Fresholi | Melting Pot Café

Hello, my name's Anne and I've been making M&P soap for about 8 years or so, bath bombs and bubble bars too.  In fact, anything that smells good!  Oh and I make the Shake n Vac stuff for making carpets smell yummy too.....    :hi:

I do want to learn to make "proper" soap (not intended to cause offence to M&P soapers cos I'm one of em lol) from scratch.  Can anyone point me in the direction of a recipe which will take me by the hand and show me exactly what to do - and an easy recipe?  I do have a crock pot if that helps any?

Anne   :buttrf:

Hello and welcome aboard.

There's a crockpot hot process tutorial (http://www.fresholi.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=302:new-crock-pot-hot-process-soap-tutorial&catid=25&Itemid=51) here in Resources and tips here
 (http://www.fresholi.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=613:tips-for-making-cphp-soap&catid=25&Itemid=51)

Thenyou'll need Soapcalc -
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp (http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp) as it's always a good idea to run any recipe you find through it.

There are loads of recipes on the web - but many are US so you really need to convert to grams for UK/Europe.

Hello and welcome.  :buttrf:

Hello Anne and welcome!  :hi:  :buttrf:

You'll love this place, it's filled with fun and friendly people.

Hi Anne,
Welcome to the forum. A combination of equal amounts of coconut,olive and palm is a good place to start - made even better with the addition of say, 10% castor oil. Lots of other lovely oils and butters to experiment with, but this combination makes a lovely soap to start with.
Scott

hello and welcome, you've definitely come to the right place if you want to make soap !!
 :buttrf:

I tried to go to the crock pot tutorial but it wouldn't let me log in; it says it's a private area.  Do I need a separate log in for this?  I'm anxious to get all the ingredients ready for next weekend when I'm going to give it a go!
Anne

Welcome  (:hug:)

Hello and welcome... :buttrf:

hey there!

Welcome  :)

I'm not sure about this - I use the same login details as for the forum.

Try creating an Account on the main site (using same name and password as for here).

(Kes will know).

Hi & welcome!  Good luck with the soapmaking, let us know how it goes!
I used this tutorial when I started & found it very helpful.  http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/cold-process.html (http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/cold-process.html)  It is for CP (cold process) so no crockpot needed.

I'd start with a 3 oil recipe, try the one Scott suggested, if you go to soap calc, set weight to grams & enter 1000.  (This will give you a kilo of oils, you could use less but it's a nice round figure to work with.)  Leave everything else as it is.  Then click on oils from the list to create your recipe, in this case coconut (76 deg), olive and palm.  Enter either amount or % in the relevant columns, say 30% coconut, 35% each of palm & olive.  Press 'calculate recipe' then 'view/print recipe' - it will open in a seperate window.  This will tell you how many grams of water, lye & oils to use- you may have to round the lye amount to fewer decimal places!
HTH!  :)

(You do need to create a seperate log-in for the main site to access some of the articles.)

Welcome :buttrf: :)

Thank you - I had to create a separate log in but I found it!  Thank you!  Where do you folks buy palm oil BTW?  I found some on eBay but for 1Kg it was £3.50 - add postage at £4.50!  And what sze stainless steel pan will I need (I believe the pan has to be stainless steel?)  They are pretty expensive too!
Anne

Have a look in the shop. I think H does it.

Hi Anne,  a warm welcome to the forum.  It looks like you have made a good start in finding some of the info that you were looking for  :)

I hope you enjoy it here  :buttrf: :buttrf: :buttrf:

I bought my pans from asda, can't remember how much they were but they were very reasonable

Stainless steel?  Ooooh, I'll give them a try!  Thanks!

Stainless isn't a strict requirement actually - for CP I always use strong food grade plastic containers - many soapers who do large batches use plastic buckets from the DIY shop - I would always use plastic for lye in preference to stainless steel actually, but not glass measuring jugs - although Pyrex is quite tough. For HP, then a slow cooker is most peoples' choice - ceramic crock.
Did you see a specific thread where stainless was mentioned?

I read somewhere on the Net that a stainless steel pan was necessary (it stressed NOT aluminium and NOT non-stick so I thought it must be really important?).  But as I understand it, what you do is melt your solid oils and butters then mix it woith the lye solution when they both reach the same temperature?

Anne

For kilo batches, I melt solid oils in the microwave, then add my liquid oils afterwards to help the cooling process - I have my lye solution cooling in a plastic jug and when they are both around room temperature, start the process. Lye eats aluminum by the way, so never a good idea!!

Hi and welcome.  I just joined last week.  I love it and everyone's so helpfull too  :) :buttrf:s

Anne, if using metal containers and equipment, then yes, it must be stainless steel. This is only relevant to metals and is important. But as Scott pointed out, you can use good grade plastic containers, also silicone, heavy duty plastic and nylon. You will learn quite quickly what is quality and what is not, part of the learning process.

Eire

Ooooooooooooooooooo I can't wait to get started!!!!!    :mwaha: