One of the crafty things I love to do is to make homemade bar soap. Yes, good old fashion lye soap.

It's great on your skin, has a million and one uses, and did I mentions it's great on your skin?

One might ask how someone gets into making homemade soap in this day and age. For me, it started as a supply and demand issue.

I had a friend covered in a poison ivy rash and we searched high and low to find old fashion lye soap when conventional treatments didn't work. The stuff works wonders on anything that itches or burns.

We eventually found some on store shelves, but I figured if it was that hard to find, I might just try to make some. After all, I am already making homemade laundry detergents that are based with bar soap,  "ivy" season was rapidly approaching if not already upon us, so certainly someone would be in need of that good old fashion remedy.

So I made some. I was hooked.

Word got out that I had the stuff, I sold a few bars, and now it's something I keep a little of on hand. A couple of shops buy a little here and there to add unique items to their shelves, several of my friends have gotten hooked on it, and I quite frankly, I may never buy bar soap in the store again. Even my mother who hates to scrub the ring out of her tub loves the stuff. She was a loyal Zest fan for years until liquid soap became popular, but she's decided that my soaps don't leave as tough of a ring as she remembered her old favorite making. 

You can see what I currently have in stock by clicking here. I try to keep this link as current as possible but the best way to see what's in the back room is to email me through my website by clicking here.

The first few batches I made were indication to me as to why no one makes the soap at home anymore.

1. Making soap will make a wild mess in your kitchen.
2. The chemical (lye) used to make it are highly caustic, requiring special attention, and is sometimes hard to come by.
3. None of the supplies are as cheap as one might expect.

Oils are the main ingredient. And if you want fine soap, you have to pay the price for fine oils. Some types aren't sold in my area so I have to order them, adding shipping to my cost. Oils aren't light and I am billed shipping by the pound, so it gets a little scary.

I make an unscented old fashion bar that's as simple as using lard. It's fine on your skin, leaves no scent on you, and is a bit more cost effective.

But I prefer more supple oils like olive, castor, palm, coconut, grapeseed, and sometimes Shea Butter. These bars are considered "Castile" soaps and can be found in finest boutiques all over the US and Europe. Who knew, right?

Body safe scents and essential oils that I use to scent my Castile bars are quite expensive as well, some costing as much as $17.00 per ounce. Considering 6 lbs. of soap (it's hardly worth making a batch any smaller) may use up to 6 ounces of essential oils, it can get to be a costly project to whip up a batch. I scent all of my "Castile" bars.

The chemical (lye) that you need to make soap is relatively inexpensive to buy, but good luck on your quest to find it.

So how do I make my homemade, old fashion soap? The same as your grandmother and mother before her made it. I am just fortunate enough to have more modern equipment to do it with.

The trick to soap setting up and hardening in the chemical process is to get your lye water and your oils at the same temp, at the same time, and blend them at that precise moment.

Since mixing lye and water makes a hot liquid fast (about 225-250 degrees hot, within seconds), that will have to cool considerably before blending with oil, and you must bring the temperature up on the room temp oil, it gets a little tricky.

So I start off by mixing my lye and water so it will have time to cool while I am heating oils. This is one of the most dangerous, yes I said dangerous, parts of making soap. But when done properly, following all precautions, everything works out just fine.

Always wear protective equipment when you are messing with chemicals like lye. Goggles or safety glasses. gloves, and an apron of some sort is recommended.

Since the lye mixture is going to get super hot, it needs to be mixed in a heavy glass or stainless steel container. Never use aluminum when handling or mixing lye.

When mixing, the lye must go into the water, and not the other way around, or it will explode. Yes, I said explode. Never, ever dump water into lye.

I use a 4 cup Pyrex container to measure my water into and then pour in my weighed lye slowly while I stir with a stainless steel skewer. (The long ones you use for shish kabobs on the grill)

The solutions begins to heat up immediately. I stir until the mix is no longer cloudy looking and their are no visible lye particles floating about. The lye solution is now a roaring 200 and some odd degrees. I've mixed it outside as I do not have a kitchen fan to take away the horrible fumes it omits when it hits the water.

Then I move onto the oils, leaving the lye mixture to sit and cool. It goes without saying that you should never leave this mixture to sit openly when there are children and pets around.

I measure all the oils for my recipe into a stainless steel soup pot, and put it on medium heat on my electric stove. Some oils are solid at room temperature while others like Olive oil are liquid. Heating times will vary.  I clip a candy thermometer on the inside of the pan and stir the oils and watch the thermometer as the temp of the oil rises.

While the lye solution is cooling down, and the oil is heating up. I take this time to ready my molds.

Each of my molds are made of solid wood and comes apart once the soap has set up. They each hold 6 lbs of soap.

Theses molds have to be lined so that the soap doesn't run out of the cracks when it's first poured. So I measure and cut the liners out of parchment paper.

When I get my oil to where it's just about the right temp I check the temp of my lye solution. I need to catch it before it cools to much, and if it hasn't, I can always use an ice bath to bring them temp down a little faster.

So the oil and lye are both at the right tempts, and I need to stir the lye solution onto the oil. I do so with an electric stick blender, a modern convenience your grandmother didn't have. It doesn't take long blending with one of those babies and your soap with reach "trace", the consistency of thin pudding. Your grandmother had to stir sometimes for hours before her soap made trace.
At first trace, I can add the scenting whether it be essential oils or body safe scents. And yes, their is a difference in the two. Essential oils are natural products derived from plants. Body safe scents are chemically produced scent, made somewhere in a laboratory and are produced especially for human skin.

Scent must be blended well to attach the scent to all the particles of your oil and lye  mixture.

It's at this point one would also add any colorants, but since I don't color my soaps, I don't have that step to worry with.

When I am using scents like natural cinnamon and other spices, they tend to leave their own coloring anyway. Some day I will probably experiment with some colored soaps, but for now I am just keeping it simple.

Once the soap mixture has reached full trace, a medium pudding consistency, it's time to pour the molds.

On the left I poured some old fashion lard and lye soap into a cardboard Velveeta box lined with plastic wrap. During saponification, the process where the soap heats back up considerably due to chemical reaction, it was a little hot for the plastic wrap but it ended up coming out OK.

The mold shown farther down is a wooden mold that I have lined with parchment paper.

I cover the molds with lids, and wrap them in a heavy towel or blanket to help hold the heat from the chemical process that's about to occur. Within an hour of pouring, the molds are hot to the touch.

And now I wait. Well, I do lift the lids a couple of times and have a look at what's going on and check to see if the soap is hardening. 

During the time the soap is setting up, the smells in my home are awesome. At peak heat, my place smells like a boutique of some sort.

After I am done making a mess in the kitchen, I don't immediately clean up the pans and utensils I used in the process.

Fresh blended soap is not actually soap just yet, and the compound is very high in ph. The acidic nature of the compound is not easy at all on skin and may make slight chemical burns if you are not careful.

I wait over night to wash everything up because by the next day, the mixture in the pans has turned to soap and makes for much easier removal. The overnight curing of the compound has let the ph lower as well so it's not as harsh on my skin, although gloves are still recommended for handling soap at this stage of the game. 

I always wash up my pans and utensils by hand. Doing so in the dishwasher will leave a scum inside of it which is unpleasant on the next load of dishes you might wash in it. I found this out the hard way. Nor does the dishwasher have the power it takes to get the scum off of your pans and utensils that you have cooked on.

Next come my favorite part, the unmolding and cutting.

24 hours after I pour the soap, I can remove the blankets or towels, and start unmolding the soap logs that have processed inside the molds. The soap had heated and then cooled, thus beginning the curing process.

Steve Siebert custom made these wooden molds shown, built to the exact specifications I requested. They make this process so much easier and will hold up far past my lifetime.

When the soap has hardened in these molds, I can let lose the screws and pop the whole thing apart, removing my soap without having to break it or handle it extensively. No digging at my soap to remove it from the mold.

Once the soap has "set up" it should be cut before it becomes too hard.

I place the soap in a box that looks like my molds, but it's open at each end and a little wider than the molds. This way my soap logs are easily slid through the cutting box.

The cutting end of the box has been notched on both sides, leaving a space where I can cut through the soap with a sharp knife or pastry blade. This enables me to cut each bar approximately the same size, making a more uniform bar each time.

Once all the bars are cut they are placed in a well ventilated space and left to cure for 6-10 weeks. As they cure they will dry and the ph balance will fall making the soap more gentle. The longer the bars cure, the drier they become, which means they will last longer. An average bar of homemade soap should last a single person one month, with daily use.

During the curing weeks I turn and flip each bar to allow it to dry consistently throughout.

Homemade bar soap is as pure as it gets. The chemical lye is changed in the saponification process which means the lye is no more. The curing process allows the PH to fall, insuring your soap is a natural cleaner that will leave your skin feeling soft and clean.

Homemade soap also retains all it's own natural glycerine, a substance that is produced during saponification. Glycerine is excellent for the health of your skin.  It's also a substance that commercial soap makers extract from commercially made soap before it cures and goes on the shelf. It's a cost effective way to get two products out of one and make money on both.

So there you have it. Homemade soap.

If you decide to try making your own I suggest you read up on the process in far more depth than I have shared with you.

If you are not so keen on making a mess of your kitchen, waiting weeks on end to be able to bathe :-) , or just don't have the desire to mess with it all, just drop me a line for information on how you can order some of my homemade bar soaps. I usually have a bar or two laying around.

You just never know what scent they might be.

Click here to check out making bulk orders of your favorite scents.

Information on what makes handcrafted soaps so much better than the store bought stuff.