Cutting a block of soap

[glenniedragon]

How about putting the crumbles in a muslin bag and using it like a wash cloth?

kind thoughts
Deb

[Milims]

I frequently make liquid soap - it's really easy and it makes your bar of soap go much further! I think that's what I'll end up doing with my big bar of Olivo!

[possum]

I've just made some pure olive soap and it's best to cut it when it's straight out of the mould, before it cures and gets too hard. It's dead easy to do and with just one litre of the cheapest, low-grade olive oil I managed to make 13 bars of it. I've posted a tutorial on http://www.growveg.info/index.php I think you have to register before you can find stuff but it's listed under myplot and my user name is the same as here.

I don't suppose you could post a text only version on here - I gave up waiting for the site to load (on ultra snail dialup here)

[contadina]

I mostly followed this recipe, which can be found here.
http://houseofstrauss.co.uk/modules/wfs ... icleid=462

INGREDIENTS
500 grams olive oil
63.65 grams caustic soda
200 grams water (put your jug on the scale and weigh the water into it)
15 grams fragrance oil or essential oil of your choice.

GATHER TOGETHER YOUR UTENSILS:
A pyrex jug
A large pyrex bowl
A clean stick to stir the lye solution
A wooden spoon (do not use the spoon for anything else other than soap) I used a stick blender too and alternated between them as it's much much quicker.
A pair of rubber gloves (I suggest you wear shoes and long sleeved top and something which covers your legs too - lye solution burns and carries on burning!) I used goggles, and put a scarf around my nose and mouth too!
Something to mould your soap in, an old margarine tub (thicker one 500 grm size) is ideal or any box that sort of size.

METHOD
Weigh your COLD water in your jug.
Weigh your caustic soda crystals into an old cup.
Add the crystals to the water in the jug, SLOWLY, STIRRING ALL THE TIME WITH YOUR CLEAN STICK - IT WILL GET HOT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AND GIVE OFF FUMES - DON'T BREATHE THEM IN THEY'RE NOT NICE!
Set the jug aside and allow to cool.
Pour your oil into the pyrex dish.
Heat the oil (either in a microwave, or over a saucepan of boiling water). The temperature you are aiming for is about 80 C. The lye solution must be about this temperature too. If you put your hand on the side of the jug and on the side of the bowl you can feel if they're the same temperature; they should feel just warm.

Now the fun bit . Slowly pour your lye solution into the oil, stirring all of the time with your wooden spoon. The oil will change colour and consistency and look like custard! Keep stirring, keep stirring, keep stirring - did I say keep stirring! This is to incorporate the mixture. The process we are aiming for is called saponification where all of the lye is chemically changed by interaction with the oil into SOAP.
The mixture will start to thicken, when it reaches the stage where if you lift the spoon out and draw it over the surface you can see a "trace" which falls back slowly that's it! (It's actually called trace honest!).
Now you can add your fragrance. Be warned, some fragrances will seize your mixture (don't worry I'll tell you how to rescue them another time!).
Safe fragrances are things like Lavender, TeaTree, Ginger, Rose, Peppermint.
When the fragrance is stirred through you can pour your soap into your mould. Pour mixture into mould carefully.

When all the mix is in put aside your utensils.
Now if there is a lid for your mould, put it on, if not cover with a plate and wrap it all up in a thick towel (this is to insulate the soap). You can then leave the soap to set for 24 hours.
After 24 hours unmould your soap, cut it into bars and leave it to dry out completely for about 4 weeks. (This "cures" the soap and ensures that total saponification has taken place (no lye left!).
You can wash up your utensils now too! Don't do this before as if you wash them straight away you are pouring raw soap into the drainage system - not good! Leaving it for the 24 hours allows the residue to saponify and then all your washing away is nice pure soap.

I used a thermometer to check the temperature of the oil and the lye (washing it in between) and I used a stick blender to achieve trace quicker - it took around five minutes. Amazingly it began to smell like soap as soon as the lye was poured into the oil and it began to look like soap as soon as it was poured into the moulds. I didn't use any fragrances - it's rather a nice smell as it is.

I left the soap in the tubs for around a week before taking them out, which is when they began to shrink a little from the sides. I then cut them and they are currently curing. Although the recipe says 16 weeks I will try one of the smallest ones after a month, but leave the rest to get as hard as they can.

I'm going to pour my next batch in a pringles tube, apparently, you can slice rounds of soap off, and then peel the packaging away.


Other sites I found useful were...

http://www.delcitysoap.com/soaprecipe.htm
http://www.millersoap.com/castile.html
http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php
The last one has a calculator to work out how much caustic soda you need to use, how much of particular oils, fragrance, water etc

[Shirley]

Doh... I forgot to take my big bar of soap with me, but Wombat reckoned that a cheese wire would be a good way to cut it - or else grate and make into washing liquid as previously suggested.

[Wombat]

Doh... I forgot to take my big bar of soap with me, but Wombat reckoned that a cheese wire would be a good way to cut it - or else grate and make into washing liquid as previously suggested.

Yup! But I cut my soap straight from the mould! It would be worth a go, but if the soap is too hard, perhaps a band saw?

Nev

[Shirley]

Not got anywhere with the wire - David keeps threatening to take it into work and do it on the bandsaw - would try it on the machinery downstairs but we had a leak at the water filter and everything is soaked!! We had a storm on Saturday and huge amounts of water everywhere and somehow the pressure built up in the ph filter and sheared two bolts and blew the gasket

[Wombat]

We had a storm on Saturday and huge amounts of water everywhere and somehow the pressure built up in the ph filter and sheared two bolts and blew the gasket

Wow!, that's impressive Shirl, and not in a good way

Nev

[Annpan]

Oh dear Shirley

I gave up on the cutting... for now, I used about a sixth to make some liquid soap, I got 3 bottles full (500ml each) so I think that it will keep us in squirty soap for a while.
It took a long time to dissolve though - a few days, I might grate it next time.

[ina]

It took a long time to dissolve though - a few days, I might grate it next time.

Yes, mine always takes some time, too. While my aunt was visiting, over the week she was here she got more and more puzzled by this jug full of stuff in the kitchen that seemed to increase in volume every day - until I explained that is was soap scraps, and I was adding some boiling water every day!

[Shirley]

I managed to cut a couple of usable slices with a very sharp non serrated knife. it's a much darker green inside and this was from a second block of the soap ( bought a box of 6 via Suma) but wanted to use some in the shower and couldn't wait for David to do his thing with the bandsaw at work! I'll stick it inside an old lemon bag* anyway so it will not matter too much if it breaks.

* you know, those scrunchy orange netting bags that are used for lemons/onions etc.

[pogostemon]

I'm going to pour my next batch in a pringles tube, apparently, you can slice rounds of soap off, and then peel the packaging away.

I do this and you do get nice round slices plus you are reusing stuff you'd normaly throw away.
I will add a note of caution in that if your soap tends to get too hot in the tube then it might have holes in it here & there where the inside of the tube has distorted a bit but I have found that this rarely happens.
It generally works really well.
Pogo