Hot Process Soap Tutorial - A Little More Info

Tamara of Natural Magic Soaps has been nothing but helpful in getting a tutorial out there for those of you who are struggling with hot process soap making.  There was a comment left by someone about measurements not listed in the original tutorial post, so I quote Tamara's email verbatim for clarification and also for some reference information that may be useful for you.  To thank her, I hope some of you purchase a bar or two from her to support her soap making magic!  Here is Tamara:

While I can provide a basic recipe for soap, it is much easier if they actually create their own- and helps the learning process too. 

The amount of oils that are needed will be greatly different because of the volume on different molds. Here are some really great links you might want to share with your readers:

http://www.soapmaker.ca/ : This is a fantastic tool for creating, storing and resizing soap recipes.  Once a mold size has been entered, the program can resize recipes to fit your specific mold.

http://grapevine.abe.msstate.edu/~fto/tools/vol/box.html: This volume calculator makes it a snap to figure out the volume of a mold. Just plug in the dimensions (in inches) and it will give you the total cubic inches of the mold (which can then be used in Soapmaker!) 

A really good beginner reference for choosing oils to include in a recipe can be found here: http://www.soapnuts.com/indexoils.html

It is also really important to remember that soap which hasn't cured doesn't mix well with most metals.  All of the pots used should be stainless steel or enamelware and soap should be poured into a cardboard, wood or plastic mold to set. 

Here is a very basic recipe that can be added to Soapmaker and resized to fit individual molds-

Olive Oil: 40%
Almond Oil: 38%
Coconut: 22%

Since the amount of oil varies so much, it doesn't make sense to post a lye or water amount.

The other bonus to using Soapmaker is that it will automatically generate the proper amount of lye and water to be used for a recipe based on the total oils used.  

I hope this helps!

-- 
Tamara Dourney
Natural Magic Soaps | http://www.naturalmagicsoaps.com
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