Two weeks ago my oldest daughter, Madison, and I made our first of (hopefully) many batches of soap. We mixed lye with olive oil and coconut oil. It was hysterical to see, as I had heard and read so much about the caustic nature of lye that we were dressed up like hazmat workers from the latest sci fi movie. We had bright yellow dish gloves up to our elbows, long-sleeve shirts and long pants, and safety goggles on. As I measured the lye on the scale it was as if those flakes were some deadly virus or germ. I was that afraid to touch them! But as we got further into the process we started to feel a bit more confident. One thing I wasn't prepared for was how long it took. When I added water to the lye it heated up right away - it was actually a great chemistry lesson for Madison and I to see the reaction. But it took FOREVER for it to cool down. I had heated up the oils to combine them, and I was supposed to start mixing the lye and oils together when they were both at a temperature of about 95 degrees. The oil cooled down much more quickly, so I kept heating that up and we waited and waited for the lye to cool down!
When I finally got them both to within a few degrees of each other, and close to 95 degrees, I poured the oils into the glass bowl I had the lye mixture in and we began to stir. And stir. And stir. We were waiting until the mixture began to trace: that is until when we lifted the wooden spoon we were using and let some of the liquid drop down, it took few moments for it to settle. Almost like a pudding looks as it starts to thicken, or so they said. Well, this "tracing" seemed a bit obscure to me, not being a big pudding connoisseur , but I thought we could figure it out.
As we switched off stirring I read my instructions once more and saw that this process could take up to an hour before tracing! What! I am not knon for being the most patient person, so I decided that I would try the other technique advocated by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (authors of The Urban Homestead.) They make their soap in a blender. What had sounded crazy and dangerous to me 40 minutes earlier now sounded genius! I was hesitant to use my Vitamix, the only blender I have and extremely precious to me, but this called for desperate measures so we pulled it out and poured the liquid soap right in. We blended, checking every 30 seconds or so, and it still took about another 10 minutes, but finally it thickened up and I thought I saw tracing. The recipe had said to pour as soon as you noticed tracing because it hardens quickly, so I didn't want to miss my window! We added our lemon balm essential oil, which smells fresh and heavenly, and poured our soap into lined muffin tins. We had bought a new muffin pan because I wanted to be absolutely sure it wasn't aluminum, as apparently lye and aluminum reacts and can explode. Then we covered it up and set it in a high place to cure. We had to make sure it was out of reach of kids and pets for at least 3 days because the lye is still caustic until after the 3 day period and I didn't want my dog ingesting those sweet smelling soap muffins!
After a week Madison and I checked the soap. We were so excited, although we still needed to wait 3 more weeks to use it, as it needs to cure for at least a month. It is pretty and smells delightful, but it is disappointingly mushy. I think that in my anxiety about catching it before it hardened, I didn't quite get the "tracing" right. But they are useable bars, it was great practice, and we feel so much more confident and ready to make another batch.
We have 18 small vials of essential oils: lavender, tea tree oil, eucalyptus, peppermint, spearmint, orange, and a bunch of other scents. And we are going to go to the thrift store to buy a blender specifically for soap making. Then we'll give it another shot!
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