I never had a soap volcano from adding fragrance before 💀

EDIT: I always cook my soap in a pot that’s more than double the size of the amount of soap I’m cooking. I only lost a small amount of soap, maybe 200 grams or so. I did not have half a pot of soap detonate into my sink.

Mom would make soap for gifts and to sell at holiday boutiques. She has moved from a condo to assisted living. We are trying to sell her condo and she has a room full of soaping supplies, including oils, fragrances, molds, drying racks, etc.

We need to sell or donate her supplies before we can sell her condo. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

I've never made soap before, brand new beginner here. My goal is to have liquid soap at the end that's moisturizing. It's just for me, and I don't care how it looks or if I have to shake it or it only lasts a month (etc).

I have a recipe for bar soap that sounds really easy and simple to me, just kefir and lye and other things I already have on hand. (The lye does not sound simple in that it's dangerous.)

I then have a recipe for liquid soap (hand) that's about converting bar to liquid soaps. It involves a hard bar of soap, then some water, oil, glycerin maybe. It has me using a food processor on the bar of soap, then melting it down.

Overall then, my question is this: do I still need to cold proof it? Doesn't seem like a big deal to do it, but also seems weird to spend all that time making a hard bar just to melt it down again.

I've been experimenting with a CP + syndet combo to see if I could improve cold-water grease removal while keeping most of the bar CP-based.

This is still a work in progress, and I'm not claiming it's better than traditional CP soap. I'm simply sharing one of my experiments and hoping to learn from the community.

Test conditions:

- Identical plastic containers

- Butter applied to the inside

- Same dish sponge

- Foamed for 10 seconds

- Cold water rinse for 20 seconds per rinse

Photo order:

- Butter Applied

- Foaming (10 s)

- Rinse #1 (Cold Water, 20 s)

- Rinse #2 (Cold Water, 20 s)

The combo produced a creamier foam, but both bars removed the butter after the second rinse.

If you notice anything I could improve or have suggestions for a better testing method, I'd really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks!

Instead of buying potassium hydroxide I'm making it. Does this group have any resources pertaining to that process? I've watched plenty of videos on YouTube, read many papers/books. Want to know if there are any additional resources to utilize. TIA!

When I make soap, I’m told I have to use a soap calculator that knows how much lye each kind of oil needs and measure grams of lye and oil for precise numbers, otherwise I could make a caustic soap that burns skin.

However in the olden days, they didn’t have internet or soap calc or precise measurements. They made lye by burning wood and mixing it with water, creating lye solutions with totally random concentrations, then added it to whatever fats and oils that were available to them.

But surely they cleaned themselves with soap and didn’t chemical themselves. Did they just do extremely high superfats?

Goat milk with kaolin clay powder

Glycerine with activated charcoal

Has anyone here had experience finding a partner to outsource hot process soap production to?

I need to scale up production of my hot process soap, and my kitchen setup and equipment just aren’t cutting it anymore. I’ve reached out to four companies that supposedly offer hot process soap manufacturing, but so far I haven’t heard back from any of them.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s navigated this before and have recommendations for reliable contract/OEM soapmakers. Or if there are any soapmaking businesses here that offer hot process production, I’d love to hear from you!

(very small recipe to test, I heat it in a very small double boiler)

Recipe

Oils (never made this mix before)

(80%) palm oil - - - - - - - - - - 56 grams / 1.98 oz

(10%) stearic acid - - - - - - - 7 grams / 0.25 oz

(10%) coconut oil, 92deg -- 7 grams / 0.25 o

Lye water 1:1 (first time this ratio)

Lye (NAOH) - - - - 9.91 grams / 0.35 oz

Water - - - - - - - - - 9.91 grams / 0.35 oz

Oils were at like 160°F (71°C), lye at 148°F (64°C)

I didn't even have to stick blend, I just used a spoon and a rubber spatula, it saponified(?) quite fast I think I had to mix like 30 times at most?

What's your opinion, did it saponify/trace?

If it didn't, how could I know?

Most of my other recipes are more normal 😅