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This is from a book about pioneer life that I found
in our library. It describes how soap was made back then:
All grease was saved; it was not only
valuable for lighting, it was also the basis of soap. Wood ashes were saved, too; they supplied soap's other ingredient,
lye. The ashes were thrown into a barrel between layers of straw, a little water was poured in now and then, and lye
dripped out of a seep hole in the bottom of the barrel. The straw kept the coarser part of the ashes from clogging the
hole.
To the accompaniment of a ghastly odor, grease and lye were boiled together in big iron kettles, out
in the open air. The mess was constantly stirred and it cooked into a harsh soft soap. For some reason the operation
wasn't always successful, and it was hence a courtesy to wish a neighbor luck with her soap. To promote luck the
soap was always stirred in one direction only. Soft soap could be hardened by the addition of salt, but not much salt
was wasted that way.
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Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? I suspect that some of the reason it didn't always turn out right was the
inexact science of creating lye. Get it too strong or too weak, and guess what...not only will the soap be bad, but
it's extremely harsh on your skin and could have done some damage.
Thankfully we don't rely on such
methods any longer. It's much more exact and carefully done. I thought you might find it somewhat interesting
to see how it's all done here.
WARNING: DO NOT try this at home
(seriously) without doing research and knowing EXACTLY what you're doing. I'm just giving you a basic snapshot
into what I do. Sodium hydroxide (lye) is a very dangerous chemical that can do serious damage.
First I mix the carefully measured lye with water and ice.
Lye/water will heat up to around 200 degrees in a matter of seconds. While that's cooling down to the proper temperature,
I measure out the "hard" oils (coconut, palm, shea butter) and start them melting. Everything is measured
to a tenth of an ounce!
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| Palm Oil |
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| Coconut Oil (will be liquid at 76 degrees) |
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| Shea butter -- so good for your skin! |
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| Melting the "hard" oils. |
Once the "hard" oils are melted, I turn off the heat
and add the liquid oils (olive, castor, babassu, grapeseed, canola, etc.).
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| Olive oil. |
Now that the oils are all mixed, it's time for the real fun...mixing
the lye water with the oils. You can hand stir the batch, but be ready to stand there and stir and stir and stir for
oh, about an hour and a half! Or, you can do it the easy way and use a stick blender. Done in about 3 minutes!
What an invention!
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| Mixing lye water with the oils. |
The lye and oils need to be mixed until you see "trace."
Trace is when you lift the blender (NOT going) and make a little trail of soap and it pretty much sits on top. Sort
of a pudding consistency. See if you can see trace in the picture.
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| Trace |
Once your mixture has reached trace, it's time to add the scent.
This batch is Patchouli Orange, so it's got a lot of wonderful essential oils being mixed in.
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| Mixing in essential oils. |
I usually mix the fragrance in by hand. If you mix with
the blender, you might blend it too much and it'll start to seize or harden and be hard to pour into the molds.
You want it to be like pouring pudding.
Here are the molds (thanks to my husband for making them for me!) lined
with freezer paper and ready to be filled.
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| Empty molds. |
I wanted to do a swirl with this batch, so I poured most of it into
the mold, then added color (crushed minerals) to the little bit that was left and poured that into the mold too.
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| Poured colored soap. |
Now I drag a bamboo skewer back and forth to create a lovely swirl.
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| Wha-la! What a beautiful swirl! |
Now the molds are covered with a blanket and allowed to go through
their magical transformation for about 24 hours.
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| Ready to lower the blanket and tuck them in! |
After 24 hours I cut the big chunks of what is now soap into
bars. I usually get 36 bars and several sample size pieces out of a batch. These are trayed up and taken to my
"soap room" for curing, where they'll sit for 6 weeks before I label and wrap them. That curing time is
when the water evaporates out of the bars and the saponification process is completed, making a nice hard, yet mild, bar of
soap.
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| Trayed up, ready to go to the racks. |
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| Patchouli Orange curing on the rack. |
And here's a peek at some of the curing racks.
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| Part of the curing racks! |
And that's the story of Real.
Simple. Soap.
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