Teach Soap

I have received my supplies from BB and am almost ready to make my first batch of soap. I still have to make my molds. I picked up some 3/4" birch ply this weekend and will make a 2# and 4# loaf mold. If I have enough material I may double up on the molds or make more of different sizes.
Over the last few years I have been trying to get my family away from commercial processed products from food to personal hygiene. I have been purchasing handmade soap for a while and decided its time to try this myself. I am excited for this next adventure.

Welcome!
If you have any questions just ask. You might also like to read this thread. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3800

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

Welcome and enjoy the journey!

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Welcome aboard the soaping train!

Welcome. It's so great here evryone is very nice. I just started Soaping Saturday. I have made three small one pound batches since then lol so it sure is addictive. Ask all the questions you want people are so helpful here.

We did it, we made our first batch of soap. First I made two 2# wooden molds and one 4# wooden mold. That was fun, even had my wife help with gluing and air nailing the bottom and sides together. We attached the ends with two wing nuts on each end. I think I will try a different design on the next batch of molds but these first ones were easy to make.
We made two batches of soap on our first try. I kind of made my own recipe from some soap that I bought from a vendor at the farmers market that we liked. It consisted of coconut oil, castor oil, olive oil, palm oil, palm kernel flakes, rice bran oil and shea butter. I worked up a couple of recipes of these oils at work and I thought I had copied them to my thumb drive but alas I didn't so I had to get back on the soapcalc website and start over. I know it wasn't the same percentages because the hardness was lower than 0n my original recipes. On the first batch I melted the coconut and palm oils to weigh out then added the other liquid oils. I then added the shea butter and palm kernel flakes to the warm oil. That was mistake number one. I had to heat the oil up to melt those oils and butter and when I did that the oil temp got up higher than the lye water. So I had to set the oil container in a bath of ice water to bring it down quickly to meet the lye water temp before I added them together. Here are the particulars of our first two batches.

Batch #1
coconut oil 4.8 oz
castor oil 1.6
olive oil 8.0
palm oil 8.0
palm kernel flakes 4.8
rice bran oil 3.2
shea butter 1.6
water 12.16
lye 4.52
Temp mix oil @ 135 deg, lye/water 145 deg

Batch #2
coconut oil 4.8 oz
castor oil 1.6
olive oil 8.0
palm oil 8.0
palm kernel flakes 4.8
rice bran oil 3.2
shea butter 1.6
water 12.16
lye 4.52
1.7 oz of Bramble Berry Lavender Fragrance Oil
1 tsp of BB purple Brazilian clay
Temp mix oil @ 125deg, lye/water 135 deg
It took a little longer to mix to get to trace than batch #1.

Congrats on your batch! If you put the soap mold in the oven, I hope the glue can hold up.

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

Congrats on your first batch and on making your molds! Doing that part yourself sure saves a ton of money.

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Congrats on your batches!
My husband & I made several molds out of scrap lumber we had laying around. Definitely a cost saver! We glued and air-nailed them and I use them in the oven all the time.

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

SS, nope, butcher paper is not the same. You can get a large roll of freezer paper at the local store though and it isn't very expensive. I get mine at wally world and it is less than 5$ (reynolds brand). It is also very long/wide, so it works well for big logs and slab molds no matter the size.

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Today I unmolded our first two batches and they turned out great. I tested for lye and didn't get zapped. Something to make note on is don't use sharpies to mark the lining paper to cut, it bled into the corner of the soap. No biggy since I can trim it off. Since I made and used a 2# loaf mold and created my recipe with 2# of oil I was over in quantity in the over all batch. I ended up using a couple of the ziplock type of plastic containers. I placed them in the freezer last night for a couple of ours so that I could unmold them, it was easy to pop them out. I had a bread dough cutter that I used to cut the loafs into 1 inch bars. Now we just have to wait for a month before we can use them.

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

glad they turned out well for you, congrats!

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy