Q&A for How to Make Bar Soap

Consider using charcoal, which not only provides color but also offers excellent exfoliating properties. Alternatively, you can opt for mica powder, a safe and natural black pigment. Adding mica powder to your soap recipe will effectively darken its color while maintaining its safety and natural appeal.

To package a handmade soap, consider these two options: first, place the soap in a charming mesh satchel bag. These bags not only add an elegant touch but also preserve the soap's texture without interfering with its natural oils. Try to avoid plastic packaging, as it can manipulate the soap's texture and remove essential oils. Alternatively, wrap the soap in a natural cardboard box for a rustic and eco-friendly presentation. This way, your gift not only looks lovely but also maintains the quality of the handmade soap inside.

You can make you own lye using the helpful tips in this wikiHow article or you can buy it at a hardware store.

Go to a wholesale store like brambleberry.com to get your materials, it's a whole lot cheaper.

The term "lye" can be used to refer to caustic soda or caustic potash, or even the mixed solution of caustic soda and water to be ready for soap making. To avoid confusion and possible mistakes, ensure you correctly identify which definition of lye you are reading - especially important when calculating SAP values.

Adding corn flour may give your soap other properties, but likely it will not affect soap hardness - try using sodium lactate or salt.

Sodium lactate and salt are additives to create harder bars of soap, Poppy seeds, oat meal, and pumice are just a few additives to be used as exfoliates, Rosemary oleoresin extract is a popular natural antioxidant used to extend the shelf life of soap and prevent the oils from going rancid. One additive which is widely frowned upon in natural and home soap making is "sodium laureth sulfate" otherwise known as SLS. It is used in 99% of commercial soaps and shampoos for its low cost and ability to create a large amount of lather/bubbles, However it is the main cause for skin irritation for people with sensitive skin.

Yes, you certainly can, so as long as you stick to the right SAP Values - not to be confused with palm oil, palm kernel oil has a different SAP value (requiring different amounts of lye to turn it into soap).

Your soap batch may have "seized". This happens when a certain ingredient added (such as some fragrance/essential oils) causes the soap mixture to rapidly thicken and become lumpy or even rice-like. As long as you have adequately stirred/stick mixed the soap before it seized, the soap should be OK; however, caution must be still used. Premature seizing of soap not stirred enough can result in caustic areas of the soap - soap will feel too harsh to use.

Set up a stand at a community event and offer your soaps for cash. Post your soaps for sale on social media such as Facebook. Give samples to people you know and ask them to spread the word if they like using the soaps.

Yes, the soap is safe for use and sale. You may not need to register with your local government first, but check to make sure. Find a way to package and market your soap, or try selling it to friends and family.

You will probably need to register your business with your local government and apply for a business license unless you plan on working alone. After that, it's a matter of marketing and selling your soap. Build a nice supply of soaps packaged in plastic wrap with a company logo.

Yes, you can. It is perfectly fine to store it away and to use it later. And it shouldn't go bad, either.

If you don't like the soap you made, note what you can do differently for next time. You may wish to find a different recipe to try. Using different oils makes a big difference. Olive oil, for instance, makes smooth soaps without much lather. Also, try mixing in oatmeal or another thickener to make the soap a little coarser.

Soap is basically lye and oil. The only dangerous chemical you need is lye, and if you follow the proper safety procedures, handling it isn't much of an issue. You can use basic cooking oils for soap and other chemicals like essential oils for scent and texture.

The white crystals are called soda ash and are harmless. To avoid soda ash, make sure your oil is hot enough when you combine it with the lye. After you mix them to a medium trace, try spraying a little isopropyl alcohol or beeswax. Do it again after another 10 minutes. Using less water or less superfatting can also help.

Add plenty of fat to the soap. Try increasing the superfatting option on a soap recipe calculator. The leftover fat makes soap feel very light and soft. Don't add thickeners like oatmeal.

Yes. Many people make their soap out of cooking oil. Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and vegetable oil are a few good choices for making a simple, inexpensive soap.

Not really recommended, as even if you filtered all the food particles out of the used cooking oil, impurities and oxidation of the oil from the cooking process would still remain, and your soap would likely end up going rancid after a few months. It can be done, but the soap would need to be used somewhat fast and monitored strictly for rancidity, and ideally only for personal use.

If you wish to make smooth soap, it is recommended you use the cold processing method, not the hot process detailed in Method 2. The only real difference is that you will heat your oils to around 120 - 130 F and then take them off the heat, add your already-mixed lye and water to the oils and stick blend to trace, add essential oils and color, then blend to a thick trace and pour in molds. After about 24 hours the soap should be set, ready to de-mold and cut, being perfectly smooth (but very soft) on the inside. It will need to be cured (just kept on rack or shelf to dry out and harden) for a minimum of 4 weeks before use, though.

A bar of soap is generally made from combining water, a fat or oil such as coconut oil or lard, and lye. The combination of oil and lye causes a chemical reaction that breaks down the fats and neutralizes the lye so it's not toxic or dangerous. Then, different fragrances and other ingredients are added to the mixture before it's shaped into bars to solidify into soap.

Soap is often made from combining fats with an alkali, usually lye. The fat can be plant-based such as olive oil or coconut oil, or it can be made from animal fat such as lard or beef tallow. When the fat is combined with an alkali, it breaks down and neutralizes the alkali to form soap.

You can make soap without lye by melting down cubes of glycerine and adding other ingredients to form a lye-free batter. Add tea or fresh-brewed coffee to the melted glycerine to change its color. Sprinkle in some colored sea salt to alter the color as well. Then, add some essential oils for fragrance. You can even add olive or coconut oil to the batter to make it softer and silkier.

You can if you wish for a more "bubbly/sudsy" soap, but it isn't really recommended - Texapon is essentially SLS - a synthetic surfactant used in commercial soaps, known to cause mild skin irritation for people with sensitive skin. It is much more recommended to experiment with different natural soap recipes if a sudsy soap is what you're after.

Use essential oils or fragrance oils - essential oils are naturally produced from a plant (e.g. lavender), fragrance oils are produced synthetically in a lab. Both are great but avoid cheap dollar store non-branded oils as the quality and purity of these usually cannot be verified. Reputable soap making suppliers will usually sell you great quality essential oils/fragrance oils for the cheapest price - these are highly reccomended.

Infinitely lower when you produce it yourself - you create virtually no waste product other than the miniscule amount you do when washing your silicone molds in the sink - essentially you are washing soap down the sink - an everyday activity done by millions of people around the world. When you wash out the trace remains of your lye water container down the sink, this is basically like pouring an extremely diluted drain cleaner down the sink - another common practice. In short, you create virtually no waste product when you produce your own bar soap.

You can input your oils and fats into an online lye calculator.

You should be able to get the ingredients at pretty much any grocery store or supermarket - even the lye. Lye usually can't be bought online/shipped or delivered as it's classed as a "corrosive" / "dangerous good".

SAP Values are basically numerical measurements soap makers use to determine how much lye they need to use, to convert the oils/fats into soap. Try inputting some oils into an online lye calculator - this may help in the learning process.

That depends on what you mean by "commercial purposes" - if you want to create a small business for soap-making there are a lot of steps, regulations, and other things things to consider. Yes, you could probably use the same methods in use here, however there are other ways (and better recipes especially) that would much better suit soap making for selling/commercial purposes.