Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/05/how-to-make-your-own-bars-of-s.html
…
4 Likes
18 Likes
Any good tutorials on how to make your own liquid soap out there?
EDIT: I just googled “make your own liquid soap” and stumbled down a rabbit hole of ‘wellness’ blogs full of vapid enthusiasm and tasteful stock photography. Fuck no.
3 Likes
Mix it with water? We made soap in chemistry class when I was about twelve.
2 Likes
Came here for this.
6 Likes
Music for making soap or rewriting the world.
1 Like
4 Likes
The first rule of making your own bars of soap is you don’t talk about making your own bars of soap.
10 Likes
5 Likes
Well, first you break into the liposuction clinic…
6 Likes
That should make a nice castile soap. Big fan of Kirks Coco Castile myself.
1 Like
/pedant Castile soap is technically all saponified olive oil and takes months to cure to the point where you can use it; it’s very gentle to your skin, but the texture of the lather (fine, almost slimy) cam be offputting. Many soap making people use other oils/fats in addition to olive oil so it cures faster, makes better lather etc. My first world problem is that the essential oils I add to my soap for fragrance disappear by the time I am ready to use it.
eta: Measuring the lye so it’s in the correct proportions to your fats and oils is important (hint: get a good scale). You can find lye calculators online that make it easy. There are also websites that sell fats and oils for soapmaking, and address a lot of common problems.
6 Likes
What MadLibrarian said. Also, be aware that if you screw up badly enough, the lye will eat your face.
Maybe start with melt-and-pour soap instead.
1 Like
As can the density of the label:
6 Likes
Use more liquidy fats (e.g. canola and corn oils instead of palm and coconut oils), and at least mostly potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide. The soap will end up liquidy.
Most of the “make your own liquid soap” stuff I found online was just suggesting buying a bar of hard soap and chucking it in the blender with some water. Sigh.
3 Likes
Make sure you use 100% lye. A lot of drain openers have other stuff in them too.
If you do hot process, you can use it the next day. Basically you cook the soap until saponification is complete. Put in mold, cut when cool, use.
I cook a lot of bacon, so I end up with a lot of bacon fat - more than I can use cooking. So I make soap out of it. I also throw some coffee in there - save a couple of used espresso pucks. Finally, throw some salt in the soap at the end of the cook - this’ll help it harden so that it doesn’t wash away in your first shower.
5 Likes
Breakfast-scented soap!
3 Likes
Unfortunately, the bacon smell doesn’t survive the saponification. I really wish it did.
I’ve tried hops in it too, same thing - just doesn’t survive the process.
1 Like
I had the good fortune to try this at the Tumble In outside Marfa, Texas. It’s especially good for Seborrhoeic dermatitis, which affects the crevices between my cheeks and nostrils, my eyebrows, and scalp:
1 Like
If this will work, then I might as well create an account on Etsy and sell my own bar soap for extra income. 
