Hello everybody

[Sapwn]

Hello ladies and gentlemen!

I love soaps since I was a kid. I adore them! I remember myself some empty Saturdays having nothing to do, going to malls and other shops just to buy some new soaps. I love both cheap and expensive ones. I even like fake soaps and with fake I mean the glycerin-based soaps.

I remember my grandma saying that when they gave our olives to the mill to make our oil for the next year (everybody had some olive trees in Greece in the old years), the last part of the oil was used to make the soap for the next year.

I always thought that if my grandma was able to do it herself it shouldn’t be that difficult. However, only recently I realized how easy it is to make soap using the cold process method.

About a month ago I gave it a try and I was really amazed by the result. The last 2 weeks I have made more than 120 soap bars using various recipes. In all of them I use vegetal oils and butters. This because I can’t find any tallow here and I am too lazy to prepare my own tallow from pieces of fat given from the butcher.


Congratulations for this nice and very useful forum. I didn’t know that there are plenty others with the same … let’s say … “hobby” ???

 

[Sapwn]

My first bars

 

[Moody Glenn]

From a fellow newbie - WELCOME! You jumped right into making your soap - good for you. They look great and you should be proud. I am also sure your grandmother would also be very proud of you.

I see you live in Athens. You have easy access to all that wonderful olive oil. Instead of tallow have you considered using lard (pig fat)? It is certainly not luxurious but it too adds a wonderful quality to any soap such as conditioning and some hardness. You could also experiment with sheep fat as well. Have fun here on this forum. There are many very nice people here willing to help and offer advise.

 

[Sapwn]

Thank you Glen.

There is plenty of olive oil here as you said. I receive every year many litters of very high quality extra virgin oil from my father’s origin town in Peloponnese. The problem is that it does not saponify into soap. Really! I used it a couple of weeks ago and I was having difficulties taking it out of the mold after 2 days of trace formation in cold process.

So I had to buy some low quality olive pomace oil to make my first olive oil soaps. That one saponified decently.

Fact is that I don’t really like olive oil soaps. I know that vegetable products are trendy and especially olive oil, but I find olive oil soaps unable to form a decent lather and I personally consider olive oil unsuitable for soap making. I hope not to find other Greek members here in the forum as I am afraid they will shoot me for telling this as the markets in the country are full of olive oil soaps

I could try lard but I can find neither lard nor tallow in refined form and ready to use in soap making.

The products I used so far for my soaps are:

Olive pomace oil

Coconut oil

Palm oil

Palm kernel oil

Castor oil

Almond oil

Canola oil

Shea butter

Cocoa butter

Mango butter

and Stearic acid

　

　

My greatest challenge at the moment is making a Sulphur soap. I tried two times and it was a complete failure. I cannot understand why. I searched before in the forum and I found a couple of old threads about sulphur soap in cold processe, but none of them included instructions on how to make them and why it is so difficult making it. roblem:

 

[Moody Glenn]

Hi! You have an excellent variety of oils to experiment with in making all kinds of soap. A lot of us will be envious! I use the regular garden variety pure olive oil (not the virgin or pomace.) I have never heard of sulfur soap so I will be researching about it. Hopefully, someone here in the forum can be more informative. Keep on posting about your progress in making your soap.

 

[Hazel]

Hello and welcome.

I even like fake soaps and with fake I mean the glycerin-based soaps.

BTW, glycerin base/melt and pour base soap isn't fake. You can actually do more intricate soap with it and there are many soapmakers who use it because for one reason or another, they are unable to make CP/HP. I mainly make CP but I occasionally do MP for novelty soap.

 

[AngelMomma]

Welcome and I hope you enjoy the forum! You are using a really nice variety of oils and butters.

 

[Relle]

Welcome

If you add some castor to your OO that will help with the lather and you'd probably have to leave it longer than two days to get it out of the mould. OO soaps are best left to cure for 6 months before using. Would love to see your soap out of the wrapping. You said you made some a month ago and have since made 120 more - it's best to let them cure well before wrapping.