Table of Contents
Quick Summary: Weigh and melt your fats in a large pot. Weigh the lye in a zip close bag and weigh your water into a plastic container. Prepare mold (add wax paper if necessary) Weigh essential oils according to recipe, set aside. When fats and lye both reach about 100° F, pour lye into pot of oil and stir.
How do you make homemade lye soap?
Instructions Weigh the Water and Lye. Put a container on the kitchen scale and zero out the weight. Add Lye to Water. Slowly add the lye to the pitcher of water (not the water to the lye), being careful not to splash. Cool the Lye Mixture. Weigh and Melt the Oils. Add Lye to Oils. Add Fragrance Oil. Mold the Soap.
How do you make soap in the 1800s?
They made it from animal fat, wood ashes, and water. The fat had to be boiled (refined) and the hardwood ashes leached for a weak lye solution. Sounds like a whole lot of messy, smelly, hot work. Homesteaders invested an entire day on this chore just once or twice a year.
What is an oil based soap?
Vegetable oil-based soaps are known for cleaning skin without leaving skin feeling dry and tight. Vegetable oils found in castile soap penetrate pores and clean skin while delivering nutrients deep into the skin.
What kind of lye is best for soap making?
Lye (sodium hydroxide) is an essential ingredient when making homemade soap from scratch using either cold process or hot process methods. As long as you double-check the label to ensure it contains only sodium hydroxide, you’re good to go.
How did farmers make soap?
On the homes or farms where butchering was not done, soap was generally made in the spring using the ashes from the winter fires and the waste cooking grease, that had accumulated throughout the year. In making soap the first ingredient required was a liquid solution of potash commonly called lye.
What type of olive oil is best for soap making?
Grade A oil is the most commonly used for making soap. Pomace Olive Oil: Pomace olive oil comes from the dregs of the olive paste as the last drops of oil (between 5-8% of the total amount of oil in the olives) are extracted from the skins, pits and ground flesh of the olives.
Is olive oil good for soap making?
Olive oil makes a hard, long lasting soap with a gentle cleansing lather, suitable for all skin types including sensitive skins. High in Oleic acid, a soap made with olive oil will help to condition and soften your skin.
What is lye made of?
Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is a chemical made from salt. Yep, ordinary salt. A system similar to electroplating is used to change the salt to lye.
Can you use household lye for soap making?
Lye is a caustic chemical that can cause bodily harm and it should be handled with utmost care. But, lye is perfectly safe when handled correctly. Drain cleaners usually contain other chemicals that make them unsuitable to use in cold process soap. But, they use the same active ingredient: sodium hydroxide lye.
Can you make your own lye?
To make lye in the kitchen, boil the ashes from a hardwood fire (soft woods are too resinous to mix with fat) in a little soft water, rainwater is best, for about half an hour. Allow the ashes to settle to the bottom of the pan and then skim the liquid lye off the top.
How much lye do you need for soap?
The Pallas Athene Soap company formulated a quick and easy cold process soap recipe that requires exactly 20 ounces of lye (the size of 1 canister from Certified Lye™) and yields a superior bar of natural soap.
What was lye used for in the 1800?
The history of lye is actually rather short, even though soap has been in existence since 2800 B.C. Lye, as we know it, was not created until sometime in the early 1800’s by a chemist named Nicholas LeBlanc. This new lye quickly became the standard for making soap and making it affordable.
Can I make my own soap?
Making soap at home requires two types of ingredients — an acid and a base. These chemically react together in what is called “saponification” and produce the soap along with glycerin as a byproduct. No commercial or homemade soap can be made without these two ingredients.
What did they use for soap in the 1700s?
In England during the 17th century under King James I, soap makers were given ‘special privileges’ and the soap industry started developing more rapidly, although soaps were generally still made using caustic alkalies such as potash, leached from wood ashes and from carbonates from the ashes of plants or seaweed.
What does shea butter do in cold process soap?
These fatty acids will increase the hardness of the soap, increase the lather stability, and will increase the lifespan. Shea butter also has a high concentration of linoleic and oleic acids, which provide conditioning properties and produce gentle and mild soaps.
Is pomace olive oil good for soap making?
Pomace Olive Oil for Soap Making It has moisturizing and skin-nourishing properties. It’s very mild, which makes it good for sensitive skin and adding in fragrance. And using olive oil as the base oil creates a nice hard bar of soap and helps to produce a good lather in the final product.
