I suggest all newbie soapers read EVERYTHING they can. Soap making can be extraordinarily dangerous. But if you are careful - its fun and easy. I use my regular soup pot, and I bought a scale at target for 25 or so. I bought a 3 set of loaf molds from wholesale soap supplies. but when I started, I just used wax paper lined shoe boxes - if I wasn't making pounds upon pounds of soap a month, I wouldnt have shelled out for the molds. I read everything on the
Miller Soap website. Absolutely everything. i have read every page. I started with her
Castille #2 and have evolved into making my own recipe.
Here is a list of recipes. And before I use any recipe I run it through a
lye calculator.
From an earlier post I made-
I buy all my supplies - except for my olive oil which I buy at Costco. If you have room (I make room in my tiny 525 sq. ft. 2nd floor condo!) buy 3 containers of lye from
The Soap Dish, oils from
Brambleberry (coconut and palm in 7 lb containers), and essential oils from
Wholesale soap supplies. Even with shipping, it came out cheaper for me to buy from each individual site, not all at one (but I was buying other things - I suggest sitting down with a calculator, adding everything to your cart and then figuring the average per ounce total - that takes a while, but it's nice to know - and you know whether you are getting the best deal.
It's a hefty expenditure - in the beginning - but you won't have to buy soap for a long time to come! And if you like plain soap, you don't need to extra eo expenditure.
Good luck!
:
That is why (in cold process soaps) you have your soap cure for 3-6 weeks - to let the "magic' of saponification happen.
