A Thing-A-Week Part 36: Soap!

I made soap! I have always really wanted to make soap...ever since I joined the SCA really. All the reading I did said "Oh my god! Soap is so dangerous. We don't even know why we make it!" And not having any chemistry background I sort of gave up hope.

Recently someone in the local group has been experimenting with soap and was gracious enough to allow me to play too! So we made a hot process soap using vegetable ingredients. The bonus of the hot process method is the lye is no longer caustic by the end of the night so it could be used the next day. It is also a more period method (though these ingredients were not). It is kinda ugly as it is hard to mold with the consistency it is at. Cold process soap requires about 6 weeks before it is non-caustic but it takes a mold much better.

This is what I got from the process. I am certainly not the expert and there are far better resources online. Essentially, it was Crisco, canola oil, water and lye. The fasts are softened so that they can interact with the lye. The lye is added to water and then allowed to cool while the fats are warmed until they reach a temperature within about 10 degrees of each other and then they are added together and mixed until they reach trace - a sort of thick pudding like stage. With cold process it is then poured into molds and left to sit for a while. With hot process, it is heated some more and goes through a couple of stages of something I am not quite sure how to describe.

When the lye is all reacted out, it is mixed with scents and then poured in molds and allowed to set. The two lighter colored bars were frozen to get them out of the mold. They were also in smaller molds so they are set up a little more.

I am going to try them tomorrow. I am not sure I added enough scent so hopefully I don't smell like crisco tomorrow.