Soap

Equipment

• 2 Old pots - 2$
• Digital Thermometer - 12$
• Digital Scale - 28$
• plastic containers - free - used containers from other stuff , yogurt, wood putty

Consumed

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

Roughly

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

Resources

• http://www.susanparks.com/soapworks/soapworks.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerol
• NaCl - Salt
• NaOH
• KOH
• The Soap Making Forums
  • Lye Calculators
• Grams of lye for Grams of fat X
• Thread about making NaOH http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=5673
• A great Piece on "Sap Values" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saponification_values

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).