The Vegetable Oils Combine

Beautiful, aren't they? Soy, olive and coconut oils, all gently swimming around together in my soap pot on the stove until they reach 100-105 degrees F.

While these oils are melting (coconut oil is a solid at room temperature) and heating, I'm combining pure lye with water, and putting that mixture into an ice bath in order to get it DOWN to 100-105 degrees F. When you mix lye with water you get a WHOLE lotta heat, let me tell you!

And here's a little urban culture tidbit for you ... I used to be able to buy good old Red Devil Lye at the grocery store for this soap-making venture. It's the pure lye stuff that you buy to pour down your clogged-up drains to clear them out. Many other drain cleaners have flooded the market in recent years that will accomplish the same thing, drain-wise, but they have all kinds of other weird ingredients added to them, and they will NOT work in soap-making.

Welllllll....... it seems all the home-based crystal-meth manufacturers have been using Red Devil Lye to create their illicit drugs -- so most, if not all, grocery stores have pulled the stuff off their shelves. Red Devil now only sells another product that has all that other junk in it. If the junk is in it, you can't make the drugs with it. Nor can you make soap.

But thanks to all the other generous and lovely soap-making afficionados out there, I now know where to go to buy the PURE lye once again ... but I'm not advertising the fact and I'm not tellin' ya' where to get it unless you can somehow prove to me that you're making large-batch cold-process soap and your life as such will be over if you can no longer obtain pure lye ;-)

The Lye Water

Now, most people freak out at the very mention of that three-letter word, 'lye'. I suppose it's deeply embedded ancestral memories of moms and grandmas bearing the multiple scars of lye burns from their annual soap-making endeavors over an open wood fire involving lots of rendered pig fat and wood ash and rain water.

I'm serious. That's how they used to have to make soap. And they only made it once or twice a year, and it was called "lye soap," and it was a nasty, brutish type of body cleanser compared to what we can create today with all our fancy electric stoves and digital cooking thermometers. Plus, thank goodness, I don't have to render any pig or cow fat to fill the fatty-acid side of the chemical equation. I have the luxury of readily available olive, soy and coconut oils.

But believe me -- I've had my share of lye burns on my hands and forearms. I'm one of those stubborn ones who refuses to wear goggles, gloves and all other manner of protective gear while crafting soap. The good news is -- lye burn scars fade within a year. But DARN they hurt when they happen!

The Chemical Process Begins

I've just poured the lye water into the oils. I love to watch the physical transformation as the two solutions combine. Amazing, isn't it? (Yes, I'm a chemistry nerd. I went to college to become a Medical Technologist. Organic Biochemistry was my absolute FAVORITE class.)

With a few quick stirs, the chemical process begins to work its magic, eventually turning liquid fatty acids and a strong alkali solution, both at about 100-105 degrees Fahrenheit, into a solid salt. Which we all now know by its common name -- SOAP.

A few quick stirs, magical as they are, don't quite cut it as far as making good soap. Fact is, this stuff has to be stirred FOREVER in order to get the whole process complete. BUT -- if you have a handy-dandy stick blender available, what was once a tedious 30-60 minute carpal-tunnel-inducing stirring job becomes a 2-5 minute breeze. And as this magical mixture thickens and reaches what is called a "light trace" stage (much like pudding right before your pour it into the bowls to set up), I will add the fragrance oil, give it a few more quick stirs, and pour it into the molds.

All Tucked In

My White Gardenia soap babies, all stirred up and tucked in to their insulated wooden crates, for a nice long 24-hour sleep as the curing process begins.

It smells delightful here!