Teach Soap

My name is Micheal and I am director of an organization involved with a community development project in South Sudan. Soap is becoming a prized commodity as we teach health and sanitation issues, but is difficult to bring in quantities that are needed. I want to begin teaching the women there how to make soap so they can start a little business. Does anyone have experience making soap in this type of an area? They do have lu lu trees, the berries from which can be pressed to make shea oil and am I correct in thinking that ash can be used for the lye? I have never made soap but want to learn in order to teach this in Boma, Sudan. I would appreciate any help with simple recipies that have worked for you. Thank You!

Welcome!
The ash that you're talking about will most likely give you either very soft or liquid soap. It will be more like potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide. What other oils are you able to purchase? Do you have any coconut oil or palm oil?

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

There are many you tube videos showing the process just as there are videos of the Soap Queen TV showing the process. There are many website were reliable recipes can be found, but each time you use a recipe you must use a soap calculator to verify the quantities of products to create a lovely bar.

There are recipes here for bath and beauty products;

http://www.teachsoap.com/

Miller soap has another site where recipes can be found.

Good luck!

splng edit

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

Soapbuddy is correct leeching the ash will produce potash not true lye. There are plenty of instructions online about how to leech potash so I won't give you a short version here but it does take time, clean water, and is as dangerous as working with liquid lye. The strength of the liquid potash varies so it takes plenty of experimentation to get it right so the soap isn't lye heavy. The variations in the strength of the potash are one of the many reasons the soaps made by our ancestors were often rather harsh. The softness of the product can be somewhat overcome by the use of tallow or lard as the main oil in the soap as well as adding some salt to the recipe.

Something like

90% tallow or lard
8% coconut if available
2% shea butter

I wont guess on the potash mixture as there are to many variables.

and maybe 1 or 2 % of oil weight in salt ( can be high but this would be a good starting point )

This recipe would be done as hot process not cold process as the condititions that would likely be present when the soaping was done aren't likely to lend themselves to the rather long process that cold process can be.

Should produce a saleable product that is functional and reasonably long lasting.


Hope that helps