Soap Making 101

[aggieterpkatie]

Hey everyone, my dad has decided not to make molds to sell. Sorry for any of you who were interested! There's just too much going on now to make them.

I didn't want to mention it while Aggie had her Dad on the job but my hubs is going to make one for me based on the measurements at Aggie's link.

He'd be happy to build additional ones--I can post photos and cost for anyone who is interested after he has built it--is there much interest?

Awesome!

 

[krisac]

Help Again I want to make some liquid goats milk soap but KOH seems impossible to find and I read that you could increase the lye amount as an alternative and then make it the same as CP soap. Has anyone heard of this? Also the only recipes for the liquid GM soap I am finding are for 5 lbs requiring 5 gallon buckets, insulating blankets...Not exactly encouraging I like to start small so I can fail several times without going broke. And we know I'll fail several times
Can I rebatch my cp soap into liquid???
Thanks Kristina

 

[walkaboutjacks]

Uhhhgh! tried to slog through all 89 pages of this so forgive me if it has been mentioned.
I really need to make liquid hand soap and I can't find a recipe for it anywhere! My DD has OCD and she is putting me in the poor house with soap alone. and body wash. She refuses to use a bar soap as it will have other peoples germs on it HELP please

 

[moolie]

Uhhhgh! tried to slog through all 89 pages of this so forgive me if it has been mentioned.
I really need to make liquid hand soap and I can't find a recipe for it anywhere! My DD has OCD and she is putting me in the poor house with soap alone. and body wash. She refuses to use a bar soap as it will have other peoples germs on it HELP please

Why not give her a soap dish of her very own for her own soap? You could use one of those clamshell travel soap dishes, then no worry that anyone else would ever use it

 

[walkaboutjacks]

Uhhhgh! tried to slog through all 89 pages of this so forgive me if it has been mentioned.
I really need to make liquid hand soap and I can't find a recipe for it anywhere! My DD has OCD and she is putting me in the poor house with soap alone. and body wash. She refuses to use a bar soap as it will have other peoples germs on it HELP please

Why not give her a soap dish of her very own for her own soap? You could use one of those clamshell travel soap dishes, then no worry that anyone else would ever use it

Nope...been there - tried that. She just mooshed it all up and left lumps all over the basin. *insert tearing out hair smiley here*

 

[moolie]

Uhhhgh! tried to slog through all 89 pages of this so forgive me if it has been mentioned.
I really need to make liquid hand soap and I can't find a recipe for it anywhere! My DD has OCD and she is putting me in the poor house with soap alone. and body wash. She refuses to use a bar soap as it will have other peoples germs on it HELP please

Why not give her a soap dish of her very own for her own soap? You could use one of those clamshell travel soap dishes, then no worry that anyone else would ever use it

Nope...been there - tried that. She just mooshed it all up and left lumps all over the basin. *insert tearing out hair smiley here*

The other thing you can do quite cheaply for hand soap is to buy liquid hand soap in a foaming pump (or regular if she likes that better) then refill it when it runs out with a nice smelling inexpensive dish soap mixed with water--the foaming pumps in particular only need 1 part soap to 3 parts water to work.

We only use bar soap, but have one of those foaming pumps in the basement bathroom off our guest bedroom for when family comes to visit, because no one else uses the basement bathroom and bar soap dries out and gets all cracked and nasty if no one uses it regularly.

For body wash, grate up a bar of soap you like and heat it in a pan with water, then cool it a bit and pour it into another foaming pump--voil, designer foaming body wash

Personally, if she was my kid I certainly wouldn't be buying her expensive soap--that would never have started and she would have to live with what the rest of us use or get a babysitting job and buy her own darn soap. And if she had wasted soap like you described she would have to seriously apologize and purchase a replacement with her own money. YMMV.

 

[~gd]

I watched a little clip from a history show the other night where a woman was making her OWN EO from mints and other herbs using a water distillation process.

Gives me something to get studying on! Especially at the price most EO runs.

Most herbal EOs are produced by steam distillation (you call it water distillation) while most of the fruit and nut EOs are produced by pressing the fruit/nut. I usually try pressing first to extract the EO from the plant matter followed by steam distillation to get the seperation (the oils float on the condensed water) Lastly I will distill with alcohol which may become well scented but can not be called an essencial oil but rather a tinture. It usually scents soaps nicely as the alcohol evaporates and leaves the scents behind.

Any ideas for simple cheap distillation setups that I could use on the stove top ~gd?

Do you know that many states want you to register your stills so they can be inspected to be sure they are not being used to produce alcoholic beverages? NC is one of them. I am still ROTFLMAO because the alcohol police raided our community colleges biofuels program thinking it was a moonshine still. Because they had gasoline mixed with the ethanol they beat the Alcohol Control Board charges but the DOT got them for failing to pay gas taxes on their product. A lot of Greens had red faces over that mess!
My steam distilling rig for herb and flower EOs uses an old whistling water kettle as the boiler on the stove. I stick a cork with a tube thru it where the whistle used to be. The tube goes to the bottom of the cooker where the plant material is loaded I use 1 quart mason jars for both the cooker and the catcher. The top of the cooker is the hard part, hard to explain not hard to do. I use a mason ring with about3/4 inch cut out of it and form cup like cap out of foil. On the top is a depression to hold ice cubes the bottom has a drip edge that runs slightly down hill so that the steam condenses on the bottom of the cap it drips into the catcher jar which is cooled with ice. To operate send steam from the boiler to the bottom of the cooker, as the cooker jar heats you should see a mix of steam and EO climbing the side of the jar. When that mixture gets to the top it is cooled and condenses on the cold cap and drips off to the cold catcher. Here the oil will be found floating on the water. I usually cap the catcher jar and stash overnight in the refrig and more oil will separate from the water. Decant off the oil and return part of the water to the cooker, refill with herbs or flowers and make another run it takes a lot of plant material to produce small amounts of EO, which is why they are so expensive. If you want a mixed scent mix the EOs if you try in the cooker the results can be weird.~gd

 

[walkaboutjacks]

Why not give her a soap dish of her very own for her own soap? You could use one of those clamshell travel soap dishes, then no worry that anyone else would ever use it

Nope...been there - tried that. She just mooshed it all up and left lumps all over the basin. *insert tearing out hair smiley here*

The other thing you can do quite cheaply for hand soap is to buy liquid hand soap in a foaming pump (or regular if she likes that better) then refill it when it runs out with a nice smelling inexpensive dish soap mixed with water--the foaming pumps in particular only need 1 part soap to 3 parts water to work.

We only use bar soap, but have one of those foaming pumps in the basement bathroom off our guest bedroom for when family comes to visit, because no one else uses the basement bathroom and bar soap dries out and gets all cracked and nasty if no one uses it regularly.

For body wash, grate up a bar of soap you like and heat it in a pan with water, then cool it a bit and pour it into another foaming pump--voil, designer foaming body wash

Personally, if she was my kid I certainly wouldn't be buying her expensive soap--that would never have started and she would have to live with what the rest of us use or get a babysitting job and buy her own darn soap. And if she had wasted soap like you described she would have to seriously apologize and purchase a replacement with her own money. YMMV.

Now thats not a bad idea! I bought some bubble bath the other day thinking it was hand soap and it really doesnt lather up when you use it as hand soap...so i will get a foaming bottle and try it in that...It was only $1.50 for a huge bottle too. I am going to try the body wash idea as well..Thanks
I hear ya on the wastage thing...but people with mental health issues are not always easy to deal with.

 

[Bettacreek]

I finally made a swirl soap today. I did mess up a little, but I'm pretty sure it turned into something that I can pretend I had intended. I was originally going for a coffee swirl, then realised that I couldn't do what I wanted to, so last minute I changed to a dark rich chocolate scented swirl. I used cocoa powder in one container to make lighter brown swirls and the scent in another (it's supposed to make an "ebony brown" color, as it has a lot of vanilla in it) and half of it was left white. Since I was planning on making something else, I had a very low concentrate of lye water, so my scent swirl seized up immediately. Thank goodness I didn't make it a goatmilk soap! Anyways, so now it's a chocolate chunk swirl, or so I hope... lol.

 

[me&thegals]

Oooh---can we see photos?