you are stirring starts to thicken up to a pancake batter or pudding, it is ready. This is difficult to acheive if your lard has citric acid in it. You may not get that thick, but it will certainly be a lot thicker than you started. It will be about 50% runnier than pancake batter.

Hand stir in your fragrance, stir well with the spoon and then pour into your molds.

Leave your molds just as they are for at least 24-hours. They will be ready to remove from the molds after their 24-hours. You will notice that when you touch the sides of the molds in about one hour after pouring that they are warm. The warmth is from the saponification process it goes through to make soap. This is normal.

After the 24-hours are up, pop the soaps out of the molds and do a ph test on them. A soap that is safe to use will be under a 10 ph. The ideal rage for a soap is 7-9.

Leave the soap bars out in the open air to cure for 6 weeks. This is when the water that is left over from the saponification process evaporates out of the soap. The soap is safe to use after the 24-hours, if the ph is okay, but it makes a much better lather after the 6 week curing time. So, if you can’t wait, go ahead and use a bar, but leave the rest out in the open air to cure. When the 6 weeks are up, you can package them up for resale or store them.

For more information on how to make soap, please see our soap making step-by-step instructions.

Delica Seed Bead DBH0914

It is a new year and to kick that off we’ve decided to add bead working supplies to our regular website for those who like to make jewelry at home.

We’re specializing in the Miyuki Delica beads and offering them at an awesome price!  Also include in the line up are charms to dangle from handmade bracelets, necklaces and earrings.

Adding these items to our website is going to take quite some time.  We have about 600 different Delica seed beads and about a hundred or two charms.  Each has to be photographed with close-up photography and coded in to the website.

We are carrying the most popular Delica seed beads, so chances are, we already have in stock the one you are trying to find.  If you know the Delica product number of the bead in particular you need, please give us a call toll free and we’ll let you know if we have that one in stock.

We are carrying the popular sizes of  8-11 and everything from silver lined, opaque, metallic and gold plated.  Miyuli Delica beads are very well known for being the very best, top of the line seed beads which are manufactured in Japan. There are cheap seed beads out there, but your finished product is just not the same.  For a little extra money you can have the very best and have a professional, drop dead gorgeous piece of jewelry in the end.  It is so worth it.

Gold Charm304, Feather

See our new line of Delica Seed Beads and Charms here: http://www.soapcrafters.com/catalog/69

The batches I made yesterday are doing great!  They are still foamy and haven’t shrunk at all.  There appears to be no color bleeding at all so far.

I made my 2nd formulation to improve lather.  It didn’t improve it all that much unfortunately.  I was looking for oodles of lather and got good lather still.

I thickened up the 2nd formulation and it looked fabulous!  Nice and thick before whipping.

Then I had this brilliant idea.  I’ll add some citric acid to lower the ph and finally we’ll all have a low ph soap!

Ut-oh.  It totally turned it to soup.  Apparently, if you thicken something with sodium cloride then you cannot stay thick when adding citric acid?  Who knew?  Everyone but me, apparently.  At least that is what I think is the conflict.  Could be something else, I dunno.  No more lowering the ph in this stuff regardless.

Now my way cool batch of whip soap is dish soap.

Sigh.

Gotta start over.

It is much stiffer now

Okay, I’m making some progress.

I got it to stiffen up some and I think this might work.  But I think my customers are going to want a lot more bubbles.  People just love oodles of lather.  This has just a nice lather.

I am re-writing the formula and changing out the detergent additives to another one to get oodles in the lather dept.

I still don’t see any signs of color bleeds.  Cool.  Really bleeding happens over a couple of days, so we’ll see on that.  So far, so good, though.

A New Parfait

Soap Whip Experiment

I’m playing around in the lab today trying to come up with one of those Soap Whip soap bases I’ve been hearing about.

I look forward to days like this, just playing around like I’m an actual chemist or something, which I’m not!

So far I’ve got a soap that whips and has a nice, thick lather but not bunches of bubbles.  It is really moisturizing on the skin, doesn’t leave you dry feeling at all.

I’m afraid it needs to be thicker and more stiff though.  I don’t think my whipped soap is going to stay whipped.  I’d like to see it a lot stiffer after whipping.  I think I’m going to have to tinker some more.

I’d hate to cut back on the Shea Butter I put into it.  We’ll see what I can do.

I’m testing it to see if our liquid colorants will bleed into each other if you layer it.

I have had only one disaster so far.  The mixer fell into the huge pot I’m using and it got soaked in foamy soap.  I dunno if it is going to be the same….

A Soap Whip Parfait