BASIC SOAPMAKING INSTRUCTIONS
These are the basic instructions for making soap. Check your local bookstore for books on soapmaking for more complete information about soapmaking.
Precautions
1) Be aware that you are working with caustic soda. If you aren’t paying attention, you could burn yourself. Be careful and pay attention !
2) Always keep vinegar on hand while working with lye. It is acid and neutralizes the alkali. It works well to have it in a spray bottle for easy application or a bowl for dipping the affected area.
3) Protect your self from burns. Lye is caustic soda. It will burn badly if it gets on your skin. Always wear rubber gloves, eye protection, shoes, and long pants and sleeves. Lye will also ruin aluminum, use only glass or heavy plastic or ceramic.
4) Never mix the water into the lye, always mix the lye into the water.
5 Put newspaper on the working surfaces like your counter to protect it against spills.
6) Never leave lye water sitting around where passers by, curious children, or animals can spill it, or heaven forbid, drink it.
7) Never pour any soap down the drain. It could harden, plugging your drain entirely.
8) Don’t have anything to eat or drink in the area. (You don’t want to pick up the glass of 7-Up and take a drink, only to find it was your lye water.)
Basic Instructions for making soap:
1) Make sure you have time to make soap. You can’t rush it. I usually give myself a three hour uninterrupted time slot. I don’t usually need that much, but I’m not going to be concerned about the time and risk rushing and getting careless.
2) Get the vinegar out and have it ready in case you get some of the lye on your skin.
3) Cover your work area with newspaper to protect it.
4) Get out all the equipment you will need and have it ready.
5) Put on rubber gloves and eye protection. Put on shoes, long pants and long sleeves.
6) Weigh your lye (sodium hydroxide).
7) Weigh your water.
8) In a well ventilated area, pour the lye into the water, (never the other way around), stirring the mixture with a wooden or plastic spoon. This mixture will get really hot, and it’s really caustic. Once the lye is dissolved into the water let it cool.
9) Weigh your oils, and melt them. I just put them on the stove and warm them. If you stir them, they melt faster. Once they are almost melted, turn the heat off and stir to melt them all the way. If there are any bits of unmelted fats, they won’t saponify, so make sure there are no lumps.
10) Now you have to wait until they are both about the same temperature. You can put them in a sink of cold water to cool them, or hot water to warm them. Generally, I just leave the lye alone and let it cool and by the time I’ve melted the fats, the lye water has cooled enough that they are almost the same temperature. Let them cool to about 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have to adjust the temperatures, use hot or cold water baths.
11) When they are both around 95 - 100 degrees Fahrenheit, start to stir the oils, then while doing so, slowly pour in the lye water. Continue stirring briskly. Make certain you are stirring the entire pot and not missing the centre.
12) You’ll notice the fats start to change immediately when you pour in the lye water. First they will go from a clear to a whitish colour. As you continue stirring, the mixture begins to saponify and starts getting thicker. You must continue to stir until the mixture thickens enough that when you take a spoonful and pour it on top of the mixture, it takes a moment to settle back in. This stage is called "tracing". It can take anywhere from ten minutes to over an hour. It varies with the fats, lye strength, water, temperature, humidity and other factors which are uncontrollable. Generally, if you use saturated fats (the hard ones), it will trace sooner, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule.
13) Once your soap traces, it’s ready to pour into the mould. Before doing so, you may want to add some goodies, like nourishing oils, essential oils, fragrance oils, herbs or fillers. A good mould for small batches would be a plastic food saver.
14) Pour your soap into the mould and cover it with plastic wrap and put the cover on your mould, then wrap it in a blanket for insulation and put it in a warm draft-free spot for 24 hours. This is the hard part. Leave it alone, no peeking It’s going to get really warm and finish saponifying all by itself.
15) After the 24 hours are up, carefully unwrap it, and check that it’s cooled to room temperature. If not, put the blanket back in place and leave it for another five or six hours. If it has cooled, remove the blanket, take the cover off and remove the plastic wrap. It should be hard by now (like cheddar cheese).
16) To remove the soap from the mould, put it in the freezer for 2 or 3 hours. Take it back out and let it sit for about 15 minutes to form some condensation between the mould and the soap. Put on your rubber gloves again (your soap is still caustic) and put a towel on the counter, turn the mould upside down on the towel and press the bottom. The soap should come out in one piece. Give it a few hours to thaw, then you can cut it into bars.
17) This is the really hard part. Once you have cut it into bars, stand them on a towel in a well ventilated place, with air spaces in between each bar and let your soap cure for 2 to 3 weeks. After that time if you have carefully measured your ingredients and followed the directions properly, you should have nice hard bars that are ph balanced. (If you want to, you can test them with ph test strips, or with your tongue. They should test with the strips at anywhere between 5.5 and 8. If you taste it with your tongue, it should just taste like soap, if it has a kind of acid taste, it may not be ready.)
All-Vegetable Soap
11 oz Crisco (311 grams) 5 oz coconut oil (141 grams)
2.2 oz lye (62 grams) 6.2 oz distilled water (175 grams)
(follow above directions)
Milk Soap
11 oz Crisco (311 grams) 5 oz coconut oil (141 grams)
2.2 oz lye (62 grams) 9.2 oz milk (260 grams)
(follow above directions)
(You are using these instructions at your own risk.)
A Summary of the Food and Drugs Act
This information comes from the Cosmetic Regulations of the Food and Drugs Act. I have put it into my own words so that people have some idea of what the laws are with respect to making and selling soap and toiletries. Although it’s really boring, you should have a look at the Food and Drugs Act to get the exact meanings.
The first thing you need to know is that soap and toiletries are both a "cosmetic" according to the Food and Drugs Act because they are used for "cleansing, improving or altering the complexion, skin, hair". If you are making or selling soap or toiletries, you’re a "manufacturer" in the act.
If you are a manufacturer of a cosmetic, you must notify the government within 10 days, on their form to let them know you’re doing it. If you call or write, they’ll send you a package with the form (a one page document) and a bunch of information about the Food and Drugs Act. You have to let them know if there are any changes to the information and answer any questions they may have. This information is considered a trade secret and is not made public. It is however, used to determine the safety of a cosmetic.
If it’s going to be used in the area of the eyes, your products can’t have any coal tar dye or coal tar dye base. You can’t use a bunch of stuff in your cosmetics like chloroform.. There is a "Hotlist" available, but the stuff on it are things that people who are making their soap and toiletries at home wouldn’t even consider using. You can only use mercury or it’s salts (yeah, right!) under certain circumstances.
The laws about labelling come from the Cosmetic Regulations of the Food and Drug Act and from the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act. The label has to have the manufacturer’s name and address and what it is unless it’s obvious. The net quantity in metric units and warnings or cautions in for safe use. Everything must be in both languages except the manufacturer’s name and address. In Quebec, special labelling may be required for products sold in that province.
To help with understanding labelling,, Health Canada produces a "Guide for the Labelling of Cosmetics" which provides detailed information on cosmetic labelling. You can’t put on your label or advertise that it is like or made like a prescription. Claims such as cell-renewal, repair, rejuvenation, nourishment or treatment of the skin are not acceptable on cosmetics, that would be the kind of thing that would be on a drug label. The difference is if you claim that a soap cleans your skin, it is a cosmetic. If you say it cures psoriasis, that now fits into the category of drug under the Food and Drugs Act. Canada does not require a manufacturer to list a product's ingredients on its label, but Health Canada encourages manufacturers to declare ingredients. Discussions are proceeding with manufacturers to explore ways of meeting the information needs of consumers.
The Food and Drug Act and the Cosmetic Regulations also set safety requirements for all cosmetics sold in Canada. Section 16 of the Act prohibits the sale of a cosmetic that is either prepared under unsanitary conditions or is unsafe when used as directed. If concern over a product's safety arises, the cosmetic may be prohibited from the market. Health Canada does not receive a copy of the product labelling unless the product requires special label warnings or directions for the safe use of the product.
Here is the Ontario address, you can find your local office in the blue pages of the phone book.
Health Canada, Health Protection Branch, Ontario Regional Office, 2301 Midland Av, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4R7
(416) 973-1600
I hope this has helped to answer the question that people have.
PO Box 700 Haliburton ON Canada K0M 1S0
Phone: (705) 754-1303 Toll-free: (888) 285-7627 Fax: (705) 754-1045
Copyright © 2009 K & W Specialties Ltd.
Last updated: 2009-11-01