Handcrafted Soap Review

If you've ever thought about making fine handcrafted soap but were told that it was too difficult or too dangerous then this might be just the book for you.

Delores Boone, a former nurse, now a full-time soap maker has written a beautifully illustrated and easy to follow "how-to" book on the increasingly popular hot process soap-making method.

Many people refer to this method as a new method, but actually this is the way soap was made by our ancestor's generations ago.

What is Soap?

There's no mystery here.  Soap is simply a combination of fats and oils, water and sodium hydroxide (lye).  When combined in just the right proportion and appropriate temperature, a chemical reaction known as saponification occurs, rendering the lye harmless while transforming the mixture into soap.

Today, when shopping for soaps, you'll notice that many of the popular brands are not labeled soap at all, but rather, cleansing bars.  The reason for this is that they are actually synthetic detergent based products rather than true soaps.  Sure, they'll get you clean, but few will feel as luxurious and as conditioning as a natural high quality soap.

Soap-making Today

Over the last 30 years or so, the art of making handcrafted soap has become incredibly popular.  The predominant method for making soap is known as the cold process method, where oils, water and lye are combined at controlled yet relatively low temperatures and are left to saponify over a period of weeks.

To many, the prospect of waiting several weeks to use the soap we make today really takes the bloom off the rose.  We live in a time where deferred gratification is a lost virtue.

The hot process method, presented (but not invented) by Boone is the actual slow cooking of soap using external heat (a crock pot for example) that yields fully saponified (safe to use) soap in as little as a day.  In fact, the actual soap-making process usually takes about 60 - 90 minutes.

Although the above is true, in practice I generally cut my bars after 24 hours and usually let them dry and cure in a dry place for about a week.  Okay, so I usually snatch a bar sooner to try it out.

Boone beautifully illustrates the method in step by step fashion using terminology that virtually anyone can follow.

There are sections that explain the characteristics of different fats and oils and which work best in combination and why.  She gives the reader easy to understand information about scenting and coloring your soaps and the pros and cons of the different methods.

Recipes

Especially if you enjoy cooking you'll feel right at home with the hot process soap-making method.  In this book, Boone treats the reader to a great number of excellent soap recipes.  I have made at least a dozen of them and have been really pleased with the results.  In fact, many of my own favorite recipes are variations of some of those found in this book.

She includes several quick reference tables in the back of the book that will be very helpful to the budding soap-maker, but this is also the area of the book that contains one serious and potentially dangerous error.

Caution

On page 112, Boone includes a quick Lye and Water Calculation Chart.  Somehow, during editing this book a mistake was made (arithmetic), and the amounts of lye needed to be used to saponify a given amount of oil was greatly overstated.  The resulting soap would be lye heavy and caustic.  Disregard this table.

When making soap always use a known, reputable Saponification Calculator.  The most widely used and the one I recommend is the Majestic Mountain Sage Lye Calculator, which can be found at:  http://www.the-sage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php.

My Viewpoint

Yes, there are certainly more complete reference books on the art of soap-making, but few, if any, present a method of soap-making in so beautiful and  so easy to follow fashion.

For those of you that would like to try your hand at crafting high quality natural soaps, I highly recommend this book.  Enjoy!

Regards,

Rudi