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Look in the personal hygiene section of any supermarket or department store and your eyes will behold a plethora of bath soaps.  Many of these soaps are manufactured by conglomerates with an international presence and are priced anywhere from mere cents to upwards of a hundred dollars.  They are advertised on television, radio, in printed publications, and on the Internet.  They are endorsed by Hollywood stars and supermodels.  Underneath the glitz and glamour of marketing, however, commercial soaps are mostly generic, using chemicals and artificial ingredients.  For something different and personal, handmade soap is a good thing to consider.

Basic Handmade Soap Facts
Soap making is a handicraft with its own set of enthusiasts.  The process involves the mixing of ingredients such as lye or sodium hydroxide, fats and oils (derived from animals or vegetables), and water.  A process called saponification ensues when the lye and oils combine, neutralizing the harsh effects of lye to produce a substance called glycerin in the soap.

The fun part comes in the selection and addition of ingredients for the soap’s color and scent.  Commercially manufactured soaps usually have artificial coloring and fragrance, but with handmade soap, you can add natural ingredients such as flowers, fruits, and other plant extracts.  Not only do these components feel and smell good, many of them actually have aromatherapy benefits.

Handmade Soap in Aromatherapy
Essential oils from plants, and other plant and animal products, should be added to handmade soaps if one wants to experience their health benefits on an intimate basis.  For instance, milk can be added to enhance the skin’s luster; cinnamon makes for a spicy aroma; ginger oil tones the skin because of its astringent properties; natural olive oil pampers sensitive skin; oatmeal relieves skin itchiness and helps fight acne.  There are so many more natural oils and fragrances that can be added, and a person can adjust the strength of these ingredients to suit his or her personal taste.

Getting More Personal with Handmade Soap
Handmade soap can be personalized not just with regard to its contents, but according to shape, size, and color, too! Different molds are available to create personal styles, shapes and designs. A person can fashion molds of the shapes he or she wants, or they can be bought in soap-making or handicraft stores. Imagine the enjoyment children will have with mild, handmade soap fashioned in fun shapes, like their favorite cartoon characters or nature-themed designs.

Handmade soap is also an ideal giveaway at events like weddings, bridal showers, and baby showers.  They can also be used as corporate giveaways.  If making soap by one’s self is not possible, there are companies and other businesses that will make them according to the customer’s specifications.  This is ideal for large jobs.  But if you just want to try something different, or give a unique gift to someone special, handmade soap may just be the thing.  It shows a personal touch that will surely make someone feel appreciated – something that even the most expensive commercial soap cannot do.

Making soap is a fun hobby for many and a number of people have even turned this hobby into a home-based business. People who have been involved in this type of handicraft for a long period of time probably have their techniques and methods down to pat, and can probably make their soaps with their eyes closed. But for beginners, or those just about to test the waters, soap making recipes are not only recommended, they are necessary.

Soap Making Recipes: Help on the Internet
Entering the relevant words or phrases into Internet search engines will bring up thousands upon thousands of web sites that offer soap making recipes. Many of these sites offer not only recipes, but other facts and tips about the art of making soap. And any person is sure to find a number of sites that is suited to his or her level of expertise: novice, intermediate, or expert.

Web sites like Mortarandpestle.net and Woodsoapmolds.com offer soap making recipes using the cold process technique. This method is so called because a step in it calls for the cooking of the ingredients (lye, fats, water) and their removal from heat when they reach the right temperature. Hot process soap making, in comparison, entails longer cooking of the raw soap even after a high temperature is reached. Another difference between the two methods is that cold-processed soaps need to stand and set for several weeks while those made using the hot process method can be packed and used a lot sooner. In addition, hot process soaps do not crumble easily and are much easier to cut and shape.

Internet forums or discussion groups also offer a wealth of soap making recipes and information. This is especially helpful since members of these groups have already tried their recipes, and if you encounter problems in your efforts, you can always consult with them to find out and resolve what you’re doing wrong. Conversely, you can also share your own recipes with these people and contribute to the exchange of information -- one of the characteristics of the Internet.

Soap Making Recipes: Offline Resources
Aside from the Internet, there are other types of media that give soap making recipes, tips, and recommendations. The handicrafts section in bookstores is sure to offer books on the topic. Magazines and other publications dedicated to soap making also provide a wealth of information on the topic.

And of course, don’t forget or underestimate the help that can be given personally by people in the community. At times, workshops or demonstrations are held in handicraft stores or in malls – these are good times to get some soap making recipes firsthand. It’s an activity that is not only enjoyable, but useful, too. Following soap making recipes given by someone else or developing one’s own through trial and error can lead to physical and emotional rewards.
 

Although many soap making companies now are leaning toward organic, vegetable based products, you can still find some of the older Appalachian recipes and techniques that originated in the Appalachian Mountains. These recipes are based on melted down animal fats, like bacon fat and grease, mixed with lye.

Appalachian soap was used in the elimination of head and body lice, bed bugs, and mites. It was naturally also used as a general household and floor cleaning.

Appalachian Soap Making Today
There are several science kits on the market for children and adults that teach them how to make soap using the Appalachian soap making technique. These kits normally include lard as the fat base. Here is an example of one such science kit.

There are, naturally, many soap makers in the Appalachian Mountains now who are converting to natural soaps, made from vegetable fats as well and who use modern methods of processing them.

Appalachian Soap Making - Audio Recordings
There is actually an audio collection available, where you can listen to Appalachian's talking abut how they made soap out of lye. You can find that information here in the Charles Gunter Junior Collection at the East Tennessee State University.

Appalachian Soap Making Recipe
This tradition of soap making has been around since the early colonization of America. You can find original Appalachian soap recipes online but the instructions can be unclear at best and at worst confusing.

Although you can follow these recipes step by step, it might be easier to purchase an Appalachian Soap Making kit. These yield more consistent results and many include the necessary safety equipment.

Appalachian Soap Making and Education
Appalachian soap making can be a fun and wonderful bonding experience for you and your children, as long as you follow safety precautions. Many schools are using these kits in their science demonstrations and science fairs with good results.

Anyone who has seen Fight Club knows that Tyler Durden said that soap was the yardstick of civilization. Now whether that was an actual quote from someone of historical importance or not, it is difficult to deny the influence soap has had on human civilization.

When studying the history of soap, many theories emerge.  Some claim that soap was first used in prehistoric times while others claim that the Gauls created it.  There is even the possibility that soap may not have been used as a means to clean at first.  In fact, it may instead have been used as an antiseptic to heal wounds.

This article will cover some of the history of soap making and a few interesting facts.

The History of Soap Making by the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews
Before soap became popularly used, the ancient Greeks were said to have used a combination of lye and ashes as a cleanser for pots and to clean the statues of their gods.

Goat's Milk Soap Recipes seemed to be the soap of choice by the Gauls and the Romans.  They combined goat's tallow and the ashes of the beech tree to create both hard and soft soap products.

Today, soap is made from of fats and an alkali. In the past however, people made their own soap from animal fats and wood ashes. Regardless of who first created the concoction, it was undoubtedly used in Rome. This is an established fact because a soapmaker's shop was discovered within the rubble of Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The Romans often used soap as a cosmetic. It was quite popular with the ladies, for they used it to dye their hair red. Plant extracts were probably used to acquire this color.

In order to make natural soap, fat was and still is combined with an alkali. The Hebrews used a salt base when creating their cleanser. This salt, used in a similar manner by many ancient cultures, could be found quite easily in their local lakes. They used the salt to create the alkali called for in the recipes.

The History of Soap Making and Innovation
The first soap manufacturing plant was Marseilles. Its soil was perfect for the cultivation of olive trees and the factory produced vegetable sodas. However, in time the industry grew so large that it was necessary to import oil and vegetable sodas from Spain and Italy. By the eighth century, it is documented that there were soap factories in Italy and Spain. It was not until the twelfth or thirteenth century that this industry was embraced by France. France then passed on the tradition to England. The French made their soaps almost exclusively from olive oil, while the English delved into many different kinds of soap. Eventually the French added palm and cocoa oils and expanded their product base.

Nicholas Le Blanc revolutionized the soap industry by developing an inexpensive method of extracting soda from salt. Called the Le Blanc process he created the means of turning salt into soda ash using sulfuric acid, limestone and coal. This method was then introduced in England by James Muspratt. In 1811 Eugene-Michel Chevreul identified the exact quantities of fat necessary to manufacture soap rather than using approximations. This change took the manufacture of soap from a cottage industry to an art form. As technology advanced, so did the number and types of soap and today we have literally hundreds to choose from, thankfully.

Today many products marked as soap are actually detergent products. They produce a higher degree of lather and therefore are more appealing to the public. "True" soaps are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, not the FDA, and do not require ingredient labeling because of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. This law exempted soap from regulation as a cosmetic so the regulations are far less stringent. As long as the soap manufacturer only refers to cleaning the body in their ads and on the product it is exempt from the restrictions that cosmetics face. On the other hand if it says that it is a deodorant soap, then it must list the ingredients, just like any other cosmetic product.

African black soap has grown in popularity. Traditionally an artifact created using natural ingredients and processes, the soap is fast becoming commercialized. In fact, synthetic versions manufactured by large cosmetic companies have found their way into store shelves allotted for beauty products.

African Black Soap Origins
African Black soap hails from West Africa and is much sought after on account of local lore surrounding its efficacious effects on the skin. It is known by many names, including Ose Dudu, as it is called by the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria, a term which literally means “black soap.” Black soap is said to have been used throughout the African Diaspora.

Ingredients and Properties of African Black Soap
The color of this type of soap ranges from light brown to deep black, depending on indigenous ingredients and method of production. Palm oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter and shea butter are commonly used as base oil, while the lye component, usually in the form of potash (potassium hydroxide), is derived from the ashes of plantain skins, cocoa pods, shea tree bark and the by-products of shea production.

African Black soap is a great moisturizer. It is mild and good for sensitive skin. It is well known for its healing or dermatological properties. Partly because of the plantain skins used in its production, the soap is rich in vitamins A and E, and is considered a treatment for eczema and acne. It is even said to provide relief to children suffering from ring worms and measles. African Black soap is also a natural shampoo for the hair, and has been prescribed for dry, itchy scalp. This beneficial effect on the scalp is attributed to the lubricating property of palm kernel oil.

Because it is soft and dissolves in water easily, the soap should be left to dry when not in use, preferably deposited in a slotted soap dish where it can drip dry. One manufacturer sells African Black soap in large blocks so that the individual can cut smaller bars from it when soap is needed. The smaller chunks can also be melted to allow the addition of preferred fragrances and herbs, in a modification process called Melt and Pour.

How African Black Soap Is Made
The traditional procedure for making African Black soap requires some muscular power. The base oil is extracted from palm by hard pressing. In the meantime, lye in potash (potassium hydroxide) or ash is made by burning cocoa pods and plantain skins. The resulting ash solution and the palm oil are mixed and cooked in water. Semi-liquid hot soap is then scooped off from the pot and placed on a table to cool and harden.

Today there is some concern over the inclusion of synthetic ingredients of dubious safety in the mass production of what some large cosmetic companies call African Black soap. These include the harsh degreaser and foaming agent sodium lauryl sulphate, and the chemical preservative Parabens, both of which are also found in most liquid soaps.

Space and logistics are two things you will surely need when you go into bulk soap making at home. But before anything else, let’s take a detailed look the process itself of soap making.

There is an entire gamut of variations in this craft. They range from the ‘melt and pour’ shortcut to more self-reliant and traditional methods that include making your own lye.
Choice of which approaches to adopt will of course depend upon inclination and intentions of the maker, as well as availability of ingredients and equipment.

Soap is basically fatty acid salt, the outcome of mixing fat or oil with a caustic, alkaline base, using water as a catalyst. Lye, which is derived from wooden ash or soda, frequently serves as the base. So, the three basic ingredients needed when making soap are: 1) Lye or some other alkali, 2) animal fat or plant oil, and 3) water.

Bulk Soap Making Materials
Soap-making may be simply summed up as the boiling of a mixture of fat and lye. If lye is not ready-made, it is produced by the soap maker from wood ash. This caustic chemical compound, also knows as sodium hydroxide, is very strong stuff that should be handled with caution. It should be kept away from the reach of children at all times.

Basic equipment necessary for soap making would include vessels for holding and boiling liquid, an implement for stirring or mixing, some mold or receptacle for setting the freshly made soap, and cloths for filtering out impurities from the mix and for cleaning up. Our rough list of apparatus should look something like this:

Mixing bowl, bucket, jar or pot
Cast iron or stainless steel boiling pot
Wooden spoons or sticks for stirring
Molding trays
Clean cloths or rags

You’ll be needing larger-sized and more heavy-duty ware for bulk soap making, and perhaps more than one of each kind. You can’t settle for just a couple of molding trays if you intend to make three hundred bars a day.

Don’t use tin and aluminum utensils as they easily corrode when they get into contact with lye. Enameled or granite ware will do for small quantity production, but for larger batches, an iron or stainless steel pot boiler should be used. Other items related to safety and the taking of measurements may also be needed in bulk soap making, such as eye protection gear, mitts or pot holders, clocks or timers, and measuring cups or spoons.

Rain or spring water is good for bulk soap making, but distilled or de-mineralized water will do as well. For purifying your tap water at home, the reverse osmosis type of filtration is recommended.

Tallow and lard, in that order, are best for soap making, but if you are a vegetarian, or are after some of the qualities of plant oil, you may want to use olive oil or coconut oil, both of which are “bubbly” in their own ways. Temperature of the fat or oil to be mixed should be a little over its melting point, which is 130˚ F for beef tallow, and 85˚ for pork lard and vegetable oil.

Successful Mixing in Bulk Soap Making
The trick for successful mixing is in the lye water-to-fat ratio. The rule of thumb is: 0.38 parts of lye water to one of fat, measured by weight. That would be equivalent to 16 ounces of fat for every 6 ounces of lye water. The maker may deviate from this ratio, depending on use intended for the soap. In general, more lye makes harder soap bars.

There is a proper sequence to adding ingredients in soap making. Generally speaking, the mix of fats or oil should be completed before adding lye water. Enhancement elements such as coloring, scents, superfatting oil, vitamin E, and abrasives should be mixed in right after “tracing,” or the consistency at which liquid soap is ready to pour into molds. At this point saponification (the process of becoming soap) is about 90% complete.

Hardening of the soap after pouring onto setting trays takes anywhere from a few hours to three days. Total time for curing is around two to four weeks.

Bulk Soap Making: Work and Storage Spaces
As mentioned earlier, you’ll be needing space to accommodate your growing bulk soap making enterprise. What started as a hobby you played around with inside the kitchen has to move out now to the yard or some outdoor area of your house. Keep in mind that large amounts of animal fat can make a mess of your surroundings.

And while your end product may be dainty and fragrant, its beginnings are not. Rancid fat, lye spills, and smoking pots are but some of the things you may have to put up with in bulk soap making. You’ll have your hands full maintaining cleanliness. Any semblance of orderliness will also be of great help to your inventory keeping.

Where to let your soaps harden and where to store them when they are finally wrapped are things you also have to consider. The storage space should be dry and not prone to moist conditions, as homemade soaps tend to attract moisture. You also ought to have ample room for storing your supplies. Lye should be stocked securely, away from the reach of children.

There are just two ways to make soap for the Christmas season. One is to make the bar itself suggestive of the yuletide, and the other is to encase any handmade soap you have produced in holiday-themed packaging.

Holiday soap making need not be complicated. Your options are made less bewildering by the limits to which soap mixes lend themselves to shape and color manipulation, and by the cultural bounds for decorative elements associated with the season. In other words, you just have so many traditional Christmas symbols to choose from.

Snow, snowmen, pine trees, stars, angels, gifts, wreaths and boughs, Santa, glittery hues of green, red and gold—these and others form the relatively fixed array of advent representation.

Holiday Soap Making: Christmas-shaped Soaps
What are some of the Christmas shapes into which we can mold soap bars? Pine trees, bells, stars, angels, snowmen and stockings are ones that come into the mind easily. You can buy plastic, stainless steel, wooden molds and stamps from a crafts store, but why not try making your own casting forms this time?

Use gypsum plaster (not plaster of paris) as your molding medium, latex molding rubber as the barrier, and an object, say a Christmas tree figure, as your model. This last item has to be made of non-porous material like plastic, glass, ceramic or sealed wood. After making your mold, peel off the rubber from the object. The shapes you can come up with for your holiday soap making are as many as the non-porous models you have!

Holiday Soap Making: Christmas Scents and Colors
Pine and peppermint are the fragrances you will want to add to your soap to make them “smell like Christmas.”

As for colors, green, red, white and gold are your logical choices. If you want to stick to natural coloring, you’ll probably get less vivid hues, but it may not matter to you if you are happy with a toned down effect. If such is the case, you can use turmeric for gold, Moroccan red clay for red, and alfalfa for green.

But if you want to get closer to the vivid, glowing hues of Christmas, use micas combined with liquid colorants. You can use Ruby Mica for your reds, Emerald Mica for your greens, and Polar Ice Mica for your white. One other option for red is thoroughly mixed Ultramarine Red.

Now here’s one cool holiday soap making idea that plays with the colors green and red against white. The Melt and Mold technique of crafting soap is used:

Make both red and green translucent bars of soap, then cut into chunks. Arrange the chunks inside your molds whichever way you like. Get your opaque white soap base ready for pouring into the molds. Let this base cool off a bit and then pour over the chunks inside the mold. Allow to cool and harden, and then unmold.

Holiday Soap Making: Packaging Tricks
You may be one of those whose idea of holiday soap making is simply to package soap with the trimmings of Christmas or as gift items. Outlined below are just a few of the ways of doing this:

Pack your soaps in:

Fabric gift bags made of muslin, calico or mesh
Handy-sized pine wood crates
Gift baskets that are bundled up with glittery organza or cellophane paper
Christmas stocking-shaped nets

Corrugated carton sheets tied up with hay-like or ornamental string
For trimmings, use strips of Christmas paper (which look like colored aluminum foil), raffia ribbons, red and green checked cloth, shiny Twistee wires, and Christmas ribbons. These items come in handy as you engage in your holiday soap making activity.

Like water, soap is a daily essential. We depend on it for keeping our things, our surroundings, and our bodies hygienic. We witness its cleansing effect all the time—when we wash the laundry, do the dishes, wash our hands or take a bath. Yet very few of us can explain its action.

This is how soap works.

Perhaps we should begin with what it is. A bar of soap is actually a lump of fatty acid salts made from the interaction of fats and oils with alkali. The oil used may be either vegetable oil, such as palm, coconut and ground nut oil; or non-vegetable oil like lard and tallow.

How Soap Works By Reducing Surface Tension
Soap basically cleans in two ways. One of these is by reducing water’s surface tension, a term that refers to the cohesiveness of the molecules on the surface. Because of soap’s effect of lowering the attractive forces between the like molecules of liquid, water is better able to penetrate soiled areas of the skin and other objects.

How Soap Works Through Surfactants
Soap’s second way of cleaning, which it accomplishes by binding to dirtied oil, is more intensive. The surfactants in the soap are responsible for this action. A surfactant, also known as a surface-active agent, is a molecule with hydrophilic (water-loving) and hydrophobic (water-fearing) ends.

The hydrophilic portion allows the hydrophobic component, or fatty acids of the soap, to come into contact with other hydrophobic matter, mostly oil or fatty substances like grease, into which dirt has settled. Oil is a magnet for dirt, and in fact, most stubborn dirt are found in this form.

Oil/dirt matter attaches to the soap’s fatty acids, and is encapsulated in water droplets, or suspensions, which are then easily scrubbed off and washed away.

How Soap Works As an Emulsifier
Another, less technical way of describing this second cleansing mechanism is by saying that soap acts as an emulsifying agent. Emulsifiers have the ability to disperse a liquid that does not naturally mix with another, in this case, oil into water. Through this property, soap is able to catch oil-dirt matter in suspended form. This suspension can then be removed by washing.

The most active surfactants are found in the common bar soap, making this type of soap very effective in picking up grime from the skin for washing away. However, these surfactants are skin irritants that do not rinse easily. Soap makers solve this problem through superfatting, the addition of chemicals to prevent some of the oils or fats from being processed before production is completed. The result is soap with better moisturizing properties.

Terms That Help Us Understand Better How Soap Works
A few more terms relating to soap ingredients and we’re done with our discussion on how soap works. Familiarization with these terms will help us understand better the cleaning mechanisms behind soap as we go along.

We mentioned earlier that soaps are fatty acid salts. More precisely, they are sodium or potassium fatty acids salts, produced from the hydrolysis of fats in a chemical reaction called saponification. Simply put, hydrolysis is water reacting with another substance, while saponification is the production of soap as a result of oils of fats coming into contact with an alkali or base. In soap making that base is usually lye, a caustic alkaline solution made from wood ashes.

Churning out detergent for clothes washing isn’t always done for the purpose of it being a hobby.  There is a lot more appeal to creating soap for cleansing the human skin: a more aesthetic pursuit where the room for improvising with scents, essential oils, hues and other sensualities seems endless. More often than not homemade laundry soap making is a function of utility and necessity.

Most do-it-yourself instructions for laundry soap making are rebatchings of grated body soap bars, usually fels naphtha, with washing soda and borax mixed in. A watery gel is usually the outcome of this process.

There are materials on making detergent from scratch, but they are harder to come by. Procedures run closely parallel to cold process, the most popular method of making body soap. You can actually use a regular recipe for body soap for making detergent.

Homemade Laundry Soap Making Procedure
Animal fat is cleaned and heated to prepare it for blending with lye water. Bleach and scents may be added when the chemical reaction or saponification process is nearly complete. The mix is then poured into molding trays. Once cured, the soap chunks are ground into flakes if they are to be used in washing machines. They may be rubbed against a cheese grater if a more powdery substance is desired. For grinding, you can use the food processor, blender, or manual meat grinder in your kitchen.

The homemade laundry soap thus produced may not lather very much, but this does has nothing to do with cleansing ability. Sudsiness has long ceased to be an advertising issue among detergent manufacturers.

Motives for Homemade Laundry Soap Making
Even though laundry soap making is often an afterthought of handmade body soap, people who have taken it up as a pursuit may have some really good reasons for doing so. One of these is to save money—as much as 70% of the cost of using detergent purchased from the grocery store.

Others make their own laundry soap because of allergic reactions to commercially available brands or for human environmental safety. Synthetic petroleum oils, the preservative parabens, and the antibacterial triclosan are examples of ingredients considered harmful in detergents manufactured by large companies. On the other hand, the humectant glycerin, a natural byproduct of plant oils that is good for the skin, is often stripped away during production of mass-produced detergents.

There have also been concerns about the adverse effects of phosphates in detergents on our water ecosystems.

Making Homemade Laundry Soap the Natural Way
Before the advent of industrial-scale production, there were no distinctions between detergent and body cleansers. Our ancestors used the same soap on everything: for washing clothes, hands and bodies, utensils, floors, and even babies. Harsh ingredients were unheard of, and the natural soap making process involved ensured that these substances were healthy for human use.

Home-based soap making still closely resembles these age-old methods. That is why most recipes for body soap may be used in homemade laundry soap making as well, as mentioned earlier. The handmade bar of soap we use for washing hands or bathing can be just as good for doing the laundry.