Once again, it is an urban homesteading day of action. This week, we are making movies! (Phew. I made the movie two weeks ago, but it has taken this long to edit it and get it uploaded.)
To be clear: I don’t actually live in the city. If you look at the first segment of this movie, you will see that I am genuinely rural. So basically, I’m doing this in support of urban homesteading. If lots and lots of us use the word in regular conversation, the claim to exclusivity will be undermined. Take that, IP Pirates!
Ahem. Right. Soapmaking, in five parts. If you are just interested in what trace looks like, skip to the last video. That was what I really wanted to see when I was learning.
Disclaimer: This is a demonstration, not instruction. There are ways to injure yourself in this process, but it is both lovely and simple if you take the appropriate precautions. If you are going to make soap, please get a really good book, or take a workshop. I like this one by Melinda Coss:
Also, I should have been wearing my goggles at the beginning when I was measuring the lye, not just when I started to stir it.
1. Get all your soap making equipment set up, including recipe, scale, NaOH, oils, and water.
2. Weigh the lye, water, and oils:
3. Prepare lye/water mixture, melt oils, bring everything to correct temperature, and make magic. Oh. Sorry. Chemistry.
4. Wait a zillion hours 45 minutes for the mixture to turn into soap, stirring all the while. Make sure your mold is greased before this part, because otherwise you will cry when your soap won’t come out of the mold.
5. In a couple of days, cut your soap into bars. Then let it cure for at least 4 weeks before you use it. I usually wait 6 weeks or longer, because it continues to harden up, and it lasts longer if it is harder when you start to use it.
Like this:
Filed under: Recipes Tagged: | not-food, PostADay2011, self-sufficiency
Very cool – thanks, babe. I’m going to have to give this a shot.
Pleased to hear it. I prefer the olive oil or sunflower based soaps myself. Find the coconut oil a little crumbly. I’ll tip you my recipe if you are interested. It’s a little soft, but once it cures it makes a wicked soap for dry skin or frequent bathers.
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[...] of bars of soap necessary to turn soap-making into a business. In the process, I made some fine soap, and stopped wanting to ever ever make soap again. Same with spice blends, baking, harvesting [...]