Soap Making 101

[Mackay]

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

Simply purchase a bar of your favorite scent of Dr Bronner's bar soap.
Probably any bar soap will do but I cant guarantee it for this recipe.
Grate it.
Add it to one gallon of boiling hot water, but do not boil the soap.
Let sit over night.
Now it should appear in a large clot or separated to clear and gel
Beat it with a stick blender or just a plain old potato masher.
Pour into a gallon jug (or leave in the pot) and let stand for 2 weeks and then blend again.
Pour into 8 or 16 ounce bottles that have a pump.

No more messy soap dishes for you!

 

[krisac]

For me and the Gals, I'm trying to make sense of it all too. and failing. I would like to sell, but need a safe workable appealing product first. I would like to make shampoo be it liquid..so far a complete fail..or bar. I have some CP shampoo bars curing we'll see. If that works great. The syndet thing set me off on a side track to investigate and now I wish I had simply chopped off an appendage. My Business Idea is products based around Goats milk soap. Which the people around here love but equate with NATURAL. So looking at my label if they need a chemistry degree to understand it...they won't buy it they will walk the 20 feet of to another vendor who does do all natural even if it doesn't have goats milk. so I will spend Christmas at the drawing board seeing what I can come up with.
Kristina
and I'll try not to confuse anyone anymore

 

[Bettacreek]

Oh!!..what kind are they?

Those are my rich dark chocolate scented "chocolate chunk swirl" bars. Kind of a mishap, but turned out kind of cute. I had only purchased a small amount of this scent and when it came in, I decided that I probably wouldn't order it again. I figured for my first swirl, a scent that I didn't think would work great with soap would be perfect, and now 3 bars are already sold and a friend is going to purchase at least one. So, yeah, I'll be ordering this scent again.

 

[~gd]

For me and the Gals, I'm trying to make sense of it all too. and failing. I would like to sell, but need a safe workable appealing product first. I would like to make shampoo be it liquid..so far a complete fail..or bar. I have some CP shampoo bars curing we'll see. If that works great. The syndet thing set me off on a side track to investigate and now I wish I had simply chopped off an appendage. My Business Idea is products based around Goats milk soap. Which the people around here love but equate with NATURAL. So looking at my label if they need a chemistry degree to understand it...they won't buy it they will walk the 20 feet of to another vendor who does do all natural even if it doesn't have goats milk. so I will spend Christmas at the drawing board seeing what I can come up with.
Kristina
and I'll try not to confuse anyone anymore

Well I was a chemist making shampoo and many other cleaning products for the old A&P supermarket chain, so you are unlikely to confuse me with chemistry. The facts are simple soap does not make good shampoo! Maybe there is some magic in goat's milk but if there was the big manfactures would be using it. Unless the water of the user [not the manufacturer] is rain water soft soap will leave a coating on your hair which is commonly called soap scum. strike one! Soap is to harsh it will strip the natural oils from your hair and replace them with soap scum Strike two. Now in the home made laundry detergent that you will find on this site most of the formulation is actually water conditioners[borax, washing soda] but in shampoo they just add to the harshness. You could try a super fatted soap [ask a soap maker] to replace the natural hair oils with the oils added to the soap to make it super fatted [that is what is done for "beauty bars" they replace face oils with such things as olive oil] Frankly if I wanted to replace my natural oils with goat milk magic and stay natural I would uae a straight soap with very solf water, rinse, apply fresh goats milk, and rinse again. other wise you are going to have to fifure a way to preserve the goats milk without using one of the chemicals and lose you "natural" claim.
I will be around if you want to bounce quetions or ideas off me, ~gd

 

[krisac]

Thanks but I've been beaten around by shampoo and I'm going to let it win this round if the CP shampoo bar batch doesn't work. I will work on my lotions, other CP bars and maybe facaial soap.
Thanks Kristina
At least my Family will have a fun Christmas

 

[Freedom57]

I have enjoyed the posts. I may try my hand at some soap making. Thanks.

 

[me&thegals]

For me and the Gals, I'm trying to make sense of it all too. and failing. I would like to sell, but need a safe workable appealing product first. I would like to make shampoo be it liquid..so far a complete fail..or bar. I have some CP shampoo bars curing we'll see. If that works great. The syndet thing set me off on a side track to investigate and now I wish I had simply chopped off an appendage. My Business Idea is products based around Goats milk soap. Which the people around here love but equate with NATURAL. So looking at my label if they need a chemistry degree to understand it...they won't buy it they will walk the 20 feet of to another vendor who does do all natural even if it doesn't have goats milk. so I will spend Christmas at the drawing board seeing what I can come up with.
Kristina
and I'll try not to confuse anyone anymore

Now I understand. You need label appeal. I've never made shampoo with anything but water, but you could try a balance of olive oil, coconut oil and castor. Plug it into a lye calculator to get the lye amount, swap in goat's milk instead of water, and try a 1-lb batch or something small. I love this shampoo, but I've never tried it with GM.

 

[me&thegals]

Gd, nearly all my CP soap has "stuff" in it like GM, carrots, pumpkin, egg yolks, etc. with no preservative, even though I superfat at 5%. I have no problems with rancidity, except with the shampoo, which seems to go rancid despite using only water and nothing else added in.

 

[carlmarkony]

This was really wonderful... Thanks for sharing....

 

[Bettacreek]

I still have some soap from like my very first batch two and a half years ago... Goatmilk is in it, no preservatives and no DOS or rancidity or any other problems...

Also, coconut oil in soap is drying... Lye changes it over to being super cleansing, which dries you out. Straight coconut oil is great for moisturizing, but not saponified coconut oil.