Sandy Chase - Best Tips And Tricks For Soap Making: Time Honored Soap Making Techniques

BestTips And Tricks For Soap Making

TimeHonored Soap Making Techniques

By:Sandy Chase

Disclaimer

This publicationis intended to provide helpful and informative material. It is not intended todiagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health problem or condition, nor isintended to replace the advice of a physician. No action should be taken solelyon the contents of this book. Always consult your physician or qualifiedhealth-care professional on any matters regarding your health and beforeadopting any suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author andpublisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss orrisk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly orindirectly, from the use or application of any contents of this book.

Any and allproduct names referenced within this book are the trademarks of theirrespective owners. None of these owners have sponsored, authorized, endorsed,or approved this book.

Always read allinformation provided by the manufacturers product labels before using theirproducts. The author and publisher are not responsible for claims made bymanufacturers.

2013

Manufactured inthe United States of America

This book isdedicated to my aunt who taught me the secrets to making great homemade soaps.

The art of making soap has existedfor hundreds of years, and for the majority of that time, soap was made byhand. If you wanted soap, you saved the necessary components from daily lifeand made it yourself. It wasn't until the 1920s that soap became a commercialproduct, bought rather than made. In the last decade or so, the art of makingsoap has seen the resurgence among eco-friendly people. Thankfully, while thechemical process behind making soap is complex, the physical process is not.

The History of Soap Making

The oldest known mention of soap isactually over 4,000 years old, coming from ancient Babylon. The recipe for asimple soap, consisting of ashes, alkali salt and water was written on a stonetablet dated to around 2200 BCE.

One popular tale of the discovery ofsoap comes from ancient Rome. In Latin, the word that means soap is Sapo. Asthe tale goes, there once was a mountain named Mount Sapo. This mountain was afrequently used site for animal sacrifices, and thus became saturated withanimal fat over the years. One day, particularly heavy rains washed the animalfats down towards the river, alongside ashes from the sacrificial fires. Thesethree ingredients -- fat, ash and water -- are the primary ingredients forbasic soap. Washerwomen at the banks of the river discovered that the refusefrom the mountain cleaned clothes much more easily than water alone, and namedthe substance Sapo.

This tale, while interesting, isalmost certainly not true. There is no record of a mount Sapo anywhere in theRoman Empire. There is also little evidence that soap was used as a detergentin Rome, as it is rarely mentioned in any capacity.

No matter the history, the basicrecipe stays the same, though today we use more refined products than animalfat and wood ash.

The Methods of Making Soap

All natural soaps -- those notcreated with synthetic detergents -- are made with three primary ingredients.The first, water, has remained unchanged since time began. The second, animalfat has been replaced in modern times with various vegetable oils. Home soapmakers often choose a mixture of olive and coconut oils. The third, ash, hasalso been replaced with the active ingredient from that ash. This ingredient iscaustic soda, or lye.

There are three ways to make soaptoday, though one of them is more of a craft hobby than an actual soap makingprocess.

Cold Process: This method is the oneused throughout the ages. You mix a proportion of lye with water in onecontainer. In another container, you mix the oils you will use. Then youcombine the two ingredients, stir, pour into molds and let it set. The lye andthe oil react in a process called saponification, chemically transforming intosoap. The chemical reaction takes a significant amount of time, so the curingprocess takes six or more weeks for a batch of soap.

Hot Process: This is similar to coldprocess, though it is a much more modern invention. Rather than mix theingredients and let them sit for weeks, you mix them over a source of heatclose to boiling. This forces the chemical reaction to progress faster, curinga batch in hours instead of weeks. For proper results, this requires constantstirring and is not recommended without plenty of time to dedicate to the task.Once the soap has been poured into molds and cooled, it is ready to use.

Melt and Pour: This process is moreof a craft hobby than a soap making method. Instead of working with oil andlye, you buy unscented clear soap base. This pre-processed soap works as it is.Melt this soap and add your preferred colors and scents pour it into molds andallow it to set. You now have soap.

The Saponification Process

Saponification is the technical namefor the chemical process that produces soap. It begins with the fatty acidsfound in animal fats and vegetable oils. When these fats are introduced to asufficient amount of a strong alkaline element, they react. This reactionproduces soap.

Two different kinds of alkaline arecommonly used in making soap. Sodium hydroxide is the biggest player, whichproduces a hard bar of soap when introduced to oil. Potassium hydroxide is amore recent chemical, which produces liquid soap instead.

The saponification process worksbeyond the basic oil and lye reaction. In fact, wet chemical fire extinguishersoperate on the same principle. Grease fires burn much hotter than liquid fires,so the standard fire extinguisher will not work. Wet chemical extinguishersspray the necessary chemicals that will cause saponification in the grease,which does two things. First, it reacts with the grease, turning it into anon-flammable soap. Second, the chemical reaction itself absorbs heat, reducingthe ability of further grease to flare up.

Interestingly, saponification is notalways a good thing. In the art world, oil paintings are at risk ofsaponification, a process that has been observed around the world and inpaintings from all time periods and geographic locations. The fatty acids inthe oil paints may react with heavy metals and alkaline compounds in thepigments or in foreign contamination, causing saponification.

Though the ingredients have changed,the art of making soap endures through the centuries. No doubt, people willstill make soap by hand for centuries to come..

Making soap, while initiallycomplicated, quickly becomes a matter of experimentation and adapting recipes.Once you're involved in it as a hobby, you can easily turn it into asmall-scale home business. Before you can make it that far, however, you needto know the different methods for making soap. There are essentially fourprimary ways to make soap.

Melt and Pour

Melt and pour soap making is theeasiest and safest way to make soap. You do not need to handle dangerous lye,monitor mixing temperatures or worry about exact measurements. However, meltand pour soap making is not quite making soap. It is more like re-purposingsoap.

With the melt and pour method, youfirst need bars of existing soap. You can use slivers of leftover soap fromyour own purchases, or you can buy large blocks of clear, odorless base soap.The first step is to melt this soap base. You can do this over a double boileror simply in the microwave, it is that safe and easy.