Home made soap

[Vater Araignee]

About 4 weeks ago I took a stab at making soap without a recipe. Every other time I have made soap I used an exacting recipe sans color or scent, usually superfating to make it more moisturizing. This time I decided that if the shit hits the fan I'm not likely to be able to acquire exact ingredients or use my digital scale so I decided to wing it.

I used 3 cups of fats that consisted of home rendered tallow, bacon grease, hamburger grease, gyro grease and dewatered butter.

Now understand that every type of oil has a different optimum amount of lye to properly go through saponification giving you that nice creamy bar that curls when you shave it so having this mixed grease I figured the best I could come up with was a soap that would have to have grease pockets opened up and drained when cured, but that is not what happened.

I took my grease and heated it up to about 110° then I mixed 1/4 lye with 1.5 cups cold water (add lye to water not water to lye or you could get a violent reaction) then once the measuring cup felt toasty I slowly add the solution to the grease.

Next came the standard Mix 15 minutes let stand 15 minutes, Mix 15 minutes let stand 15 minutes, Mix 15 minutes let stand 15 minutes, etc etc until trace.

Unfortunately after an hour and a half I got impatient, I mad a lye solution of 2 tbls lye to 12 water and added it.

Mix 15 minutes let stand 15 minutes, Mix again and trace started, unfortunately by the time I got to the mold I had soap pudding in the pot and had to scrap it into the mold Then I covered it with a wet towel.

I knew as soon as I washed the pot I had soap.

The next day it was time to unmold and cut. What I had was brittle but I let it cure and finally used it today. I have softened, those with it know how difficult it is to feel like you are completely rinsed off after washing but with this soap my skin squeaked and the great thing is, it is not dry. Hell, it feels better then any bar of soap has left it feeling in years.

Oh yeah, the soap faintly smells like a cony island but leaves your skin smelling like a clean human.

I think I am going to call this hodge podge wing it soap Ben Franklin, ya know "Waste not, want not."

[Vater Araignee]

Update: For years I have suffered minor acne on my face, back, chest and oddly enough, for arms. It didn't start up until after I moved from the city so it must be the well water. After only using my soap for about a week My for arms and chest are free of blemishes and they are almost gone on my back (the worst area). I haven't used soap on my face in years because it always made it worse but now I am convinced that I should start using this on my face.

[Class-Punk]

Update: For years I have suffered minor acne on my face, back, chest and oddly enough, for arms. It didn't start up until after I moved from the city so it must be the well water. After only using my soap for about a week My for arms and chest are free of blemishes and they are almost gone on my back (the worst area). I haven't used soap on my face in years because it always made it worse but now I am convinced that I should start using this on my face.

Sounds interesting.

[Vater Araignee]

6 months and two batches of soap latter (I'm experimenting and building a surplus) I became zit free.

As a test I started using dove and the acne returned on my chest and back, then I started using lava (was my normal full body wash) and the acne started on my forearms again.

Back to the homemade stuff and it all went away.

[TronRP]

Maybe I should try homemade soap...ever since my sensitivity to the sun increased, so has my acne. Now it's traveling down my shoulders and is halfway to my elbows...never figured there was anything I could do about it. This sounds promising. I am the only one of my siblings with very noticeable facial blemishes so at least I could give homemade soap a good validity testing ...would be great if it could clear this up even just a little bit.

[Vater Araignee]

My base equipment.

coffee cans (26 + oz size)

coffee filters (not cone type)

wire strainer

2 glass cooking thermometers

Crock-pot (large enough to hold at least 1 coffee can of liquid + 2 cups, got mine at salvation army and soap is all I use it for)

wooden spoons (If properly treated first you could use them for cooking after but that is a lost art)

2 cup or larger pyrex measuring cup

Kitchen scale or my preferred scale is a digital scale from Harbor Freight.

You may want molds and whatnot, I don't bother I just let it harden in the Crock-pot then cut it out.

Once you start to use lye you do not want to involve metals unless you know exactly what they are and how they will react.

Aluminum for example will violently react. This is how Works or Drano bombs work.

[TronRP]

Thanks...I definitely look forward to trying this.

It will be my first personal project after I finish these houses.

I'm positive I'll make some mistakes, but that's where the fun stuff comes from...

[Vater Araignee]

Do you eat meat?

If so, start saving the fats now, avoid poultry fats and don't mix in vegetable oils, using butter as a nonstick has actually been proven better for you anyway. There is no proof that low cholesterol reduces the wrisk of heart attack but there is a direct link between low cholesterol and Alzheimers.

You can save vegetable oils too if you do any deep frying. But be warned, the blends can be difficult to work with and are best used to make "Yep, that's soap alright".

No matter what, saving fats/oils means learning how to clean the fats/oils but it is a skill well worth developing.

As you can probably tell I am a cheap bastard.

I did make a pure castle soap (that means that 100% of the oil was olive oil, converted an entire gallon) once, funny thing is that everyone who tried it prefers my animal fat and blends. Except hunters, they love it as a laundry powder because it has no brighteners, no chemical, petrol or dead animal smells.

I can help you out with recipes that are guaranteed success unlike every book or site I have found.

Keep in mind, my mind set is "Soap is not detergent and chemicals, it is soap, but soap is just soap."

For me it just has to get you clean and not leave you stinking. I have a batch that i didn't clean the oils properly and it smells like a heady cheese but it gets the job done properly.

This means that my soaps don't leave you feeling moisturized thoe you also don't feel dry.

Most of the time i cant even cut them into bars they are so hard I just break them into manageable chunks. in fact only my "Stinky cheese" batch cuts like one would expect.

I would recommend just making soap before getting frufru, but once you have some made you can always doctor it with a remelt.

[TronRP]

It's a good thing I don't get much into the *googles frufru* side of things. I'm so non typical I'd bath in dirt if I thought it would do the job effectively.

Not to sound like a sob story, but growing up poor, we learned how to save, store and reuse all types of fats and cooking oils at very young ages. Nice to know their is a true use for the skill now.

This is beginning to sound more and more fun...I almost can't wait to get my hands working with it. A few years back, I used to make figurines out of Premo! Polymer Clay...I believe this will rank right up there...

[Vater Araignee]

That doesn't sound like a sob story to me, it sounds like an advantage. Who has a better chance of survival during a depression, people who have never known anything but middle class or those who know how to be poor.

Hell a better question would be who would be truly poor in that kind of situation?

Of course that isn't to say the government sponsored domesticated has an advantage either.

[TronRP]

Thank you