Last night Roni taught me how to unite lye, water and oil in a process that causes the lye to become neutralized called suponification. This is how to make what we commonly call soap. Most people know how to use soap but they don’t really know how soap cleans things. Historically, soap was discovered by the women of ancient times who found that when they did their laundry on the river banks below the areas where sacrifices occurred, they saw that their clothes became cleaner. This was because the ash and the fat from the sacrifies were falling down the hill and mixing with the water creating lye, which is one of the main ingredients in soap. Soap’s main function is to break through the outside membrane of water making it so that the molecules of water can get wetter.
The endeavor of ours to make soap is more of a chemical experiment then I ever would have believed, and I learned it is imperative that when working with these substances that you weigh everything carefully. Roni has done this before so I felt good about what we were doing. Roni had her little scale and boxes with Tupperware and tools that are only used for making soap. The lye was handled carefully and was weighed precisely. This was set to one side and we weighed the water in a separate container. (Did you know that 1 gallon of water weighs 8 lbs?)
The first step is to weight out the water and the lye or sodium hydroxide. Lye is a very dangerous substance. It can only be bought at certain locations. Roni told me that when she bought hers she had to sign a form stating that she wasn’t a terrorist. (So I wonder if they really believe that terrorists wouldn’t sign that form when asked?) There are lots of warnings about lye and it’s harmfulness to humans because it is positively charged. One little molecule on human skin can burn the skin leaving a hole. The way to counteract this burning sensation is to put something like olive oil on the skin to neutralize the lye.
When we mixed the water and the lye together we had to do it outside and I wore a chemical face mask because the gas from this chemical reaction can kill you. I stirred the solution of lye and cold water with a spatula and after just a few minutes the temperature rose 110 degrees; from 70 to 180 degrees! When we took the spatula out it was already showing signs of deterioration in that the tip of the spatula was falling off having been eaten away by the lye. We left the lye solution on the porch to cool down while we started the next step.
We began mixing the oil solution back inside the house. The first oil we added was olive oil and we used about 4 lbs of it. Olive oil is just good for your skin in general. The recipe then called for palm oil and coconut oil, neither of which are easy to get. Palm oil is a good detergent and coconut oil is good lather. Roni orders these two online and has to buy in them bulk so she keeps two big 5 gallon buckets that hold each oil. Palm oil is used because it causes lather and the coconut oil is good for skin softening. Roni used a big serving spoon to scoop clumps of these oils out of their respective buckets and into a container on the scale for measuring. Coconut oil and palm oil both have low melting points, around 80 degrees, so when Roni was scooping them out they were melting very quickly. All three oils, olive, palm and coconut, were put together in a big pot and heated on the stove.
Now the trick to making soap is to have your lye and water solution the same temperature as your oils so we kept moving back and forth between the solutions trying to find when they were both the same temperature. When they both got close to 130 degrees we mixed them together, along with some crushed oatmeal, honey and avocado. We used oatmeal because it has healing and soothing properties, contains vitamin E, and is an exfoliate. The honey was added because it is just good for you all around, and the avocado oil contains vitamin E which is good for your skin.
With the help of an electric mixer we got all of this mixed together, working quickly as it began to harden. We cleaned out some long deep trays and poured the liquid mixture into these molds so it could cool. It will take 24-36 hours for the substance to harden completely. Then we will cut the long blocks into smaller pieces that people more commonly associate with soap. See my pictures to see what I mean. The soap is cured or kept for about 4-6 weeks before it is ready to be used. Now it is still a bit strong.
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