Soap

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Processes

There are two processes as far as I can tell

  • (naoh+water) + oil -> mold @ 100F - 110F
  • (naoh+water) + oil, stir, then add salt -> hard stuf comes to the top (gycern in the bottom bit with the water). The hard stuff is the bar of soap.

I need to flesh this out a bit more. It looks like you get bars in the first process, but where does the gycerin go?

And to make gycerin soap you need to make soap to make the gycerin so huh?

Equipment

  • 2 Old pots - 2$
  • Digital Thermometer - 12$
  • Digital Scale - 28$
  • plastic containers - free - used containers from other stuff , yogurt, wood putty
  • Goggles , Safety Glasses, Apron
  • hand mixer, eg braun hand mixer . I tried to do this by hand and the mix was unreliable. We'll see how the hand mixer goes.

Consumed

  • olive oil - 3 litre - 11$ - grocery store
  • lye ( sodium hydroxide - NaOH ) - 3kg - 22$ - hardware store

Oils

hard soft butter all types, why do I want one over another?

  • Olive oil - lower enviromental impact, no habitate destruction, sustainable operations. Softer soaps.
  • Coconut oil - less habitate destruction , labour concerns, dager pay , child labour. imparts hardness + lather
  • Palm oil - lots of habitate destruction. imparts hardness and lather.

Tough decicions.

Scents

  • patchouli
  • ginger root
  • vetiver essential oil - no clue what this is , yet.
  • citrus
    • lemon lime orange grapefruit madarine tangerine - extraction? zest? rind? oils?
  • dried fruit?
    • apricot cranberry raisins figs
  • honey
  • oats
  • bacon
  • Herbs
    • lavender, sage, thyme, rosemary, basil , mint ,
  • avacado
  • chillies
  • vanilla
  • trees
    • juniper and fir pine
  • cinnamon
  • anise


Resources

Abrasives

  • salt
  • sugar
  • walnut shells
  • corn meal
  • ground luffa

Unit notes

  • 1 ounce = 28.3495231 grams
  • convert KOH Sap value to NaOH Spa values by dividing by 1.403 ( it's the ratio of the molecular weights , see note below )

my Recipes

Not stuff I created ,but stuff I have done or will do.

Used http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp for calculations

Roughly

fat + base ( NaOh or KOH ) = Fatty Acids + Glycerol i.e. soap

100% olive oil take 1

ingredients:

Ingredient Grams
Water 190
Lye - NaOH 66.381
Olive Oil 500


Total oil weight500
Water as percent of oil weight38 %
Super Fat/Discount2 %
Lye Concentration25.892 %
Water : Lye Ratio2.862:1


Sat : Unsat Ratio17 : 83
Iodine 85
INS 105
Fragrance Ratio0
Fragrance Weight 0 Gm


Ingredient Pounds Ounces Grams
Water0.419 6.702190
Lye - NaOH 0.1462.342 66.381
# √ Oil/Fat % Pounds Ounces Grams
1 Olive Oil 100 1.102 17.637 500
    Totals 100 1.102 17.637 500
Soap Bar Quality Suggested Range Your Recipe
Hardness 29 - 54 17
Cleansing 12 - 22 0
Conditioning 44 - 69 82
Bubbly 14 - 46 0
Creamy 16 - 48 17
Iodine 41 - 70 85
INS 136 - 165 105


Lauric 0
Myristic 0
Palmitic 14
Stearic 3
Ricinoleic 0
Oleic 69
Linoleic 12
Linolenic 1

So I was unable to disolve al lthe lye , so added more water until I could get all the lye dissolved. Now I have a spongy caustic soap. Next step: create troubleshooting section , see below.

Lessons Learned / Gotchas

  • Do NOT use aluminium pots for the work. Lye reacts with aluminium.
  • Braun like hand mixers make mixing less work and more effective. Batches made with the mixer are smoother in consistency, and took shorter time to get to the end of the reaction. ( google "braun hand mixer" )

On Scents

I've made a couple of batches of soap now and I'm getting a feel for the chemical reaction, so I'm spending more time thinking about scents.

In a couple of test batches I've put citrus rind in, both Lemon and Orange. Both of which did not work quite as expected. I put the rinds in after making the soap, before I poured it in a mould. I think this is a problem. Two factors I think destroyed the scents. One , the reaction is still going on. This means that there is unreacted NaOH reacting with the scent, rather than with the oil. Two, the temperature is high and that can destroy the scents. The results is that I get a bit of "grit" in the soap, which is not totally undesirable, but more importantly the scent is not there.

So, what to do? I've a different approach. I make the soap sans parfum, let it set, cut it, let it cure. Then I take it to a cheese grater and mix it with the scent and melt it in a double boiler. This addresses the two issues: Once the soap has cured it should not be reacting any more, and the double boiler keeps the heat to a minimum. The soap takes a while to melt using the double boiler method, but it seems to have worked. I tried this with thyme and I have a bar of soap that smells like thyme.

Interesting to note that the colour of the soap changes with the addition of rind , slightly yellowing.

Left to right:Bare soap,Lemon Rind,Thyme

Here are three recent samples. The Bare soap is completely without scent and very white. The soap with the rind has yellow streaks and has a very mild aroma, not clearly citrus. And the Thyme which turned out well, and smelling as expected.

Next up:

Resources

Handmade soap makers who aim for bar soap use NaOH (sodium hydroxide). Because saponification values are listed in KOH (potassium hydroxide) the value must be converted from potassium to sodium to make bar soap; potassium soaps make a paste, gel or liquid soap. To convert KOH values to NaOH values, divide the KOH values by the ratio of the molecular weights of KOH and NaOH (1.403).

Troubleshooting

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