6 - How to make soap: equipment

- Safety equipment, specifically gloves, is absolutely necessary (read this about caustic soda). You should also use safety glasses, a mask, and old newspapers to cover your workspace.

- An electronic scale. A kitchen scale with 1g precision is fine if you make batches over 400 g of oil.

- A hand blender; without it, it could take hours for the saponification to start. It's up to you ;)

- Containers; at least 3.

One to weigh caustic soda and one to weigh oil and in which you will pour and blend the lye solution with the hand blender. For these two, I just reuse large yoghurt pots (or crème fraiche pots) that I then throw away.

It’s fine to have a simple, thin pot to weigh the lye, but it's better to have a more solid container to blend the oil and lye solution; I use hard plastic yoghurt pots.

In the last container you will weigh water. It's in here that you will prepare the lye solution by pouring in the already-weighed caustic soda. Doing so will produce an exothermic (heat producing) reaction, that is why you must use a container resistant to high temperatures. I use a glass jar.

Read safety precautions!

- A stainless steel spoon.

When pouring caustic soda into water, you will have to stir the liquid at the same time. You cannot use just any utensil. Wood or metals other than stainless steel will react in the solution, producing a volcano effect. You need at least a stainless steel spoon that you can also use later in the process (scraping the dough out of the containers), but it's ok to use a wooden spoon once the lye solution has been poured into the oil.

- A mold

Again, I reuse food packaging. It can be yoghurt pots or, to make soap bars, milk/juice cartons. You don't need to grease the mold and the soap will be easy to unmold since you can just tear the carton. You may also use silicone molds (I bought second hand ice cube molds) but from that day on they will be only used for soap/cosmetics making.

- A knife, to cut the soap once it has hardened.

7 - How to make soap: tutorial

Comments

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