Thursday, July 28, 2011

Making Soap for Reals

I finally got the opportunity to make soap from scratch today.

I used:

250 grams Coconut Oil
500 grams animal oil (didn't specify what it was, I'm guessing beef or lamb, but it's just a guess)
500 grams rice bran oil (bought a 4 litre tin for $12.99!)
172 grams Caustic Soda (confirmed both by SoapCalc and the MMS calculator).

I used the room temperature process - I spent half an hour preparing the hard oils, although it left a lot to be desired. I had planned to grate them, but that was a pain in the neck, so I tried cutting them up small, and that was a pain in the neck. Next time I'll just pre-melt the damn things.

After that I mixed the lye. Then I got all paranoid that they weren't mixing at room temperature. Then when it turned out there was no suitable pot to use as a double boiler I toughed it out, and it was fine. Paranoid Iddy is paranoid. Then I blended in the rice bran oil, and it reached trace pretty much straight away. I decided that couldn't possibly be right and mixed it for longer, but nothing really changed. Then I added my fragrance, poured it into my mould (Devondale UHT milk carton - 2 litre), wrapped the mould in a towel, and put it away.

An hour and a half later Mr. Iddy observed that he could 'smell soap'. I informed him that he was insane, but looked at my soap anyway - because I'm the highly suggestible type like that, and yay! my soap had hit the gel stage, and my fragrance oil was evaporating! My colouring for M&P soaps didn't work (just like the interwebs warned me). So I expect to have a plain yellow, mostly unscented soap.

But soap, yay!

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