I’ve wanted to learn how to make soap for a long time. I even had these books for almost 20 years. Did I use them, no! Youtube has it all. It really wasn’t that difficult. Although, I did add different funky ingredients that effected the process a lot. Pine Tar made the soap get thick really quick and I didn’t need a hand blender.
When using caustic soda, called lye, it is dangerous and causes severe burns. Did you ever see the movie “Fight Club”? They made soap in that movie…
The soap I was most proud of making was what I called “jimmy buffet” soap. It contained coconut milk, coconut oil, dried lime zest and fresh lime juice. That may not seem odd to you but, acid, like vinegar or line juice neutralizes the lye. Which means that the chemical process of saponification will not happen. I wanted to use fresh lime juice and not lime essential oil. I just needed to figure out how much extra lye I needed to use so the lime juice didn’t neutralize the process. I got totally geeked out on the science in this one. Someone figured out the ratio, all I needed to do was the math. Whallah! It worked.
I wouldn’t want to go back to store bought soap after I saw how easy this is to do. I’d highly recommend giving it a try. It’s really not that complicated.