hizgeorgiapeach
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ORIGINAL: hejira92
hizgeorgiapeach- Thanks for the great information. I understand the chemistry, but knew nothing about soaps.
I've had to learn a lot more of the Chemistry portions of it over the past few years. Especially once I decided to start thinking in terms of a Business, and started doing the necessary research on the FDA website concerning regulations on labeling, naming, etc. The FDA gets Very persnikity about this particular subject, and regulations cover what sort of claims can and can't be made on the lable; what sorts of things in labling require the item being regulated as a Drug (any claims of health benefits - even those which have 1000+ years of background - require FDA Approval As a Drug, meaning they have to get paid, test it themselves, run clinical trials, etc.) ; what can and can't be called Soap (it has it's own specific catagory under the Cosmetics Labeling Acts of the FDA); when something has to be termed a "cleanser" or "detergent" or "skin bar" as opposed to a "Soap." If you happen to look at the Packaging for any of the stuff normally carried in the stores - you'll see that it says something like "cleansing bar" or "mosturizing bar" - not Soap.
The primary difference in the ingredients list between my Lotions and my Soaps - is that I don't use Lye in the Lotions LOL. I use the same oils - ranging from Olive and Coconut to Macadamia, Cherry Kernal, Peach Kernal, Grapeseed, Sweet Almond, Rice oil, Safflower, Sunflower, Palm and Palm Kernal oils, to Cocoa Butter, Shea Butter, Mango Butter, Illipe Butter, Kokum Butter, and Mohrah Butter. Things like the mixed Tocopherols, a Vit B complex; Silk, Wheat, and Soy proteins, natural Collagen, Goat's Milk (from a couple of grass fed herds here locally, so it's always fresh when I get it); organic Honey from a supplier in my local area - those are addititives that I use in various amounts in both soaps and lotions.
Probably my favorites of what I make are my Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey - which uses locally grown, coarsely ground oatmeal; locally produced fresh goat's milk; and locally produced Organic Honey as the 3 main Additives in a base of Olive Oil, Cocoa Butter, Coconut Oil, and Palm Oil - and what I call my "Lady McBeth" (named due to a literary joke as I was starting the company lol) which is my most basic recipe and uses Coconut Oil, Crisco, and Palm Oil with Honey as the only additive. I use Honey a lot because the sugars in the honey actually help significantly boost the lathering. I've joked for a while that my business is 50% artistry, 50% mad scientist, because it takes a touch of both. The scientist to come up with a well balanced formula that isn't to drying, and isn't lye heavy so it doesn't potentially cause the equivalant of chemical burns. The artistry to decide what color to make a given batch, what scent to make it, which combination of those two would work well together (and actually appeal to other people as well lol) and to do things like make those neat marbled effects with multiple colors, or carve the bars so they don't simply look like big ugly blocks once they're cut into individual bars - and of course do things like come up with names, logo, sales gimics, lables, etc.!
Making your own soap is Incredibly easy to learn. Same with making your own natural, environmentally friendly, skin friendly lotions, or bath salts, or fizzing bath bombes, or even body powder and lip balms. I even make my own Tattoo Balm, which I use as an all purpose body balm, and specifically as a healing promoting moisturizer when I get fresh ink. (One of the Tat shops near home and I are working on a deal for me to make it in quantity for them to sell out of their shop - they're keen on the idea of a locally made tattoo balm for their customers.)
For a batch of soap that will last my family an entire year - that's for all the people, all the pets, the dishes, and the laundry - I spend about $15 on ingredients - that's to make a single 20lb batch. Cost per bar, when you Only count the ingredients, works out to about 23 cents per bar for me on a batch like that. It'd be more for someone who doesn't buy ingredients in bulk, like I do - but even at a much higher ingredient cost due to buying small quantities, it ends up only being about 45 cents per bar. Less than I would be paying for a single large container of laundry detergent, and forget the cost of dish detergent or body bars. It takes me about 45 to 50 minutes of Actual Work - weighing and mixing lye solution, weighing other ingredients, melting oils, mixing the lye and oils, pouring it into one of my large box molds, cutting it into bars once it's finished setting up, grating up a couple of the finished bars for laundry use - to get it done. But in that process, it's a matter of 20 minutes of work, 5 hours of waiting for everything to be at the Same Temperature, then 15 minutes of work, and waiting 17 to 24 hours for the batch to harden in the mold (hardening time depends on whether I did or didn't use a stronger than average lye solution - more water = more time for it to harden), then 5 minutes of work cutting it into bars and putting those on my drying racks to finish processing and "cure out" (which is actually sitting time while excess water evaporates out of it) - 30 days of cure time wait, then 5 minutes to grate up the bars that are going into the laundry bucket, and trim the bars that are going to be used for the bath. When I started out, the process took a lot longer, simply because I hadn't worked out streamlined methods - the longer I've done this, the more streamlined the process has become, from start to finish. When I'm making a batch of soap to go in my sales stock, I add a couple of things to My price per bar - packaging per bar, a prorated portion of the cost of maintaining my business website, and a prorated portion per bar for my time at 1 hour per batch (I don't count my wait times, but I do count packaging time) - to cover the expenses of the business end. Those are costs that *I have, as a business, that someone making soap strictly for their own use or for themselves and family/friends wouldn't have. It still amazes me that so many people are willing to pay - and pay Well, mind you - for the soaps and lotions that people like myself make and sell. I guess a lot of people just don't feel like they have the time to learn it, or want to take the time to wait for the soap to finishing it's curing/drying process, or want to deal with the potentially dangerous lye. (FYI - it's only really Dangerous if you don't follow some very basic safety steps that are easy to learn and very quickly become second nature! I wear safety glasses when mixing the lye, or mixing the lye and oils to avoid it potentially splashing into my eyes, and wear fairly heavy rubber gloves to avoid it splashing on my skin and possibly causing a chemical burn prior to the saponification process getting going good.)
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Rhi
Light travels faster than sound, which is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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Dr. Bonner's and Detergent - 
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), glycerine, Shea butter, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba, aloe vera, and essential oils. I keep a lab notebook wherein I write down all my experiments. 
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