Soapmaking Advice?

Hello All,

So, I'd like to make soap.  My recipe is:  300ml unfiltered extra-virgin olive oil, plus 24g of lye mixed with 100ml of water.  Then, I'm supposed to heat the oil to around 50 degrees C, add the lye, and stir till it's soap.

Can anyone tell me if the above sounds reasonable?  Also, how careful do I have to be with ventilation, breathing, and eye protection if I'm heating lye up to 50 degrees?

Really want to do this, but don't want to damage my health or waste resources with the wrong recipe.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cheers for now,

-- Jojo

A double boiler should help keep the temperatyre steady. I confirmed with wiki that the molar ratio of the ingredients is 1:1 and could help you figure out the volume or weight in a few hours of needed

Gloves, long sleeve and goggles should be a must. I would also use a steel pot to avoid issues with aluminium

Thanks, Zeus.  What about breathing?  Is it hazardous, or does the place just need to be well ventilated?

Not sure what a double boiler is...

Here you go:
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp
It's everything you need to make sure your recipe will work.  Let me know if you have questions about how to use it.

Just punching in your numbers (converted to measurements shown) I see that your soap will be extremely conditioning, but not cleansing and not bubbly:

Additional advice:
1. Use non-metallic mixing spoons. I use wood.  I use thick glass bowls.
2. Put your lye into your water, not the other way around. I do this outside on the deck and just leave it set out there for 5 minutes. That way ventilation is a non-issue.
3. Once my lye is mixed with water it will heat up a great deal. While it is cooling down, I have my oils cooking in the microwave so that the saturated fats, like coconut oil or lard become a liquid.  A microwave melts your oils in a few minutes. Know that you will get a harder bar of soap if you add saturated fats. 100% olive oil will make a very gentle soap.
4. I let everything cool to 115 degrees fahrenheit, which equates to 46 degrees celcius in your part of the world.  Once it hits that temp, that is when I pour the lye water into the fats.
5. Get a stick blender if that is an option for you. It makes mixing the soap to trace a pretty quick and easy process. Hand mixing works fine too.  Once you come to a trace, then add any essential oils you want to add. Mix enough more to mix in the essential oil. Then immediately pour into mold.
6. Have your soap mold ready to pour into before you begin the mixing process.

The oils I like to use are lard, coconut, olive and soybean (Crisco or an equivalent).  The oils I use in shampoo are a whole different matter.
My favorite essential oils are either a blend of:
lemon and tea tree
or
pine, cedar, eucalyptus with a bit of lemon.

Soap making is fun! Follow a tested recipe (and/or double check it on a soap calculator), have everything ready at the beginning, wear long sleeves and gloves and glasses. I'm pretty careful partly because my kids are watching and sometimes helping. I do mine on top of our chest freezer in the garage because I don't want the lye in the house. Once I get more comfortable I'll probably relax on some of that.

I find it easy to accidentally overblend then it's too thick to pour and fill the molds nicely. We use a deep, round 6 quart plastic container like restaurants would use to mix it in. I do a recipe with mainly shea butter, olive oil and goat milk and everyone loves it- so creamy.

It takes a lot of essential oils for scent so be sure it's accounted for in your recipe.

A double boiler is like heating a pot by placing it inside another pot with a hot liquid, I think it has another name in the cooking/bakimg realm. The lye powder is more dangerous than when it is in warm water so a dustask wouldn't hurt, use a respirator and make a permie skit

So, a quick update:

After three attempts, I finally managed to make a couple of ml of (very soft) soap!  I was having trouble extracting lye from hardwood ash, so a friend suggested adding iron nails to the burning process.  I still only managed to extract a tiny bit of lye, but I only left the ash overnight, and it was a small quantity.  At least this is proof of concept!