Janet Evans - Soap Making Reloaded: How To Make A Soap From Scratch Quickly & Safely: A Simple Guide For Beginners & Beyond

First and foremost, thank you very much for purchasing and downloading the e-book, Soap Making Reloaded: How to Make a Soap from Scratch Quickly & Safely: A Simple Guide for Beginners & Beyond.

This book provides readers with an overview of the process of soap makingfrom its humble beginnings in the outskirts of Ancient Babylon all the way to putting up a soap making business.

In addition, soap making methods are also discussed here together with a few relatively easy soap recipes. It is hoped that readers will find themselves interested in soap making, and that they will be encouraged to try it out to experience the whole process first-hand.

Again, thank you for downloading this book and I hope you enjoy it!

Soap is a cleaning product that is made from natural substances such as castor, olive oil, coconut oil, tallow, and vegetable oil. It is basically a combination of vegetable oil (or animal fat) plus caustic soda, and throughout time it has been used for washing wool in the textile industry, for curing skin diseases and other skin breakouts, and for dyeing hair. Today, soap has managed to integrate itself into our culture and our daily lives, and it has become a primary means of keeping oneself clean and hygienic. The soap as we know it now is a product of numerous modifications and improvements over the course of centuries.

To fully appreciate the soap making process, it is important to first know about its humble beginnings. This chapter will talk about the history of soap in brief, and it will also give you an overview of the most common types of soap.

Soap is perhaps one of the most used skin-care products all over the world, and it has actually been around much longer than we would have thought. In fact, the very first evidence of soap-like material has been dated to have existed at around 2800 B.C. in the outskirts of Ancient Babylon. The Babylonians were the first people to have mastered soap making, and they crafted their soaps from boiled fats and ashes. For at least 5 millennia, soap was utilized for cleaning cotton, wool, and cooking materials as well as for medicinal purposes. It didnt actually start out as something that was used for bathing or personal hygiene.

In Egypt (1550 B.C.), it was described in the Ebers papyrus how animal and vegetable oils were combined with alkaline salts to create soapy substances. These were used for treating skin sores and diseases. The Ancient Greeks, on the other hand, did not wash with soap. Instead, they used water, clay, sands, pumice, and ashes to wash themselves while they used oil for treating skin ailments. It was in the 2nd century A.D. when Galen, the famous Greek physician, said that washing with soap is highly recommended to prevent skin diseases.

Like the Greeks, the Romans used sand and pumice to clean their bodies. However, soap was also known to be very popular throughout the Roman Empire, as an entire soap factory was found in the Pompeii ruins following Mt. Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D. The Ancient Germans and the Gauls used soap to decorate their hair, and their soaps were made from ashes and animal fat.

The Arabs were the first to make soap from vegetable oils, aromatic oils, and lye. In the 7th century A.D., soap was manufactured in places such as Basra, Nablus, and Kufa. Perfumed and colored soaps were made, and these came in both solid and liquid forms. Special soaps for shaving were also produced.

Marseilles (in France) and Savona (in Italy) became the focal points of soap making by 1200 A.D. Soap making became very popular in Spain and Italy where soaps were made with Beech tree ashes and goat fat. At around the same time, the French started producing soap with olive oil. Fragrances eventually became one of the most used ingredients in soaps and thus, manufacture of soaps for bathing, shampooing, and laundry began.

Industrially manufactured soaps became readily available in the late 18th century. This big leap in wide-scale soap making can be attributed to the discoveries of two French chemists, namely Nicholas Leblanc and Michael Chevreul. Leblanc patented a technique for creating soda ash (sodium carbonate) from commonly available salts in 1791, while Chevreul learned the chemical nature and the relationships of glycerine, fatty acids, and fats.

Later on, the Castille region of Spain also became well-known as a soap making center, as they were the first to create hard, white bars of soap made from olive oil. In fact, Castille soaps are still very popular up to this day, with simple recipes available for those who wish to make their first soap.

The commercial soaps that we know today came into being during the First World War. After the war and until the 1930s, the batch kettle boiling method was used to manufacture soap. Eventually, Procter & Gamble came up with a continuous process that reduced the time for soap production to less than a day. This method is still being used by the big soap companies today.

Many types of soap are available in the market, each with a different purpose. Soaps can be used for personal hygiene, dishwashing, laundry, pet cleaning, etc. There are hard soaps and soft soaps, and there are also those that fall in between. The hardness of soaps can be attributed to the amount of hardening agents in its recipe, and the main categorization of soaps is according to its usage. The different types of soaps include:

1. Kitchen Soaps

As the name suggests, these soaps are intended for use in the kitchen. They can be further categorized into two types:

Cleansers: The main purpose of cleansers is to get rid of solid particles, heavy oil, and hard-to-remove stains. They are usually filled with mild abrasives.

Dish detergents: These are made to wash off grease thoroughly and to capture solid particles in its foam. Hand dishwashing detergents tend to produce more foam than machine dishwashing detergents, which allows it to get rid of greasy substances much better.

2. Laundry Soaps

Laundry soaps are made to get rid of solid particles, grease, stains, and other dirt and compounds from clothes. They are formulated to work in almost any condition and water temperature, but they are most effective when used with warm water. Laundry soaps come in powder, liquid, or gel forms.

3. Industrial Soaps

Industrial soaps are formulated especially for car wash and auto centers as well as for production line clean-ups. Since they are made for big tasks, these soaps generally come in large gallon drums that are linked to specialized pressure cleaning systems.

4. Personal Soaps

Personal soaps are made for personal hygiene purposes. There are many kinds of forms and formulations depending on your specific needs. For example, if you wish to prevent the spread of bacteria and viruses, you can go for antibacterial soaps. There are also hair and body soaps that can be used for both the hair and the skin.

5. Perfumed Soaps

These are just normal personal soaps with added perfume. Some manufacturers would even provide a different design for these soaps to make their product line more varied. However, the perfume in soaps can actually be a source of skin irritation for people who have allergies.