Help needed in making soap

Are you sure that you want to handle caustic soda? Though it looks innocuous it can be more hazardous than acid. It causes skin burns and worse.

Lots of accidents happened in early days of home soap making in the USA. Hot caustic can cause quite a bit of damage. It has to be avoided if toddlers are around.
Here is a list of Chennai sources:
Caustic Soda Flake Dealers in Besant Nagar Chennai - Justdial

(My first job was in producing caustic soda and also soap making in 1960)

Arunadhri

 

Please keep up posted on your progress on your soap making. I used to think about doing that but it got pushed to the back burner with other projects.

We have a LOT of local soap makers in my area. One very popular type is goats milk soap, also oatmeal and olive oil soaps. A company in the next town makes a brand called SoapRocks which are glycerine soaps made to look like precious rock samples. (This soap is a little harsh so I do not use it.)

In the colonial period here, the caustic soda was made from running water through wood ashes and you would get the lye water from that for use in making soap. They would make very very big kettles of soap outside on wood fires and so soap making was a chore done perhaps once a year (back then they didn't wash like now either bodies or clothes so God knows if it was once a decade! (joke) ). I think back then they mainly used fat from animals and that procedure also had its dangers. The quality of the soap produced could vary hugely and then you were stuck with awful or too strong soap for a long time which I think was why folks would prefer going for industrially made soaps. I think the home made soaps were mainly from areas that were very poor or remote and lacking access. Now I think most soap here is made from vegetable source oils.

 

Anuram: If you can go to North Chennai, there is an entire street that deals with household chemicals. I buy baking soda for cleaning in the bulk from a shop in Rasappa Street off Evening Bazaar Road. There are gardening equipment and hardware shop on the street.
Do let us know how the soap turned out. tks.

 

Hello Ladies,
Can anybody please tell me how to prepare sopas at home.

What is the concentration and measurement for doing this.
Besides also please tell me what precautions to be taken ( I have toddler running all around ).

Thanks
Shilpa.

 

Anuram:
did you use any scent in your soap? If so...what did you choose?

BTW, I was taught by my grandmother when I was a kid that all soaps you buy you should unwrap if they are in airtight packaging and let them harden and age. In this way your soap will last much longer. I know that some soaps I have purchased in India were really soft and would have improved with this aging.