How To Make Natural Soap - Tips

You can learn how to make natural soap with minimal instruction. Adding lye to water and mixing it in oils is not that hard. After all, that is essentially all that soap really is, it's a mixture of lye and oils. The process gets complicated by many attempts to explain it in confusing detail with often conflicting ideas. Here are a few tips to remember to get off to a good start with soap making.

It does not take lots of odd components to make fine soap. Look for recipes to get started that contain just a few simple ingredients. It's difficult to best a mix that just includes coconut, palm and olive oils, along with the right proportions of lye and water too. What's more, wholesale soap supply outlets make it simple to get your hands on these. With just those simple parts, you can build soap that looks and feels like the most luxurious of soaps and all for not a lot of money or trouble either for that matter.

No exotic ingredients are required to make fabulous soap products. If the basics don't work then something is badly wrong and more work needs to be done on the process of making soap or the recipe is flawed.

One key factor in soap recipes is the percentage of lye. It's included in the term lye discount. Basically that means using less lye than would be required to turn all your oils to soap. And you really probably don't want to turn all the oils to soap. You likely want a tiny bit of oil still unreacted to impart that luxury feel. Getting the lye amount right is simple to do once you know how but it must be just right and not too high or too low either. Then there is the smell factor.

Many soap recipes when made into soap will be unscented even though you put exactly what was called for in the recipe you have. You put in the amount specified in the recipe and still get little or no smell. A shame, since that means you wasted the cost of the scent and still got nothing to show for it.

For essential oils in cold process soap, you'll need about 0.7 ounces of essential oil per pound of soap. That will be less for mint and spice oils and more for citrus oils. And most citrus oils won't work very well anyway. You can try citrus oil scents but only a few will endure the soap making process.

Use too much scent oil and it will remain free in the soap. Too little won't smell at all.

It is quite simple to learn how to make natural soap from soap making books and trial and error. Really the basics are quite simple. Moving beyond the basics to build soap to market through a soap business or to experience spa quality soap means more study and experience.