Project 31: Finished soap and lessons learned

Hey everyone! Remember how I made soap back in August? Well, it has been done for some time and sitting on top of a dresser. I wasn’t sure I was happy with it. The soap smelled kind of stale, to be honest, and had a fine layer of crud on top from curing outside.

See, a day or so after making the soap our house started to smell like mothballs. We were afraid that it may have had something to do with the lye, so we cured the soap outside. (In hindsight we think the smell might have been coming from a neighbor’s apartment.) My soft soap collected a layer of dirt and grime while sitting in its bread pan. Between the smell and the crud I wan’t too eager to post it on the blog.

But the show must go on. This morning I took the top layer off of each bar with a vegetable slicer and they were good as new. Then I tested one to see how it lathered and it worked great! I was impressed. The smell isn’t good, but it didn’t leave a bad smell on my hands so I think they’re usable.

Yay soap!

Lessons learned:
– Safety is key when working with lye, but it isn’t so difficult that one shouldn’t try it. Soapmaking was easier than I expected.
– A stick blender is absolutely the right tool for emulsifying the liquid soap. Worked like a charm.
– Trying soapmaking a few times to test smells and shapes would be a fun thing to do.

Watch for more updates this weekend and a new project starting Monday!

 

 

Project 31: Making soap

I made soap today! And since it is Saturday and my husband was home I was able to get more process photos to share with you.

Above you’ll see the list of supplies I started with: A bread pan, plastic wrap, and waxed paper to make the mold; gloves for safety; distilled water and lye (Roebic crystal drain opener from Lowe’s) for the lye water; coconut oil, olive oil, and castor oil for the oils; heatproof glass measuring cups; and a cool infrared laser thermometer (not required, but fun to have). I forgot to include our kitchen scale or the hand mixer in this photo.

The first step was to make the lye water. Lye can hurt you so I tried to be extra careful, even though safety isn’t really my strong suit. Fortunately I had my husband around to remind me to be cautious. We mixed the lye water outside because of the potential for dangerous splashing and fumes.

Something kind of awesome happens when you mix lye and water: it heats up. I’m sure that people who know things about chemistry know why this happens, but I just thought it was cool.

Next we headed inside and I measured out the oils. I used 6 oz coconut oil, 10 oz olive oil, and .5 oz castor oil. I’m told that the castor oil helps the soap be more lathery, but I included it because it was in the recipe.

It was at this point that I realized that I had mixed the ingredients kind of backwards. I wanted the lye water in one vessel and the oils in another. The two would then combine into the bigger of the two measuring cups for the rest of the process. However, for safety’s sake I was supposed to have mixed the lye water in the small cup and the oils in the big cup so that I was adding the water to the oil and not the other way around. Oops. I carefully poured the oil into the water with no disastrous consequences.

The next step was to agitate the mixture so it will trace. My original reference recommended using a stick blender so it will thicken in a matter of minutes (as opposed to a whisk which could take an hour). Our stick blender is kind of broken and I didn’t want it to fall apart into the lye mixture, so I decided to use a hand mixer. Well, after 20 minutes of using the hand mixer we had a hunch that something was wrong. It just wasn’t thickening. That was when my husband found this video: How to get ‘trace’ in soapmaking. It clearly shows trace happening in a matter of minutes with the stick blender. We got ours out and tried it and it worked like a dream. In just a couple of minutes the mixture was nice and thick and pourable.

I poured it into the prepared mold — in this case a bread pan lined with both plastic wrap and wax paper. It needs to cure in the mold for 2 days. Then I’ll take it out, cut it up, and let the bars cure for 3-4 weeks. When everything is done I will report back and show you how it turned out.

Yay soap!

Project 31: Oops

Did you know that it is Friday? I had no idea it would come so soon. Pretend you can see me looking sheepish right now. The bad news is that I have not yet made soap. The good news is that I have all of my ingredients.

My new plan is to make soap on Saturday. I’ll post the whole process as soon as it is done. You can follow along with me by reading this instructional post at orthogonalthought.com. See you then!

 

Project 31: Soap

This week I’m going to make soap. I’ve never made soap before, but aside from the scariness of working with lye the process looks kind of easy. Have you made soap before? Do you have any tips?

Photo by mwri on Flickr