Homemade soap

Sara

Nulph

My AWESOME facilitator!

Supplies I needed!

More supplies

How I created my product

More complicated than anticipated

I feel my facilitator did help me

Needed ENAMEL pot

Measuring everything exactly

Dangers with lye, vinegar towel, and goggles

Bringing the lye and oil to the same temperature was the hardest part

Add together in the pot

Constantly stirring and keeping at 100 degrees for 3 hours. (found a solution)

Adding scented oils

Saponification after being stirred

Pour into greased Tupperware as a mold

Let sit for 18 hours under a blanket (gradually cool to finish saponification)

Let sit for 8-12 hours uncovered

Cut soap into bars

Let sit for another 30 days due to the lye still being active

Optional steps:

Molding your soap

Shave soap

Melt down

Superfat

Pour into desired mold

Adding scent oils

LYE!!!

Very dangerous base, always wear protective eye gear.

Saponification

Becomes a thick and creamy texture.

Problems Encountered

Few problems

Price and quantity of soap

Time it took to stir and keep the temp at 100 degrees (stick blender)

Lye would sometimes get on us

Facilitator and I had conflicting schedules

Oils had different melting points, I would melt them separately in the future.

Getting the lye from 180 degrees to 100 degrees and melting the oils and getting them to exactly 100 degrees was very challenging, discovered the use of ice baths.

Stick blender!

Through research we found it much more efficient to mix the oil and lye using a stick blender rather than a wooden stirrer. This made controlling the temp easier and saponification occur much faster.

In the future…

I would not like to make homemade soap as a career because it was very difficult to sell the products and make any type of profit due to the cost of the materials, I would much rather go into the medical field. I did learn that large scale productions of these type of products are more economical, yet still may not be as beneficial to our health.

TA DAH !!!!!