Soap Making

Soap making may be the oldest craft there is. Of course, in the good old days of the Phoenicians and Babylonians (two cultures thought to have produced the first soaps) soap making wasn’t a hobby, it was a necessity. For a lot of human history soap has been made by individuals for family use, and if you ask the thousands of crafters who still make soap they’ll tell you that’s the way it should be.

Early soap making

Like many great inventions, soap was probably discovered by accident. The main ingredients in the original formulations of soap were animal fat and ashes, so ancient man (or, really, woman) likely discovered soap when the fat drippings and ash left in the fire pit got wet and made foam.

The person washing up the pots might have noticed that when ashes got into the cooking vessel and combined with the animal fat, that foamy stuff actually made it easier to wash the pan.

Over time, people learned that ashes and fat were the key ingredients to soap, but no one really understood how or why soap making worked for many centuries.

We know for sure that the Romans made soap because of the accounts of Pliny and the existence of a soap making factory in Pompeii. Through the influence of the Romans, the Celts also began to use soap, and in that way, soap making slowly spread around the world.

Soap in the colonies

When the first settlers moved to America, they took a lot of soap with them and asked for soap when new colonists were set to arrive. Eventually, however, they found that clearing land for farming left them lots of ashes and slaughtering animals for food left waste fat, so they could easily make their own soap.

At this time, soap making was still very much trial and error, as no one really understood the science behind it. But in the colonies, professional soap makers took over much of the trade, from producing the potash (the ash component) to making and selling soap.

Because potash and its cousin pearlash were very valuable, the colonies and later America produced a lot of these materials to trade with Europe. Of course this decimated the American tree population by the end of the 18th century. But the development of sodium hydroxide (aka caustic soda or lye) made the process of soap making much easier, cheaper and less environmentally damaging.

How soap is made

Soap is basically a chemical reaction caused by the combination of sodium hydroxide (or some other “salt”) and fat, which traditionally came from animals but now is often replaced with vegetable, fruit or nut oils.

The lye is mixed with water while the fats are heated. When the two mixtures have reached about the same temperature (usually around 110 degrees F, but check your recipe) the two are combined (always adding the lye to the fat). Then you stir and stir and stir (or use an immersion blender) until the soap gets to the right consistency to mold and allow to cure.

This is all explained in greater detail in many of the articles you will find below.

Though soap making has come a long way in terms of the ease of making soap at home, the basics have really changed that much. There is still a formula that must be followed, even if we have far superior ingredients and thus far superior soap than what was made in times of old.

Soap making is a great hobby and soap makes a wonderful gift because, let’s face it, everyone needs it! . .