Monday, July 14, 2014

The Beginning....


Crock pots, scales, lye, soap calculators, fats....LYE!! That stuff will burn the skin off your hide!! Ha ha!

Some folks will come across the basic list of supplies needed for making Liquid Soap(LS for ease of future reference) and become a little intimidated.  I know I sure was. Coupled with the hard to find, or lack of information back when I first started, and the idea of working with lye is that much scarier.  What if you mess up? What if it all looks great and then you use it on yourself, or worse, you kids, and it's not so great after all? Like, you actually hurt someone with a failed batch?  Scary shit, right?  Oops, yeah, fair warning, I can have a bit of a foul mouth.  And I don't sugar coat either.  Anyways..

All that aside, There are many ways to make LS, and make it safe.  And it will be the best thing you've ever done once you get the hang of it.  Bars soaps are nice, but I never considered them sanitary.  I mean sure, they're too alkaline for microbes to grow on, but still.  They just never settled well with me.  Not even as a kid.  Not only that, but compared to bar soaps, which are done in molds, start to finish, LS can be customized a lot easier. I can scent and color as I please per bottle of LS, rather than the whole batch. And it's more forgiving as far as correcting errors. You don't have to worry about colors morphing or scents fading. But, there is a catch.  You may have to neutralize your soap, and you can't superfat.

Wait...WUT!!??  No superfat??  That's right.  No superfat.  In a completely, 100% natural, unadulterated, finished liquid soap, you can't superfat.  Why? Because oil and water don't mix. And liquid soap is water based; between 60 and 80% of your soap can be made of water. So that's the trade off.  So why would you want to trade that off?  Well, I can't answer that for you.  Only you can.  And anyways, I never said you couldn't superfat at all, did I?  It needs a little help is all. So no worries folks.  We'll get there.  It's a lot of work to get there, but again, once you get the hang of it, I'm pretty sure you'll like it as much as I do. I'll do my best to share with you how I got where I am now.  I'm by no means saying I'm "the pro" at LS.  But, I like to think I'm pretty good.  And it seems like a few others toot that horn loud enough for me anyhow.  But anyhoo, I'm off.  I think next time, I'll cover a much inquired after topic.  One that tends to get a lot of panties up in a bunch. Good night folks!

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