A little about soap-making

For those of you who are budding soap-makers, I thought I'd offer some helpful hints that I discovered in my own self-education with this hobby.


First of all, you need to go to the website: www.millersoap.com. She offers a plethora of information about soap-making; from recipes to how to avoid disasters. She also has a lot of links to soap calculators, and where to pick up supplies. I can't remember if I read it on her site or not, but I did read somewhere that if you are interested in selling soaps, you should really make soap for at least a year to hone your skills. I would agree with this statement 100%! Early on, I made what I thought were great soaps, but as they aged and as I perfected my recipes, I realized that these early attempts were only my first baby-steps to the wonderful soap I can now make.


Secondly, don't use Red Devil lye. This is drain cleaner. I, luckily, didn't have this option, living on a tiny rock 2,000 miles away from any decent soap-making supplies. Instead, I went to http://certified-lye.com/ and bought sodium hydroxide online. This is a high-quality and pure lye that comes in easy-to-use containers. It is non-clumping and you know that you are putting the best ingredient into your final product. Also, their prices are great and their shipping is quick.


I'll write more later on things like oils, recipes, and cold process versus hot process. But these two things are a good starting place for anyone interested in making soap.