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I'm with you! That's an interesting take on it, I never would have thought of it that way. Thanks!

Well, thinking it through, it sounds like adding fragrance to a batch of soap via essential oil at least doubles the cost of the batch. Even at a pretty cheap $5-10 per 1 fl.oz., that's way more than the cost of the oil and lye going into it. Looking at the FOs on thesage.com, they are...

That's interesting, I did not realize. Is the reason because to get a good scent you need too much of the EO and that makes it expensive, or you need too much that it ruins the recipe somehow? A bit of a side question - when I go to the store to buy a standard Dial/Dove/Trader Joe's bar of...

That's a good question, I guess I usually make a about 1 lb at a time. 3% calculates to roughly .5 oz. Does that seem right? That's a lot more than a few drops, some bottles aren't even that much.

What about making a tea infusion oil out of my olive oil before making the soap? I have some lemongrass based loose leaf tea that would be great if the soap ends up smelling anything like the tea. How well does that work?

I looked at bramble berry but for a 6 dollar bottle, the shipping was like 9 bucks. Is there a better place to buy a small amount from?

My preference would be herbs or essential oils (and not artificial scents) because the wife is into that stuff. I'm looking for something simple and not very expensive. I looked at a 5 fold lemon oil from Amazon but it was $20 for a small bottle...is that normal? I would be into fruity or...

Indeed! Thanks, all. I didn't realize the separate tools thing was really for fragrance and not the lye.

Ok thanks for the reply. Since I'm not totally sure, how are saponification and curing different? I understand that full curing can take many weeks, but is it reasonable to assume saponification is done in a couple days?

From beginner resources I've read/watched, a big deal is made of keeping your soaping tools and utensils separate from kitchen equipment. i.e. don't use tools you've used for soaping for food because of lye contact. That's mostly fine with me but I'm wondering about if this includes, or how big...

Ok, thanks for all the good responses! Sounds like I could do better but there's a good chance this batch is not garbage, I will do the zap test to find out when enough time has passed.

Hi all, Forster time poster and soap maker. I followed this blog post to make my first batch which is now curing. https://www.diynatural.com/how-to-make-soap-2/ I may have made one mistake. After I added the lye water to the oils, I probably only stirred for a minute or two before using...