Homemade Soap Making – Mistakes

Fri, Oct 23, 2009

Homemade soap making lets you watch the fascinating process of fats and lye mixed with water turning to mild bar soap. It seems almost like magic… It is a simple process to perform, but it’s easy to make mistakes. Here are a few of mine…

1. Too little scent.

Scent oils are expensive and it’s tempting to use just a little less. Recipes often don’t call for enough of the smelly oils either. If it doesn’t smell, you either used oils that don’t work in soapmaking or you used too little scent. Know what a soap that doesn’t smell is called? Unscented soap, no matter how much expensive smelly oil you poured in it.

2. Poor recipe.

Getting the right proportions of each ingredient is critical. Some recipes are just flat wrong. Probably because the author of the recipe was ignorant about how to design soap. Watch who you listen to.

3. Mis-measure.

Small recipes are harder to get right than large ones. It is critical that all proportions are right. That’s why recipes that use weights are better than recipes that use measures like cups and so forth.

4. Too little stirring.

Different recipes take different times to start hardening or tracing as it’s called. You can design recipes that trace quickly, but in any case, you just keep stirring until the soap traces. It can take 10 minutes or it can take hours…

5. Wrong tools.

The tool require are simple, but the right tools make working much easier. Cutting soap is one place where you can get hurt. Try to get soap cutting tools so you don’t use knives to cut soap. Cutting hardened soap with a knife is a quick road to injury.

Handmade soapmaking is part science and part art. The science part takes some study. The art part takes practice as well. Making soap is a great hobby and can be a profitable little business as well.