American Valkyrie
Well-Known Member
missybee said:
I have Soapmakers Workshop and it was a great addition to my "education." Great for beginners, it talks about the origins of soap, the chemical process, and how to do CP, MP, rebatch, and a little bit of HP. He even adds a section on making bison soap, mostly because somebody had asked him and he noticed that you couldn't find that information anywhere else. In the back are about 20 or so recipes, a tutorial on aromatherapy, and a glossary. He didn't go into anything complex such as salt soaps or design ideas. He also uses a lot of canola oil in some of his recipes. I made one of his recipes, then read on here that canola is more prone to DOS, so I stopped using it and started just making my own recipes.
I think it's good to give this book at least one good read-through. It will tell you why you can't use a citrus oil without adding other scents to anchor it down, and why you might want to do an oven finish for small CP molds. To go further into the soaping craft, he'd have to write a much bigger book and might lose an audience by intimidating them. I think what he has is great for someone to start out with.
One that you haven't listed is called Natural Soapmaking by Marie Browning. This was the first book I read, and I'm glad I borrowed it from a friend because I was disappointed. She tells you how to make a plain bar, then grate it down (rebatch) to make little custom bars. I really don't want to go through that much work. She also advocates buying a bar of Dove to rebatch... to me, that isn't "natural." If that works for the soaper, great. But I'd rather have control from beginning to end, and not have to rebatch.
