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Hi everyone. I need your advice. I'd like to try making some liquid laundry soap. I'd like to use butcher shop fat as the soap feedstock because from what I've read, it makes good soap & also because it recycles the waste fat. I know that some folks resent soap being made from animal...

Hi everyone. I've got a question for you. Can good hard bar soap be made using only Palm, PKO & peanut oil? I was thinking that maybe a good recipe might be something like 10% PKO, 20% palm & 70% peanut. This is related to my plan to make soap in West Africa. You see, PKO is...

Hi everyone. Today I tried a simple cold process recipe using only one oil. It was 100% palm kernel oil. Anyway, I'm concerned that I may have done something wierd to mess up my soap because instead of making the usual greyish white bars that are sort of transluscent, this batch has gone...

Hello again! In case the thread title wasn't clear, I'm wondering if anyone here knows if herbal powders can be used where essential oils aren't available? I know they will add unsaponifiables, but since people often add charcoal, clay and pumice to their soap, I gotta figure that herbal...

Hi everyone. About a week ago, I made my first two batches of soap. The first batch was HP and was a failure. I was too excited and cooked it to death. I think my wife threw it in the garbage a few days ago. The second batch was much nicer. It looked good, smelled normal and...

Hi everyone. I noticed a soaping acronym on another thread that I'm not yet familiar with. The term is: DOS I tried to find a glossary of common soaping terms, but couldn't seem to find one. Can someone please explain what defines DOS ???

As stated in this threads' title, even my newbie soap has gotta be better than cleaning with this thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil

I found this on YouTube almost a month ago, before I could post it for you guys on Christmas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgb_16A1 ... 90&index=0 I think you'll like it. It made me laugh.

Hi again. Since the "curing" phase of soapmaking is mostly about drying the soap, I was wondering if anyone here has ever tried using a food dehydrator to speed up curing?

Hi everyone. Well, I've lost my soapmaking virginity today. It actually happened last night when I cooked a very small batch of HP soap that I made at 1 AM. I'm not really counting that one though because I think I killed it by boiling the hell out of it. First, I was so antsy to...

Hi again folks. I'm wondering if anyone here has to soften their water? If so, what do you use? I read somewhere that borax works for that, but I'm not sure, because I've never tried it (never had to). The reason I'm asking this is because I'm starting a commercial soapmaking...

Hello again. I'm wondering how critical it is to the CP method to get both the lyewater and the oils to the exact same temp? I'm also wondering how important it is to get them to 120 deg F, or whatever is recomended? Is 75 degrees okay? What about 150 F? I'm not asking whether...

Hi people. I'm just curious if there's any general formula for determining how much EO or FO can be added to soap. I know that such oil concentration may depend somewhat on personal taste, but I'm thinking that it may also depend on stuff like what specific soapmaking process is chosen and...

Hi again everyone. I guess I could have just PM'ed this question to Nizzy, but other people here may know the answer too, and also asking someone a technical question in a PM deprives others from learning a technique they might not already be aware of. Anyway, how is this wave pattern...

Hi everyone. I was comparing the different strengths & weaknesses between HP & CP soaping methods when I got an idea about what might be a totally new way to make soap that has the good points of both HP & CP soapmaking. From what I've read, HP is much faster than CP and helps soapers to...

Hi everyone. I was reading Soapmaker Mans' sticky on mold volume/oil weight, but although I learned the formula up to the last point shown, I'm unsure how to determine how much water is needed to finish the formula. Soapmaker Man said lenght times width times length (all in inches) times...

Hi again everyone. I'm nearly ready to try to mix up my first batch of soap, but I just wanted to ask you experts about using silicone baking pans as soap molds. It seems like they should work okay, I think. They can handle baking temps and since soap won't adhere to silicone, they...

Hi everyone. My wife has donated one of her older stainless steel cooking pots to my soaping project. It's a relatively large pot though, so I'm not sure if it's too large or not. It's 10 inches across the base and 6 inches tall. Is this too big or will it be okay?

Hello Everyone. I am new to soapmaking and although I've got my basic supplies together, I haven't actually tried making any soap yet. This is because I'm trying to choose between using the cold process or the hot process. I posted about this issue once already, but for some reason, the...