Teach Soap

I'm an old Texas girl who flew South & didn't come back... We live on a tiny peninsula jutting off into the Atlantic. We have a lot of sun & surf & wind, so lots of dry skin (everyone, not just me).

I've recently started making soap for us here at the house after about a 40-year break from it. (Eek!) Everything down here is UniLever or worse & dries me out considerably. When I went to YouTube for a brushup, all the new terminology, etc. freaked me out. I had NO IDEA there were so many ways to make soap.

Wanting to start a new business down here making soap, after my search for "better than storebought" turned up nothing. I've always used either an iron pot outside over the fire or a steel pot inside over the stove. I don't have a crockpot & don't think they even sell them in the Free Shops in the bordertown with Brazil. (Oh, well, we DO get great coffee & for cheap!)

I'm eager to explore the world of CP (especially after 100% coconut, my first attempt, seized before the lye was killed yesterday - what a fight!). When it was at trace, it was luscious & lovely but then went hard FAST - like about 20 seconds, and no way to get it into a sheet cake mold at all... Rebatched this morning & all went fine after I added about a quart more water & 2 oz of olive oil.

I do homemade beauty products & stuff from my tiny kitchen here (we're renting a beach house & hubs is building us a house in the woods). It would be so neat to develop a little business here. I used to have an aromatherapy business 20 years ago, and still have my old recipes & stuff.

I am looking forward to meeting other soapmakers & making friends online, learning from you all. Making soap for me was always just an enjoyable chore. We ran out & made more - from whatever bits of chicken, beef or pork fat we had on hand. I have a lovely young Uruguayan friend who is also motivated & interested in being my partner.

What a relief to find this place. I'm looking forward to getting to know you all.

CabraVieja
"Old Goat"

Welcome!
I've made soap since 1969. We've come a long way since then! Soap does not need to cook in order for it the become soap.
I started to not gel, so I get smoother bars, lighter color and I can use less fragrance. Soap does not need to gel in order for it to become soap.
100% coconut needs 20% superfat and cut with gloves on while the soap is still quite hot.
I add all my oils/butters right up front and prefer a 7% superfat. I don't add anything at trace like some of the older books recommend.
Lye at trace is still very active and it will take whatever it wants. There is no guarantee that any added oil or butter will end up as your superfat.
I cure all my soaps for 4-6 weeks no matter which method. According to Kevin Dunn, who wrote the Scientific Book of Soapmaking, the pH of soap
changes slightly lower after a full cure. My skin finds newly made soap very drying and irritating.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

G'day, Soapbuddy. Nice to meet you.

I've enjoyed reading your posts. I spent all last night on some of the links at Miller's, learning much & remembering our "traditional" ways. Several "rabbit trails" I got lost on, but bookmarked every page... (I'm obsessive until I have something really DOWN.)

I was 6 when my gran had me stirring her soap in a pot out back. We lived in NM on a Navajo reservation then. (She wasn't Navajo, she was Creek, but that's another story.) She used only dripped lye, which never bothered me at all, as I understood it even at that age. It's relatively puny, tho & makes softer soap. We only ever used kitchen fats. Any color came from the dirt that blew in. Hahaha. But it was good stuff.

Storebought lye has always intimidated me, but I find it's no big deal at all... However, my venture into the world of vegetable fats was interesting. I've been using olive oil & coconut blended into my tallow/lard soap in different % for recipes, with great success (making HP). I had no idea coconut got so hard, or so fast. Without realizing it, I was doing my first 100% veg soap... The Universe must've wanted me to take a lesson, because I picked the hardest, quickest to set up. Joke's on ME.

If I had stopped at the trace stage & moulded, I'd have come out with nice bars of very harsh soap for laundry. Duh! Instead, following "muscle memory," I tried to HP it... Never again with coconut. Luckily, the "adventure" came out as a nice white skin bar with plenty of olive oil (and some lard) and a lovely scent.

Back to school. Glad to have you & the other teachers & members to lead me into the modern age. At least I do have a stick blender, jajaja. I will study MUCH more before doing another veg soap.

Besides, coconut is expensive here, I think - about $12.50 for a liter bottle. Ridiculous, when you live on the border of Brazil. We have tons of Rice oil & others, tho. I'm heading to the Drogueria today to get more coco & also pick up 5kg of paraffin. I'm a candle maker from way back as well. Can't wait til we have our house finished & can begin beekeeping on our place. There's a huge colony of wild honeybees about 75 ft. from our property line... and I have melissa planted already (and essl oil on hand) to attract them when the colony divides. Now, to get hubs to construct the top bar hives I want. These are Africanized Italian honeybees & the honey is really delicious when made with the eucalyptus & acacia blossoms here, as well as the citrus trees.

Thanks for the welcome. I look forward to learning from you all. Who knows? Maybe there's a trick or 2 I can contribute along the way.

Welcome! I'm looking to hearing more about your adventures!

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

Hi, Linda. Thanks for the welcome. I'm reading & learning a LOT here.

My adventures? Well, before I was the "old goat," I was the "flying goat" & used to have a little farm in East Texas with, of all things - goats! I had Boer goats & Nubians. Best of both worlds. One for eating, the other for drinking, eh? Or, cheese making, etc. anyway. I was making soap outdoors back then & doing aromatherapy & massage.

Then an inbred neighbor seriously annoyed me, so I cashed in our chips & son & I left for Australia. We spent 3 years traveling between Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos. (Believe it or not, I loved Laos! Some communist countries get a bad rap via our MSM.)

So my son got a REAL education - homeschooled since 3rd grade, he learned his fractions in the kitchen, learned Spanish, and then had the cultural experiences of his life! We lived in Thailand for a year on a friend's goat farm... It was great... until the military coup.

Love your kitty...

Welcome to the forum! I love Nubian goats!

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Olivia :)

Welcome. I love it when someone from another part of the world joins us. We learn so much more than just soap making. You have lived a very interesting life.

MaryLou

Thanks again for the kind welcome, ladies. I'm reading with great envy your soapy adventures... Oooohh! to have access to all those oils & butters available to y'all... I'm positively GREEN! I miss cocoa butter. You'd think, being on the Brasil border, it would be available, but Noooooo... <snif!>