Soapmaking is a craft and profession which extends back in time for thousands of years. Today, most people buy their soap from commercial vendors such as Proctor and Gamble, Ivory, etc. But handcrafted soapmaking has recently seen a resurgence both in availability and in consumer interest. As with any handcrafted item compared to a commercially produced item, hand made soaps often use more expensive and exotic raw materials and result in a soap bar which is unique and luxurious.

"Soap" is created when fixed oils such as palm oil and coconut oil are blended with sodium hydroxide (known more commonly as "lye"). The laws of nature demand that you cannot make soap without lye. So, cold process soapmaking involves working with oils and mixing them with lye which has been dissolved in water. As the two are stirred together, a chemical reaction sets in which changes everything into soap. A properly made bar has no free lye in it, and is gentle and cleansing.

Once you get past any concerns you may have about working with lye, Cold Process Soapmaking is a relatively easy process. With the proper tools in hand, you can produce several bars of soap in a few hours, in the comfort of your kitchen. Here is the basic process:

Ingredients: fixed oils, water, lye.

Tools: Medium sized pot, candy thermometer, plastic spatula, plastic bowl, shoebox lined with plastic.

Directions: Pour the water into the plastic bowl, add the lye and stir until fully dissolved. Set aside to cool. Melt the fixed oils in the pot and remove from heat. When the lye and the oils are both approximately 100 degrees Fahrenheit, pour the lye/water into the oils. Pour in a slow and steady stream, stirring all the while. Continue stirring until the soap thickens or begins to "trace". The chemical reaction will make the soap stock thicken like pudding. Pour into the mold. Cover the mold with plastic and wrap with blankets. Leave undisturbed for 24 hours. After 24 hours, remove from mold and slice into bars. Set bars in a dry place to age for three to four weeks before using.

We provide this basic process to show you how simple it is to make soap. However, before actually attempting to make soap, you will need a recipe with weights and measurements. These are available in any of the wonderful books recently published on the craft of soapmaking.

A variation on the Cold Process soapmaking theme is the Hot Process. In Hot Process soap, you continue to cook the soap while you stir, you do not remove it from the heat. Constant exposure to heat makes the oils and lye interact more quickly and more thoroughly than in the Cold Process method. Hot Process soaps can also be made at home, however there are no books currently available on the topic.

Large, commercial soapmakers use neither the Cold nor Hot Process methods. Rather, they have developed advanced means of soapmaking which result in more soap being produced faster and to their specifications. These methods require expensive equipment and facilities as any commercial venture would. There are a couple of essential differences between handcrafted soap processes and those used by larger manufacturers.

One primary difference is the glycerin content. Glycerin is a skin-loving humectant which is a by-product of soapmaking. When oils and lye are mixed together, they result in a new chemical which we call soap as well as a by-product we call glycerin. In handcrafted soapmaking, this extra glycerin is left in the soap. Commercial soapmakers use a process called "salting out" to remove the glycerin from their soap stock. They do this for many reasons. First, glycerin is an expensive and useful product. Commercial soapmakers can make good money by removing it from soap (which people like to pay very little for) and putting it into their lotions and creams (which people will pay more for), or by reselling it to other industries which use glycerin (candy makers, etc.). Also, commercial soapmakers have developed processes for making soap which require that the soap stock be ground up, milled, and otherwise manipulated. They need their soap base to be fairly "plastic" and to move easily through their equipment. Extra glycerin makes the soap too sticky to do this. (By the way, commercial soapmakers can skip this process entirely by starting their soapmaking process with the acid components of oils such as stearic acid and palmitic acid rather than working with the full oil. These acids do not result in excess glycerin in the soap base).