DH makes his own soap. You need lye to make soap, without it, you just have a bunch of blended oils LOL. You may find recipes telling you to make lye out of wood ash.. but you are making the same lye.. NaOH... but it is harder to control the concentration of the lye this way. You need it for the saponification process.
NaOH is a natural chemical. If you don't use that, then you'd have to use a detergent - that's the nasty stuff. Potassium hydroxide is used for liquid soaps.
Glycerin soaps would still have gone through a saponification process, just that they then have further processes on top of that.
DH loves his olive oil soaps. Different plant oils will do different things with the hardness of the soap too. I think he uses coconut oil to make it harder? (can't remember). his 100% olive oil soap gets a bit soggy after use LOL. He keeps the % high of olive oil.. 80% or something.
He hasn't tried any milk soaps.. (and we've heard that it stinks when you make it LOL). He just uses plant oils and some essential oils, but he prefers just a very plain soap. It's done wonders for his skin using home made soap.. he had terrible acne and very oily skin and it's been fantastic since ditching commercial soaps & cleansers.
Get a hold of a book called Soap Naturally. Easy to read, explains all the basics and has a few recipes in there to try.
ETA: New Directions is a good site for ingredients and supplies.
ETA: meant to say he has honey and beeswax in all his soaps too.
Last edited by Liz; October 4th, 2009 at 11:43 AM.
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