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Homemade Soap
Making soap for your emergency preparedness supplies
would be good information to have and know. Especially when we know
that sanitization is crucial for keeping disease and infections
away. Also if your normal supply of soap is out it would be good
idea have these ingredients in storage so you could make your own
homemade soap . Homemade soap can also be customized to your
likings and will be explained by Al Durtschi in how to make your own
homemade soap:
"Soap making is not hard to do if
you are armed with just a little bit of information. Soap is the
result of combining fats with some sort of caustic agent such as lye
using water as a catalyst. Armed with just a little bit of knowledge
it’s possible to turn out a nice batch of soap with things that can
be purchased at most grocery stores. Read on to get the specifics on
this fun and interesting hobby. Study this page carefully and you
shouldn't have any problems turning out a great batch of soap.
Jump within page to:
Water:
For
best results, use rain, distilled, reverse osmosis or de-mineralized water. Your
water should be 0.38 of your fat by weight. Don't worry too much about getting
it exact, however, as this measurement isn't terribly critical.
Lye:
You should
know a little bit about lye, or sodium hydroxide. Lye is a very strong base. If
you get it on you, you will find it's bad stuff. (Be sure to store lye where
kids or pets can NEVER get at it.) You must use care in
determining what utensils and mixing containers you use when handling lye. Use
wooden or plastic spoons and enameled, plastic or glass bowls for mixing. (Lye
will eat up Aluminum in a hurry. Also, lye instantly and permanently takes the
shine off Formica. Formica is so sensitive to lye that it left timeless streaks
across the table where I wiped a few dry crystals off with my hand. Now, with
our table
 top and kitchen counter tops ruined, the wife ushers me outside when I
handle lye.)
You would be wise to wear eye protection and rubber gloves when handling the lye
crystals or the lye solution after you have mixed it into the water. Dissolve lye in cold water. Having half your water as ice would
be so much the better. Never pour the water into the lye. Doing this could
cause the mixture to explode and blow very corrosive lye water and crystals all
over the place. Rather, always pour the lye into the water. If you don't stir it
immediately as you pour the lye into the water, the lye will settle to the
bottom and quickly solidify. This isn't a problem as tapping it with the
stirring utensil will break it up. As you mix it, a physical reaction takes
place between the lye and the water generating a lot of heat. If you are making
a large batch of soap, the lye can even start the water boiling - with little
droplets of lye water splattering all over the place. If this starts happening,
stop stirring it until the bubbling stops. Generally, it doesn't take more than
a minute to dissolve the lye crystals into the water. You know this has happened
as the water will become relatively clear. Before using, the lye water must now
cool down to about 85 degrees F (or room temperature if your mixing area's above
85 degrees) before adding it to the fat.
Fats and Oils used in soap
making. In my experiments I have learned almost any fat or oil
can be used to make soap. Fats for soap making include animal fats such as
tallow (fat from beef), lard (fat from pork), and the various plant derived oils
and hydrogenated fats. Traditionally, animal fats have been used, with beef
tallow making the hardest soap, pork lard a medium hardness soap and chicken fat
the softest. It's generally accepted that the harder fats make better soap.
There are a multitude of fats and they each bring their own unique
qualities to soap. If you want to know what a particular fat will do, make a
small batch of only that fat and see what kind of bar it makes. Armed with this
knowledge you can mix fats to give your soap the qualities you want. This is how
soap recipes are born.
Whatever type of fat or oil you use, you must ensure it is clean and
free of impurities. It shouldn't be rancid, have excess salt in it, or have any
solid particles. (Many people remember the soap ‘grandma used to make,’ and have
unpleasant memories of nasty smelling stuff. If Grandma had used clean, fresh,
fat, her soap would have smelled clean and fresh. But we can't blame Grandma as
she did the best she could with what she had. You will notice that Mrs. Mertz
disagrees with me on this point in her ‘how we used to do it’ page.)
Rancid and dirty fat can be cleaned by boiling it for a few minutes
in a large pot with four parts water to one part fat. Set it aside and let it
cool. After it has solidified, remove the fat from the pot in one piece. One way
to do this is to run hot water around the outside of the pot, melting a thin
layer of fat next to the pan. It should then slide out. Scrape all the foreign
matter off the bottom of the fat. If it is still dirty, repeat the cleaning
process again. It is also fairly easy to render your own fat.
What are your best fats for soap making? Amazingly, the soap making
professionals feel that lard beats tallow and vegetable oils for gentleness to
your skin. However, soap made with 100% lard doesn't lather very well. But it
cleans beautifully. There is a predominant idea today that you must get bubbles
for the soap to do its job. Soap making professionals have told me this is not
the case. But if you want bubbles, you can have the kind of bubbles you want by
using different oils.
Different Fats that create bubbles:
-
Coconut Oil gives big, fluffy bubbles. One hundred percent coconut oil
soap is sometimes used around maritime operations as it will even lather in
sea water, really, about the only soap that will. Soap with coconut oil can be
a tiny bit harsh on some people's skin. If you'd like cheap coconut oil, get a
one or five gallon bucket of popcorn popping oil which is 100% coconut oil
that's dyed yellow. Yes, you will be stuck with yellow soap but this won't be
a problem for most people.
-
Olive oil gives very fine, silky bubbles. This oil is very good for the
skin.
In your soap making, use at least 25% of these fats as part of your overall
fat to get the desired effect you're seeking.
Saponification (Sap) Value:
Each fat
requires a different amount of lye to change the fat to soap. See our Lye to Fat Ratio Table
Page for a short discussion on this and a listing of different fats and the
lye required to convert them to soap. The temperature of the fat is important. It needs to be a bit above
it’s melting point. This is 130 degrees F for beef tallow, or 85 degrees F for
pork lard, or about the same temperature for vegetable oil. The hotter your oil,
the faster the chemical reaction between the lye and the fat. But the hotter the
oil, the easier the soap separates into layers during the mixing stage.
Mixing:
With the lye water and fat at the right temperature, very gradually pour the lye
water into the fat using a very small stream. Stir gently only in one direction
the whole time you are adding the lye water. This helps it mix. You should
insulate your mixing pot with old rags, etc, to prevent the fat from hardening
before you've finished mixing the soap.
Saponification and its role
in the mixing process: Simply stated, saponification is the name
for the chemical process that happens between lye and fat as they turn into
soap. It doesn't happen all at once, but actually takes days to complete. There
are different levels of this process, and the most important one for you to know
about is the "Trace" stage. This
is the point at which your soap has thickened up somewhat. As you let the soap
run off your mixing spoon back into the mixture, the falling soap stays on top
and doesn't blend in, but leaves its "trace" mark on top. Its thickness is
another way to know when trace occurs. Its consistency is much like the
thickness of pudding after it's cooked but before it has set up.
With stirring only, it can take a long time to get your soap to the
trace stage depending on many variables. One of these variables is the heaviness
of the fat. The lighter the fat or oil, the longer it will take it to trace. You
can expect a wait anywhere from 30-60 minutes for animal fats to several hours
or even days for the vegetable oils. Does this mean you need to sit and stir
your soap for several hours until it traces? I don't. After mixing it for about
15 minutes, I do other things and mix the settled layers back up every 15 or 20
minutes when I happen to go by it. (You may wish to set your timer so you don't
completely forget it!) At the trace stage of thickness, it won't separate out
into layers when you pour it in your setting trays or molds.
A False Trace
can
happen when making soap with fats that are solid at room temperature, such as
tallow, lard, or shortening. If the temperature of your soap mix drops below the
melting temperature of your fat, it will start to solidify. As it does, your
batch will start to thicken up just like it was tracing - but it's not! Rather,
it's the fats solidifying. To prevent this from happening, be sure that the soap
you are mixing stays above the melting temperature of the fat. In fact, the
warmer your soap, the quicker it will saponify. It wouldn't hurt to keep your
soap up to around 115 degrees F to speed this process along a little more
quickly. At 120 degrees F lanolin will curdle your batch, so sometimes,
depending on the additives you've included, you may need to be very careful how
hot you get it.
Vegetable oils can also be used
for making soap. These oils are liquid at room temperature and without employing
a trick or two usually require many hours of mixing before they trace.
Trick 1: Use a blender. The more finely the lye and fat
molecules are intermixed the faster they will saponify. Using a blender, the
trace stage can be reached in minutes instead of hours. Don't use an upright
blender unless you don't mind millions of tiny air bubbles being permanently
whipped into your soap. Use the hand-held type instead. With one of these, even
your most stubborn oils should trace within 20 minutes. Sometimes, you can get a
trace with animal fats in just a couple of minutes. Anyone who has sat around
for hours stirring a batch of soap will be ecstatic with this.
Trick 2: Cook it. There are a
couple of processes that I have developed myself yet are rather unorthodox. And
this is one of them. If you don't have a blender, perhaps cooking your soap is
for you. After it has cooled, pour or spoon it into the soap mold or tray
and treat it like you would for the no-cook recipes. Even though it has been
cooked, the chemical reaction that slowly turns liquid vegetable oils into soap
will take much longer than cooked animal fat soaps.
When your soap has traced you can add
your superfatting, coloring and perfume oils.
Superfatting oil:
When your soap gets to its trace stage, the saponification process is around 90%
complete. Fat added at this point makes your soap softer. There is a reason why
the superfatting oil is added after tracing instead of at the beginning with all
the other fats. If it was added at the beginning you wouldn't have any control
over which fat or oil ended up as your 'free fat' as all fats would
saponify together. This is presupposing you are going to superfat with a
different fat or oil than you used to make your soap with. Exotic oils are
generally used in superfatting. They are added at trace to give the benefit of
their desirable qualities without having to use so much it empties your wallet.
A good rule of thumb is to use 1 oz. per pound of total fat used in the recipe.
(That's one part superfatting oil to 16 parts total fat.) Let me list just 2 of
the more common superfatting oils:
-
Avocado Oil: Feels very soft to the skin and makes an excellent
shaving soap.
-
Cocoa Butter: Makes a hard bar. It smells and looks nice, but
doesn't lather.
Coloring Dyes: Several things are used to color soap.
Approved items are clays, mineral pigments and spices. You can get these items
from soap supply companies. Moving back into the area of unorthodoxy again, I
color all my soap with a piece of crayon. Virtually all crayon is made with
stearic acid, a type of fat. The stearic acid saponifies into the soap leaving
behind the pigment.
I melt crayon into my soap after it has traced. Don't be tempted to
put your crayon in at the beginning as the lye will change its color. You may
need to heat a half cup or so of your traced soap to about 150 degrees F to get
it to the melting temperature of the crayon. Even adding a crayon at this late
stage of mixing, you may notice a slight color shift over time.
Scenting Oils: There are two types of scenting oils, FO's (fragrance oils) and EO's (essential
oils). An EO is made from distilling the oil out of the plant it comes from. A
fragrance oil is a man-made chemical that's steeped in alcohol. EO's are usually
used in soap making as FO's have been known to seize soap, or turn it into a
yucky ball that doesn't saponify correctly. EO's are much more expensive and
harder to find than FO's but also have better scent retention. If it is an EO,
it will most often say so on the label. You will also know it by the exorbitant
cost. FOs can often be used safely at trace however. Make a small test batch
first to see if your FO is going to work before making a big batch. Be aware
that rose and cucumber FOs are notorious for seizing soap. If you want to use an
FO that can possibly seize soap, you can safely use it during a rebatch. Certain fragrance oils and essential oils change the saponification
characteristics of a mix. Jasmine absolute from real flowers is damaged by
strong alkali. It is a natural fragrance and not a fragrance oil.
The Setting Tray:
Mrs. Mertz used a
galvanized tub. Other old timers used a wooden box in the shape of a tray with a
cloth laid in the bottom of it. The cloth was used to help remove the hardened
soap from the tray. If you are going to use a solid tray, may I recommend
plastic wrap instead of cloth as a barrier between your soap and the tray. But
there is something even simpler than this. If you have any square edged,
flexible plastic trays with lips at least as high as a bar of soap is thick, use
this instead. After the soap has hardened, a slight flexing of the tray will
dislodge the soap. When the soap begins to harden (1 hour to 3 days depending on
how fast the curing process is moving along), section it into bars. When
cutting, the soap should still be soft enough to easily run a table knife
through it but hard enough that the soap doesn't run back together again. After
it has further hardened (3-7 days), remove it from the tray, and break it into
bars following the knife marks made earlier. Even though your soap looks hard at
this stage, it is far from done. There's a good chance it contains a bit of lye
that should dissipate into the soap as the saponification process continues.
This will be true as long as you had your lye/fat ratio correct
in the first place. Your soap will need to sit for 2-6 weeks to dry out and
cure, depending on the fat you used. Use litmus paper to test
the lye content of your finished soap. Be sure to wash off any soda ash that has
formed before testing. Soda ash has a high pH value. Your soap should be below a
pH of 10 within 36-72 hours after it has traced. The closer the pH of the
finished soap is to 7 the better but don't expect normally made soap to reach
this. If your soap is over a pH of 10, let it sit around for a week or two.
Hopefully as the soap continues to saponify the lye will get transformed and the
pH will drop. Your soap should be below a pH of 10 before you use it. Below a pH
of 9 would be better. There are a few seasoned soap makers that test the pH by
tasting the soap. Your tongue will tingle if there is still too much lye in it.
Of course, you don't want to swallow this stuff. This was suggested to me as a
possibility by Mrs. Mertz and also by other contemporary soap makers who sell
soap.
Final Curing and Storage:
With the soap out of the tray or molds, stack it up and set it in a warm dry
place for at least two weeks. When it has fully cured, place it in a plastic bag
or air tight container, and store it in a cool, dry place. You might notice a
thin, white powdery layer on the outside of your soap. This is soda ash, and
forms as a result of the carbon dioxide in the air interacting with the lye in
the soap. This outer layer quickly washes off the first time you use it. If this
is a concern, cover your setting soap with plastic wrap so the air can't get to
it. After saponification nears completion, you can remove the air barrier to let
your soap dry out. After all this, if there is still a thin layer of soda ash on
your soap after it has cured, wash it off, then let the surface of your soap dry
before storage.
Final Soap Making Tips:
My experience: The recipes I used left a lot to be desired. The
instructions weren't sufficiently detailed for me to really figure it all out
and so I made several mistakes which I will now point out.
The first thing I had trouble with was
getting the
lye/water/fat
ratio correct.
Often
the recipe simply said ‘a can of lye.’ Obviously, in yesteryear all lye cans
must have been the same size. Not so any more. From analyzing several recipes
both relatively modern and old, I find the lye to fat ratio in many recipes to
be lye heavy. I suggest you figure the lye yourself using the
fat to lye table
before using a recipe. Then alter it accordingly when making your soap. Let’s
not forget the 0.38 parts of water to one part fat by weight. (Water, lye and
fat are the primary ingredients for all soap recipes I've found, and will make a
good bar of soap all by themselves.) Depending on what you want to use the soap
for, you may wish to deviate from the lye-fat table. Make laundry soap
intentionally lye heavy and delicate facial soaps intentionally a bit fat heavy.
Mix it:
-
Double the SAP table's figures for lye for really tuff cleaning jobs, like
laundry soap.
-
Use the 5% fat column for regular hand soap.
-
Use the 9% or 10% column for delicate facial cleaner
Note: The more lye in the soap, the harder bar it makes. (One of my friends
told me how before the days of the automatic washing machine, his mother always
threw a bar of home made soap into the wash during her ‘manual wash cycle’ then
pulled it out before the ‘rinse.’ The same bar of soap lasted several batches!)
The second thing I had trouble with was adding the different ingredients at the right
times. rinse created some real messes with this one. Here is a
suggested order to add things: Start out with...
-
Water
-
Sugar can be used in soap recipes for making clear soap. It won't
dissolve if you try to add it after the lye or fats have been mixed in. Don't
add sugar if you plan on cooking your soap.
-
Salt: It may be of interest to know that the commercial soap makers
use salt to separate out the glycerin which is a natural byproduct of soap
making. Then they sell it as a byproduct even though by removing it, they
reduce the quality of their soap. Commercial soap makers use salt to curdle a
batch of soap. Salt is sometimes used to clean fat during the rendering
process and can be used to help solidify soap when making it from ashes. Under
normal circumstances you probably won't add salt.
-
Ammonia is an emulsifying agent that helps a mixed batch of impure
oils to get together closely enough to saponify readily. As the soap cures the
ammonia evaporates, leaving your bar ammonia free.
-
Borax is an emulsifying agent that helps a mixed batch of impure oils
to get together closely enough to saponify readily. When the soap is used the
borax acts as a water softener.
-
Lye
Mix all your fats together before adding your lye
water to them.
-
Fat or Oil
-
Lanolin (Lanolin comes from sheep's wool. It's oil based and mixes
with the other fats very nicely. Adding Lanolin as a superfatting oil at trace
is also a option. Lanolin is a mix of cholesterol, other heavy alcohols and
fatty acids. It's good for the skin and has a low sap value. Lanolin does
require a little lye.
-
Coal Oil
-
Lemon Juice
After Trace: All the following items are
optional:
-
Ground Oatmeal (abrasive element)
-
Vitamin E This is an antioxidant, and acts as an anti-rancidity agent.
Poke a hole in one end of the pill with a pin and squeeze it out into your
batch.
-
Coloring Dyes
-
Superfatting Oil
-
Scenting oils: To prevent the lye from eating up your perfume, you
need to add this as late as possible in the saponification process - the last
thing before you put it in the mold.
The third thing I had trouble with was
getting it to trace correctly.
Trying different things, I happened on a couple of different ways of
getting soap to trace. Three methods of getting soap to trace have already been
discussed. When I first started making soap I didn't know the first thing about
"trace." Because of this, I had several failed batches until I developed a
unorthodox way of setting soap that incidentally is a lot faster than waiting for
it to trace by stirring only. The following method will only work with fats that
are solid at room temperature, like tallow, lard, and shortening. You can't
color or scent your soap if you do it this way as you should only add these
things after tracing. Professional soap makers are leery of this method as they
feel it is important to stir the batch to trace as it keeps the molecules
moving. Yet I add this last method here as I've had excellent luck with it.
The Intentional False Trace: After all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, set your mixing container in
cold water and continue to stir, especially the sides and bottom. I use a big
spatula to do this as the fat will solidify first on the sides and bottom of the
pan. This solidifying fat/lye mixture must be remixed into the warmer mass in
the center of the pot. As the mixture cools, continue to quickly stir it while
the whole batch thickens. When it gets to the consistency of thick gravy or
pudding, (trace consistency) pour it into your setting tray. The idea here is to
get it so thick there is no way it can separate, yet fluid enough so it will
flow. With it in the setting tray, put it in the refrigerator so the fat in the
soap can continue to solidify. After it is cold, take it out of the refrigerator
and set it aside. Unless you make the soap during very hot weather, it stirring
re-melt and separate. Anywhere from an hour to a day, depending on how fast it
is setting up, the soap should be ready to cut into bar sized pieces. Note:
Don't get confused here. If you actually traced your soap,
you shouldn't put it in the refrigerator. The refrigerator is only used when you
thickened your soap in cold water before tracing had a chance to happen.
Final curing: As mentioned
before, it takes soap days for the saponification process to complete, then
weeks before it has cured with all the water evaporating. My experience is that
it takes about 1 to 3 days for the soap to set up hard enough to cut the soap
into hand soap sized bars without it melting back together again. Check it once
or twice a day. You don't want it so hard you can't run a table knife through
it. After sectioning the soap in the setting tray, leave it in the pan to
further harden 3 - 5 days. You want it to be hard enough so it will maintain its
shape and not break up as you are taking it out of the tray. You can't hurt it
by leaving it too long, but if you take it out too soon you can accidentally
break
pieces off or put big cracks in the bars that will later break. When it has
cured long enough, remove the now solid soap and break it
up into bars from the knife marks made earlier. If you used a solid pan lined
with plastic wrap, after the soap is removed, use your finger to smooth out the
small grooves made by the wrinkles in the plastic wrap. (If you wait, it will be
too hard and you can't be able to do this.) It is then stacked up and left to
further dry (cure) for two or more weeks.
Using It:
Even
mentioning this may seem like over kill. When I first used that initial bar of
lye heavy soap from my first ever attempt at soap making, I rubbed and rubbed,
and didn't get much off it. But I soon learned that I was just breaking it in.
After I used it a few times, it was much easier to use. If you have kids, to
decrease their resistance to using soap ‘you’ made, break it in first then put
it out for them to use.
Floating soap: Ivan Stern discovered the easy way to make your soap float.
Just add a tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) or so to your soap mixture
after you've added almost all of the alkali. The bicarbonate reacts with the
fatty acids to release CO2 into the mixture. Be aware this adds a very small
amount of caustic material to your batch."
Al Durtschi, E-mail: mark@waltonfeed.com
All contents copyright (C) 1997-2000, Al Durtschi. All rights reserved.
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