Welcome CookbookChef! :wave: I love your enthusiasm and the passion you have for cooking and chocolate-making. (I just read your intro posts). I myself am just as passionate about soap-making.....and bread-making and making many other things from scratch (sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century). 
Well, let's see if we can get you started on the right foot.....
First, like Susie so rightly said, research is key. I think I spent a whole year just reading and studying and taking copious notes, then re-reading and re-studying again and again and again on all the different soap-making forums and educational sites before I felt brave/confident enough to try my hand at making my first batch. I'm not saying that you yourself will need to spend a whole year reading and researching, etc.., for afterall, we all learn in different ways and at different paces depending on our particular learning styles and previous experiences, etc..., but becoming familiar with the basic in's and out's of soap-making and its accompanying lingo is crucial and can't be emphasized enough, especially since you'll be working very intimately with something as potentially dangerous as lye.
One of my favorite educational sites to learn from back when I was still cutting my teeth on the subject is David Fisher's site: http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/s...n-And-Concepts-To-Get-Started-Making-Soap.htm As you read, you'll find lots of links that lead to further info. Go ahead and click on them. They each lead to very useful, more in-depth info that will come in handy. Remember to take lots of notes!
No worries- you're not off the mark at all, but to be more specific, the KOH you bought is known as potassium hydroxide and it is for making all kinds of liquid soap, and the lye that you bought for making hard bars of soap is known as sodium hydroxide (i.e., NaOH).
LOL Don't get down on yourself too badly- I used to feel the same way as you are feeling right now, but isn't that how it is for all of us when learning anything new? We all learn to crawl before we start walking and running, but have no fear- if you become as passionate about soap-making as you are about cooking and chocolate-making, you'll soon get the hang of things in no time. To me, soap-making is not at all very different from the art/science of baking- both utilize acid and alkaline ingredients that one manipulates to achieve a desired result.
Anyway- to answer your question- ZAP is the term used for that tingly sensation one feels on the tip of their tongue when they stick it (the tip of their tongue) to a bar of soap or a dollop of soap paste that is either lye-heavy or not yet quite fully saponified. I don't know if you've ever played the silly childhood game of daring each other to stick the tip of your tongue to the terminal of a 9-volt battery like my siblings and I used to play when we were young, but if you have, then you'll have a fairly good understanding of what ZAP feels like. It's a slightly uncomfortable, tingly sensation that goes away as soon as you remove the soap from your tongue. Testing your soap this way is called the 'tongue test'. It's the preferred method of many soapers like myself to test for lye-heaviness or to gauge whether or not full saponification has been achieved yet in one's liquid soap paste or hot-processed (HP) soap.
I'm not familiar with Life of the Party colorants, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up that not all colorants will work well in lye-based soaps because of the higher pH of the soap (they'll either be a total wash-out, fade, or change color). For future reference, when you buy colorants for use in lye-based soaps, you'll want to be sure they are first of all body-safe (which I'm sure you already know from making your other B&B products), and that they are also stable in lye-based soaps such as CP (cold-process lye soap), HP (hot-process lye soap) or LS (liquid lye-based soap). Also, lots of colorants that are stable in MP (melt & pour soap, i.e, comparable to the melt and dip chocolate that you talked about in one of your other posts) usually do not work in lye-based soap. That's just something you'll want to be mindful of.
Yes- that is the same as castor bean oil. You can also find it at many health-food stores in bigger bottles than the pharmacy usually sells.
Now this is where the beauty and creative fun of making your own soap enters in. You actually don't need to use Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (i.e., SLSA) to make bubbly liquid soap (or hard soap either for that matter). Lots of commercial soap companies use it in ther soap, but they formulate and make their 'soap' quite differently than we home soap-makers do. You will find that the coconut oil that you bought will make your soap quite bubbly without a single iota of 'help' from SLSA. Now, I do happen to have some SLSA on hand to experiment with in my soap just for the pure joy of experimentation, but I haven't used any of it yet. I plan to try it out in a 100% olive oil batch one of these days when I get around to it. Or maybe even a 100% tallow batch.
I'll answer the remaing of your questions in the following post (it seems I've exceeded my word quota again) lol.
IrishLass
Well, let's see if we can get you started on the right foot.....
First, like Susie so rightly said, research is key. I think I spent a whole year just reading and studying and taking copious notes, then re-reading and re-studying again and again and again on all the different soap-making forums and educational sites before I felt brave/confident enough to try my hand at making my first batch. I'm not saying that you yourself will need to spend a whole year reading and researching, etc.., for afterall, we all learn in different ways and at different paces depending on our particular learning styles and previous experiences, etc..., but becoming familiar with the basic in's and out's of soap-making and its accompanying lingo is crucial and can't be emphasized enough, especially since you'll be working very intimately with something as potentially dangerous as lye.
One of my favorite educational sites to learn from back when I was still cutting my teeth on the subject is David Fisher's site: http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/s...n-And-Concepts-To-Get-Started-Making-Soap.htm As you read, you'll find lots of links that lead to further info. Go ahead and click on them. They each lead to very useful, more in-depth info that will come in handy. Remember to take lots of notes!
No worries- you're not off the mark at all, but to be more specific, the KOH you bought is known as potassium hydroxide and it is for making all kinds of liquid soap, and the lye that you bought for making hard bars of soap is known as sodium hydroxide (i.e., NaOH).
LOL Don't get down on yourself too badly- I used to feel the same way as you are feeling right now, but isn't that how it is for all of us when learning anything new? We all learn to crawl before we start walking and running, but have no fear- if you become as passionate about soap-making as you are about cooking and chocolate-making, you'll soon get the hang of things in no time. To me, soap-making is not at all very different from the art/science of baking- both utilize acid and alkaline ingredients that one manipulates to achieve a desired result.
Anyway- to answer your question- ZAP is the term used for that tingly sensation one feels on the tip of their tongue when they stick it (the tip of their tongue) to a bar of soap or a dollop of soap paste that is either lye-heavy or not yet quite fully saponified. I don't know if you've ever played the silly childhood game of daring each other to stick the tip of your tongue to the terminal of a 9-volt battery like my siblings and I used to play when we were young, but if you have, then you'll have a fairly good understanding of what ZAP feels like. It's a slightly uncomfortable, tingly sensation that goes away as soon as you remove the soap from your tongue. Testing your soap this way is called the 'tongue test'. It's the preferred method of many soapers like myself to test for lye-heaviness or to gauge whether or not full saponification has been achieved yet in one's liquid soap paste or hot-processed (HP) soap.
I'm not familiar with Life of the Party colorants, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up that not all colorants will work well in lye-based soaps because of the higher pH of the soap (they'll either be a total wash-out, fade, or change color). For future reference, when you buy colorants for use in lye-based soaps, you'll want to be sure they are first of all body-safe (which I'm sure you already know from making your other B&B products), and that they are also stable in lye-based soaps such as CP (cold-process lye soap), HP (hot-process lye soap) or LS (liquid lye-based soap). Also, lots of colorants that are stable in MP (melt & pour soap, i.e, comparable to the melt and dip chocolate that you talked about in one of your other posts) usually do not work in lye-based soap. That's just something you'll want to be mindful of.
Yes- that is the same as castor bean oil. You can also find it at many health-food stores in bigger bottles than the pharmacy usually sells.
Now this is where the beauty and creative fun of making your own soap enters in. You actually don't need to use Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (i.e., SLSA) to make bubbly liquid soap (or hard soap either for that matter). Lots of commercial soap companies use it in ther soap, but they formulate and make their 'soap' quite differently than we home soap-makers do. You will find that the coconut oil that you bought will make your soap quite bubbly without a single iota of 'help' from SLSA. Now, I do happen to have some SLSA on hand to experiment with in my soap just for the pure joy of experimentation, but I haven't used any of it yet. I plan to try it out in a 100% olive oil batch one of these days when I get around to it. Or maybe even a 100% tallow batch.
I'll answer the remaing of your questions in the following post (it seems I've exceeded my word quota again
) lol.IrishLass
