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AMY SMITH LINTON

Making Soap

11/24/2013

14 Comments

 
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It's a little bit mad-scientist, a little bit Little House on the Prairie, and even though the answer is "Yes," to this question:
"Can't you buy that stuff these days?" 
I continue to make a batch or two of soap every year. 

Call me a thrill-seeker, but the two main ingredients alone are worth the effort: 

boiling oil and caustic lye. 

In everyday life -- aside from driving a car -- what's more hazardous than boiling oil and a lye solution that WILL burn the skin clean off your skin? 

My former sister-in-law K taught me this old-fashioned craft. She impressed upon me the urgency of getting the measurements absolutely precisely right, and about not playing around with this dangerous stuff. Seriously. 

K made wonderful soaps, including one particularly astringent batch that she instructed us all not to use "on your generals." 

Saponification = the chemical process by which a strong base (like lye) chemically combines with oil to form soap. 
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Thanks to her caution, I do wear rubber gloves and eye protection during the dangerous phases of soap-making, and make sure of excellent ventilation. Still, from time to time, I am profoundly glad that K has missed some of the more creative moments in the laboratory.

Of course aside from the thrill of not getting hurt with the dangerous ingredients, there's the alchemical fun of making, you know, SOAP.  The essential oils –– essential! –– like lavender, peppermint, vanilla, clove. And more exotic scents: bitter almond, sweet orange, birch, wormwood, violets. And that's just the tip of the smelly iceberg.

Add beeswax, and rose petals or steel-cut oatmeal, cinnamon, or dried mint and powdered green algae or ground marsh mallow root and chopped almonds and the soap is like a good magic spell.

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I'd been at this for a few years -- defying hideous injury, stirring up hedge-witchery, and sending the sudsy products into the world as gifts  -- when a friend said, "Hey, not for nothing, but can you make some soap without the leaves and twigs for once?" Because, regrettably, that stuff got caught in her man's body hair.  

Sure, I said, for once.  Though, honestly, probably not for twice, because really, why NOT add whole leaves, tiny plastic toys, lashings of rose absolute or eucalyptus oil, flecks of bergamot, dried heads of clover? If you are going to make your own soap, you might as well aim for something strange and wonderful.

14 Comments
Cath Mason
11/24/2013 04:47:49 am

How caustic! Yum

Reply
Amy
11/24/2013 05:38:45 am

Thanks for stopping by, Cath!

Reply
greg
11/24/2013 12:38:30 pm

quite a bit of homemade soap around here, Wonder what a bar of Moth soap would be like. getting in a lather thinking about it. LOL

Reply
Amy
11/25/2013 01:13:59 am

Classic Moth Boat soap?
Essential oil of...turpentine? With spruce sawdust as an exfoliant?
Or possibly essence of epoxy with fiberglass sprinkles...
Hmmm.
They'd have to be molded into a circle with a big M in the middle.

Reply
george a.
11/25/2013 01:50:07 am

For Classic Moth Boaters make it a two part process: bar 1 = mold release wax; bar 2 = an artisanal mixture of epoxy, fillers (closely guarded recipe), and carbon with just a hint of Nomex honeycomb.

For Vintage Mothists just shred up some Atlantic white cedar bark and mix liberally with resorcinol glue.

george a.
11/24/2013 01:32:13 pm

Kinda reminds me of my early years as a molecular biologist when we had to distill phenol in order to remove impurities, which if left in would oxidize nucleic acids during isolation. If the still "ran away" and boiled over there was the distinct potential for an explosion, with the production of flying glass and boiling phenol. A thing which to be avoided required scrupulous attention to the mantel supplying heat to the still. Now days all the reagents for DNA and RNA isolation come in a "kit" and nobody knows how to do anything from scratch. Probably a good thing since fires and explosions in our labs have become something of a rarity.

Reply
Amy
11/25/2013 01:23:04 am

George--
Exactly!

Same way one rarely hears about disfiguring lye accidents these days.

Same way when I got re-certified for SCUBA recently they didn't even really cover the science behind tanked air. What is it, the ABC's? Gah, I have to look them up: Boyle's, Charles's, Dalton's Laws. Reminding me why I prefer my air untanked.

Reply
george a.
11/25/2013 01:51:50 am

For Classic Moth Boaters make it a two part process: bar 1 = mold release wax; bar 2 = an artisanal mixture of epoxy, fillers (closely guarded recipe), and carbon with just a hint of Nomex honeycomb.

For Vintage Mothists just shred up some Atlantic white cedar bark and mix liberally with resorcinol glue.

Reply
george a.
11/25/2013 01:53:38 am

Sorry about the repeats--kept getting an error message that said "try again". Next time I'll consult my Magic 8 ball before doing so.

Reply
Amy
11/25/2013 05:59:58 am

No worries, George, I have a magic "fixit" button!

spongeBobsquareChuck
12/3/2013 01:06:14 am

Your writing is more fun than Frank Caliendo! Frequent notes on the dangers of this stuff is a service to crafters everywhere. Please use a full-face motorcycle hemet when you do this - with the visor down. Years ago I was told that the thousands of tons of caustic soda we lugged from Nawlins to San Francisco was to provide Publix with canned skinless tomatoes forever. Caustic on your skin is a wake-up, but all the vinegar lemon juice and water in the world will not save a very absorbent eyeball. Benzene MTBE and PVC glue play nice by comparison.

Reply
Amy
12/3/2013 06:01:12 am

Hey SpongeBobsquareChuck --
Frank as Morgan Freedman-? That's funny! Thank you!

Good reminder about the sanctity and absorbent nature of eyeballs -- all joking aside, lye can be deadly stuff. I wear large and very stylish safety glasses when doing my soapy mad-scientist thing -- and I usually do the mixing outside, with a very long spoon...

Reply
Kate link
12/5/2013 08:34:03 am

LOVE this post... almost as much as I love your kindred morbid curiosity about the world around you! We two would make a dangerous pair...

Reply
Amy
12/5/2013 09:40:21 am

Thank you Kate!

That must be the cosmic reason we are located on opposite sides of the continent. Hmph. How unimaginative of the cosmos.

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