Things You'll Need:
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Step 1
Purchase all glycerin soap base making tools, and keep them separate from your cooking tools and appliances. The soap making pot must be either unchipped enamel or stainless steel because lye will corrode most pots made of other materials. Glycerin soap base making tools must never be used for preparing food!
Purchase less expensive, Grade B olive oil if you can find it. Grade B makes better soap than food grade olive oil. If you can't obtain Grade B, it is perfectly acceptable to use any olive oil.
Purchase pure lye in powder from from a hardware store. Lye is caustic and must be handled with extreme care. -
Step 2
Put on your gloves and safety goggles. Place a plastic pitcher on the kitchen scale and set the scale to zero. Add seven ounces of lye and remove pitcher from scale. Place the other plastic pitcher on the scale, set to zero, and add 20 ounces of cold water.
Very carefully pour the water into the pitcher of lye. Do not pour the lye into the water, and do not splash! Stir the lye and water gently with a wooden spoon. The solution will be very hot. You may either set it aside and wait, or place the pitcher in a pot of cold water. Stir gently and monitor the temperature of the lye solution. The solution needs to be about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. -
Step 3
Pour 52 ounces of olive oil into your soap pot. Gently stir and heat the oil until a thermometer placed in the oil reads 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove the pot from the heat. Both the olive oil and the lye solution must be at 100 degrees Fahrenheit before you continue.
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Step 4
Wearing your safety goggles and gloves, gently pour the lye solution into the oil and stir. Stir gently and constantly to ensure that all of the lye is absorbed into the fat. This may take 30 minutes or even up to an hour. As you stir, the solution will become thicker and opaque. Eventually, it will become so thick that you can lift the spoon and see the droplets sitting on top of your soap solution (these are called trailings). When you see trailings, you can stop. If you have stirred for an hour and see no trailings, stop anyway.
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Step 5
Pour the warm glycerin soap base solution into your plastic mold. Use your wooden spoon to get all of the glycerin soap base solution out of the pot and into the mold. Place the lid on the mold, and wrap the mold in towels to keep it from cooling off too quickly.
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Step 6
Check your glycerin soap base every twelve hours for the next couple of days. Open the mold, and stir any oil on the top back into the solution. Eventually, the layer of oil will stop forming.
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Step 7
If the glycerin soap base is not getting hard after a couple of days, take the lid off and expose it to the air. When the glycerin soap base has hardened enough that you can pull the sides of the soap away, you can continue. Remember, this substance is still caustic. Turn the plastic mold upside down and push the block of glycerin soap base out onto a clean surface.
Wearing your gloves, cut the big block of glycerin soap base into bar-size pieces. Let them sit and be exposed to the air for two weeks. During this time they will become less caustic; they will also shrink. -
Step 8
You now have bars of home-made glycerin soap base. The soap can be used as is. It can also be grated and melted down so you can add essential oils, food colors, or beneficial ingredients such as ground oatmeal.
