Soapmaking

Soap is one of the fundamental inventions that created the modern world. Consisting of three basic ingredients, oil, water, and a high-pH reactant (we usually use lye), soap’s main job is to separate oil and water, which allows the oils and grime to be washed away.

In addition to the three basic ingredients, there is an endless number of additions that can be used to enhance the smell and color, change the cleaning properties, and affect the hardness of the bar, and the softness of the feel.

In this workshop, we start in the classroom to learn about the chemical processes happening when you make soap and when you use it. Then, we’ll take a look at an online soap calculator, which will allow us to plug in desired traits and get the exact measurements of the ingredients required.

Then, we will move to the soap lab and mix up our batch.

Each student has a soap mold that makes four bars of soap. When the mix is ready, we pour the so-called batter into each of these molds.

The mixture must cool down over night, but in the morning can be cut into individual bars. The bars will take about six weeks to cure, during which time it will lose some of the water content and become harder. But mostly, the curing time will allow the chemicals to get to know each other so they can work together to keep us clean.