Welcome to the Dreamwidth Soapmakers community

[lauredhel]

Hi everyone!

This community is for soapmakers and prospective soapmakers of all persuasions - cold process, hot process, rebatch, melt and pour, whatever you love. You're welcome to ask questions, troubleshoot, or show off your creations.

I'm mostly a high-olive DWCP (discounted water cold process) soapmaker, though I do a tiny bit of CPOP and the occasional bit of melt and pour. I've been soaping for five or six years now.

Useful Soapmaking Resources:


OzCalc lye calculator

DWCP Water Calculator

Miller Soap

Teach Soap

Aqua Sapone

Diane's Naturally

The Scent Review Board

How to make felted soap


I thought I'd kick off the community just by showing you a few of my latest soaps.















What have you made lately?

Comments

[ladyseishou]

Beautiful soap! The colors make some of them look good enough to eat! And the sculptural aspects are so cool!

May I ask a (very dumb) question? Is soap making hard (something more than following a recipe kind of thing)? Is it something pricey to get started in?

Okay that was technically three questions. It's just since I started using homemade soap (purchased from a wonderful seller on Etsy), I've wondered how hard it would be to try making my own, to create my own scents. I don't want to bog the comm down with a bunch of newbie questions (unless maybe someone wanted to start a soap-making-for-beginners thread ^___^) so if someone could recommend a soap-for-beginner's book (or two) or website, I'd really appreciate it!

[lauredhel]

Hi,

I don't have a problem with newbie questions.

I've read a fair few soapmaking books and to be honest haven't been impressed with any of them. Some quite well reviewed books have even included majorly dangerous instructions, like the infamous one that said to add water to the lye (which can cause a lye volcano!). You need to always add the lye to the water - think "snowflakes falling on a lake".

The resources I've listed do some great 101 stuff, especially millersoap and teachsoap. Mostly important, though, is to always run your recipes through a lye calculator yourself - don't trust any recipe by anyone else, whether it comes from a website or a paper book or a friend. You need to be sure for yourself that it's not going to be lye-heavy.

The outlay isn't expensive if you have a decently equipped kitchen; a good quality digital scale is probably the biggest outlay (you need to measure carefully), some eye protection, and after that it's just stainless utensils (not aluminium or wood), a stick blender, and a stainless or heavy duty plastic pot to mix in (not a cheap bucket, especially not one with a dimple in the bottom that your stick blender will chew off!). You can start with milk cartons or lined shoeboxes or plastic containers for moulds.

Ingredients can be as expensive as you want them to be, but I recommend starting with a very simple three-oil soap, equal parts olive/palm/coconut oils, or similar. A good batch size to start is 500g-1 kg. I also think it's best to start without colours and fragrances until you're familiar with the process, then add things in one at a time as you learn. Get the right lye - 98%+ sodium hydroxide, not regular drain cleaner.

Safety safety safety. Read up. Use your protective equipment appropriately. Never, ever, soap with children or pets around. Have an emergency plan. Respect the lye without being frightened of it - if you can cook with boiling oil, you can soap.

After that, just enjoy! It's one of those things that makes _much_ more sense after you've done a handful of batches. Things start to click together, then.

[ladyseishou]

Thank you very much! You've given me a place to begin (the Teach Soap site is very nice) and I like your snowflake analogy (which I will always try to remember). Thanks again!

[lauredhel]

Enjoy! And please report back.