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rupertspal42

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Hello all, I've bought some Melt and Pour soap to get me started but what is better to use Hot or Cold press soap? What are the smaller differences, I know hot and cold haha but I want to get serious with my soaps and what would you guys reccommend? How does lye work exactly in the soap to make it.. well soap? I'm pretty curious about how CP feels compared to HP.. Like I said I want to play with the melt and pour before I get all crazy with it! Thanks guys! :wink:
 
x

:D hi there, and welcome! :D

my best suggestion to get a good working knowledge of cold process soapmaking is to read thru the previous posts in the forum.

also "google" cold process soap making.

www.soap-making-essentials.com and www.teach-soap.com are great information sites.

cold process soapmaking is a pretty straight forward process. if you can bake a cake from scratch, you can make soap.

you 1st investment should be a reliable digital scale that weighs both in grams and ounces with a minimum of five pounds. i use a postage scale-there are numerous others to choose from.

there are many soapmaking books available, too.

nice to have you on the forum.
 
Welcome to the forum! :)

The links that Heartsong gave you are excellent starting places to learn about the craft of making soap from scratch with lye.

Melt & Pour (MP) is great to start out with, but it's a totally different animal from CP and HP, just so you know. :) While there's no lye to mess with in MP, you have less control over ingredients and other factors than with making CP and HP.

I make mostly CP, but I also make a few occasional batches of HP when I'm dealing with a rebellious fragrance oil. HP is pretty much the same as CP, only it's cooked in a crockpot or on the stovetop or in the oven to speed up the saponification process.

If done carefully, HP can feel and look pretty darn close to CP, but not quite exact. I find CP to be more smooth, fine-textured, dense, and opaque, while HP is more rustic and transluscent. Both feel great in the end after curing, though.

To me, CP is much less fussier to make and easier to pour into the soap mold than HP when it's ready to pour. It also gives me much more leeway to do fancy coloring tricks like pretty swirls and such. You can do swirls in HP, too, but they are much harder to do. My MP swirls never look as finely tuned as my CP swirls.

A very big advantage of HP is that you can use it sooner than CP. A lot of people use their HP right away, but I like to wait at least 2 weeks for mine because I like the extra mildness. And I find that they don't melt away so fast in the shower when allowed to cure for longer as well.

HTH!
IrishLass :)
 
I don't know that one is any easier than the other. They all have their perks and down sides. It's really a preferrance, and once you pick the one you want read read read:) And this is a great place to start.

Welcome to SMF!
 
Hey thanks guys! This has been pretty helpful for me! I've read a little bit into CP soaps but it seemed a little overwhelming for me.. heh Some of the things with the Bath and Body projects seem pretty easy but i'd really have to read more in to those because of the whole preservatives thing ya know... anywho.. nuff babling THANKS! :shock:
 
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