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Obsessed with body wash. Not loving my office job so I’m selling all natural soap instead. I’ve also trained combat sports for years. That said, I do draw the line at using liposuction fat for soap making.

Why not? Surely a little bit of lye is fine if you dilute it enough.

Tea Tree and Eucalyptus for natural anti-microbial, anti-fungal properties. Peppermint is my runner up.

Not at all, you can make it on the spot if you want to. It’s 50/50 because that is about as strong as you’ll usually go, and then you can just add extra water if a recipe calls for it. That said, in making 40 different single bars of soap, I only made my lye water twice*. The other benefit is...

Hi @Mishshellee, Scientific Soapmaking by Dunn outlines a method to make single soap bar batches and ways to scale up in bulk. I personally used his process to make 40 different single bar batches last week with good success! The main difference at that small scale is he mixes soap by shaking...

I use polypropylene plastic bottles since they are more heat resistant than LDPE/HDPE/squishy plastics. I use 125, 500, and 1000mL “reagent” bottles from United Scientific. I also have a 5L polypropylene “carboy” (bottle with a spigot) for dispensing into the smaller bottles. The upside of...

@Feelin' Soapy beautiful soap! Yesterday and the day before I licked 40 bars of soap. Gross, but I learned the zap test. I also prepared an acid and base standard (known concentrations). It turned out my “90%” pure KOH was actually 94%!

@AliOop Haha, thank you. I did use the finger approach for the sketchy soaps. Tongue on bar only when I didn't feel any sensation after that. That is helpful to know about acid increasing the exothermic reaction. I didn't know that. My experience lines up with that - using apple cider vinegar...

To neutralize the base. Same reason as you'd use lemon juice, it's a low pH. I tried this apple cider vinegar, and ended up realizing mid-experiment that coffee is acidic too, so I switched to that. Edit: See @AliOop's post below. Neutralizing is an exothermic reaction and can intensify the...

Ok, so I looked into this a bit more and there is an alternative! I would have to do an acid base titration. Dunn talks about it in Chapter 15 of Scientific Soapmaking. Compared to testing with my tongue, a titration is also a lot longer to complete and more complex. I think I am just going to...

@AliensrReal Soap with a pH of 9-11 I would assume is fine but a pH of 12-14 probably not. So it is somewhat helpful. That said, it sounds like even a relatively low (for soap) pH of 9 could have excess lye? I'm not sure. @artemis those are instructions for putting soap on your tongue / in...

How do you know how much salt to add? Hoping you share results 🤞

Hi, I don't want to lick soap, but I want to know if there's excess unreacted lye in my soap. Is there any way to test this? Is pH alone a good enough indicator? From what I've read, it sounds like the answer is no.

Fits 8x100mL soap bars or 12.5-13" x 8.5" ish.

Update on the Roaster Oven setup: it's been working great for my soaps I made here - Single Oil Soap Test - 23 Bars, 19 Oils . The dial on the front is not accurate (runs about 20F hot), but it is MILES better than a crockpot. The crockpot outputs a constant amount of heat and does not shut off...

Thanks for the praise @Nona'sFarm! My goal here is to understand the properties of each oil to have a baseline for blends and get a "feel" for each oil. My ultimate goal is to sell some awesome natural bar soap and body wash online, at farmer's markets, and to local stores. Last year and a...

When you say surfactant, do you mean the low-pH kind used in the cosmetics industry for lotions etc. that stay on your skin for a while, or is that a more general term that would include high-pH soaps as well? I noticed Humblebee uses a lot of acidic surfactants. Some exotic sounding stuff like...

I made a bunch of different single bar soap batches this weekend and thought I would share my observations. I'll share the oils I used, the recipe, and my thoughts/notes/screwups for all to see. For all recipes Saponifcation values I used Scientific Soapmaking (Dunn) and soapcalc.net where he...

Newbie question, but what's the difference here? I see so many resources out there on making liquid soap (typically hand/dish wash), but not body wash. I'm not sure what the differences are in simple terms when it comes to the recipe and process, however. I bought Making Natural Liquid Soaps...

Haven’t used Guar before but also interested. Lotioncrafter sells “Guar Cat” and they have a formulation guide and technical data sheet there. Looks like 0.2-0.4% Please share your Laundry Detergent recipe and how much fragrance/salt you’re adding. I am curious to learn more