The Making of a Butter Bar
Many people have asked me what goes into making my natural soap. While this is a condensed story it will give you the gist of what it takes.
First I line the molds with refridgerator paper. I hand made the molds myself. It helps being handy with power tools:-)
Here are the lined molds ready for the raw soap.
I then measure out my hard oils and melt them to the correct temprature. These oils have been chosen after many many trials and experiments.
After they are melted I add the hard oils to the Palm oil and other base oils. The heat from the melted hard oils melts the palm oil and I begin to make my slurry mix. Once I get all the oils melted and combined I add the lye mixture and it’s soap making time. Soap is actually a salt. It is a byproduct of the chemical reaction between a fatty acid (oils) and an alkaline solution.
I begin mixing the oils together with a hand blender until they start to form an emulsion also called trace. Depending on what oils and what recipe I am using this can take anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. The more stearic acid an oil has the quicker the trace. Here is the mix after trace and after I add the fragrance. This batch is a new Butter Bar Vanilla Jasmine. Right now is is about the consistancy of thin pudding. As the reaction continues it gets thicker and thicker.
Immediately after I add the fragrance I pour into the mold. Some fragrances can accelerate the trace so fast that you get soap on a stick. It can instantly freeze the mix and it is not fun! So you learn to work very fast in getting it into mold.
After it sits in the mold for about 8 hours I take it out and slice it up using my soap harp. It’s not really a harp. It’s jig made from steele and guitar strings that you can actually use as an instrument. It cuts the soap log into 17 uniform 1″ thick bars.
After the log is cut I put the bars on a drying rack for about 6 to 8 weeks. Drying is needed to remove the excess water that the bar contains. The older the bar of soap is the more gentle and great it is. But after about 6 weeks the soap is ready and perfect!
Hope you enjoyed my little story…
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