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Hello everyone, By chance, I found an ancient article about a laundry soap to use in hard water. What was really surprising is that that soap was made with corn meal instead of oils or fats! I've tried searching more information but I couldn't find any. I wonder how could corn meal react with...

For anyone who may be interested. Loofah belongs to the botanical family of Cucurbitaceae, which means that it's similar to pumpkins and courgettes. In my opinion what is very important in growing pumpinks, courgettes and also loofah, is to plant them in a soil very rich in nutrients. The best...

Thank you very much, I'll read it with more attention as soon as I could obtain some rosin and then I will give it a try.

Interesting! I had never heard of loofah disc in bar soap! But doesn't it creates problems because of keeping the bar constantly wet? I imagine that loofah would absorb water when you use it and this usually isn't good for bar soaps

I'm not an experienced soap maker and I've never used honey, but I don't think that Wild African Honey's characteristics are so different from a regular honey. At least not in soap making terms. So I don't think it should react different but I wonder if it is worth using it for soap (I assume it...

Just bumping up to see if I get some more answers.

Thanks but, just for clarification, when I say rosin I mean colophony, not pine tar. They both derives from the same plant but tar comes from the wood while rosin is the heaviest part of resin, the lightest of which is turpentine. I've read that both can be use in soap with quite similar...

Hello, after having made some "simple" bars, I'm thinking about trying with a more complex recipe. Because of my passion for forest and plants, I'm very attracted by Rosin soap and I'd like to give it a try. For now, I'm just thinking and reading about it, so I searched for older threads in this...

I used HP and I didn't notice anything wrong. What could the problem be?

Thanks everyone, I've just made a small batch following your instructions. I used normal sugar,at 5% of the fat weight. I diluted it in the water and when it was completely dissolved I added the lye. Now I've just to wait after the curing time to see the result!

Hi, I'm thinking about trying a new bar soap and adding sugar to it to improve the lather. So, my first question is: is it worth it? Does it really better tha amount of foam produced or is it simply a legend? What are your experiences? And obviously the second question is: any tips for trying...

I've read of Kevin Dunn's method, in Scientific Soapmaking, where he states that even a 5% SF can be too much. He recommends a 1-2%, which indeed become higher if you consider the purity of your NaOH. Moreover, he uses the minimum SAP value of every fat, not the mean value as we usually do. So I...

Thanks, my lard comes from the store so I think it is fine. I'll wait a couple more weeks then and see what happens.

Okay, so I have to check when soap batters is in full gel, and when it is in that condition I put it in the mould? I think that mine took more or less the same time to bacome jelly and translucent (40 minutes), so I probably cooked it too long. Does this ruin the finished soap? Thank you. PS: I...

I use a lye with a 28 % of NaOH. For olive oil, I don't know what to you mean. In Italy we have Extra Virgin oil and Virgin oil which are th best, used for cooking or added to food. And then there's an oil of a lower quality which is simply called "olive oil". Mine is that last one. Reading...

Thank you, I did it. There are many useful information on this forum, although a complete description of ash lye soap making seems really impossible to find...

Hi, last month I tried making to soap bar with the hot process. I made them with fats that I had in my house, which were olive oil (70 %) and lard (30 %) and no fragranves or essential oils. I don't expect my soap to produce much lather or to smell very fine, but at the moment here is difficult...

"not everyone is going to have access to the same kind of hardwood, not everyone is going to be able to use the same method of turning the hardwood to ash, not everyone is going to be using the same type of water." Oh no, no, you misunderstood me! Or maybe I used a wrong term when I said...

An other question. When I made HP in the oven I obtain a softer soap that was difficult to extract from the mold, and on the free surface I observed a white powder that I think is soda ash. Is it normal?

I made some attempts with HP too, both in the oven and with bain-marie cooking (I hope the translation is correct, I'm Italian...) In the oven, I kept 70-80°C while in bain-marie I think the temperature is around 90°C. But how you underatand when the soap is "ready"? I let it cook for a fixed...