How Soap Is Made
Being a basic household item, soap is often taken for granted, and until I started making it I never asked myself where it actually came from. While I didn’t exactly think that it grew on trees, I used to be somewhat vague on how soap is made and what goes into it.
Despite a huge surge of interest in handmade soap in recent years, many people  are still none the wiser about the actual process of soap making. So what exactly is it and how is it created? The answer might surprise you: soap is a salt. Not the kind that you find in your salt shaker, but still a salt – well, at least chemically speaking. Soap is made when fats react with alcali and undergo a radical transformation from grease to something you can clean things with. This reaction is called saponification, and the process has been around for thousands of years, helping people be cleaner and smell better one bar of soap at a time.
Taking the soap out of its form
While the reaction itself is very simple – fatty acids reacting with alcali – the actual qualities of the end product will vary wildly depending on what kind of fats and oils were used, as well as what kind of base. The traditional hard bar soap is made with sodium hydroxide, also known as lye; and liquid soap is made with potassium hydroxide. Many people think that lye is a dangerous chemical – and it is!!! – and I’ve been asked on several occasions to make a special, super mild, bar of soap without lye. That, of course, would be impossible to achieve! Some form of alcali is absolutely necessary, simply because without it there would be no saponification taking place. I would like to reassure anyone who is concerned about the use of lye in soap making: there is absolutely no lye that will burn your skin in the finished product. Once the oils and lye are mixed, the mixture starts heating up and eventually hardening. Using the traditional cold process, no additional heat is used to speed up the process of converting this mixture into soap, making it as eco friendly as possible. I usually wait for about 24 hours before taking the soap out of its forms and cutting it into individual bars, which then sit and cure out excess water for about four weeks before hitting the virtual shelves.
Cutting freshly made soap into individual bars
If you pick up a bar of Ravenscourt Apothecary soap, you’ll notice that it is made with real skin-loving ingredients like shea butter, cocoa butter and coconut oil. It will never contain any palm oil, synthetics and animal products.If you’ve ever tried handmade soap – by us or another artisan – did you notice any difference to your skin? How was your experience?
Every bar of Ravenscourt Apothecary soap is decorated with a classic red wax seal
I love using natural, cold-pressed soaps and the difference is so noticeable. I find that my skin is softer and better balanced, but more than that, other products work much better as a result. The most obvious case is natural (or any) deodorant. I discovered that less than natural soaps (ahem, Lush!) or body washes leave a residue on your skin that’s hard to remove and this can inhibit the performance of deodorant – essentially, you end up with a whole slew of chemicals and things reacting with one another. Far from ideal. Natural soaps wash cleanly away and enhance the performance of deodorants or anything else on your skin.
And all that’s without looking beyond my shower to the wider environmental impacts which add extra weight to the argument to use real soap.
I can’t wait to keep trying the natural goodness 🙂
That’s interesting that you find that other products also work better when you use all natural real soap; I’ve been using it for several years now and find that it just keeps my skin in optimum condition, even my ‘winter hands’ don’t get so bad anymore. My mother has told me that she doesn’t need to put moisturizer on after using my soap, and many more friends and family reported similar things – like their eczema improved, or that it’s ‘the only soap that doesn’t leech moisture out of their skin’. (Not that my soap is the only ‘real soap’ in the world, but I’ve heard more feedback about mine for obvious reasons.)
Hi Tanya,
I find that I don’t need moisturiser too, and that if I do use it (for example after shaving my legs) I instantly regret it as my skin feels claggy and like it can’t breathe.
I always find that standard products seem designed to leech moisture out of the skin, forcing one to use yet another product to re-add it artificially. Yuk! I also can’t abide chemical or heavy fragrances anymore. I don’t use them on my skin or when I clean my house and if I walk past someone who uses a lot of chemical products or into a home with those awful air-freshener things, my body has this flight reaction like it wants to reject all the chemicals. It’s funny how your senses make these adjustments without you knowing.
I do love how a simple change, such as using bar soap on your body or castile soap to clean you home, has so many knock-on effects. I think it serves to reinforce the original decision and motivation to change and simplify.
Kim
On the subject of cleaning your house without toxic chemicals: last year’s best purchase was a steam cleaner! (Is it a sign of getting old when you get excited about such things?). But seriously, it is just so amazing to be able to just use steam to clean your carpet and floors, without adding to the toxic load of your body and that of your pets (who are much more sensitive to many household chemicals than humans are).
And as for synthetic fragrances, after several years of working with essential oils and botanical resins and extracts, I find that I regret having to wash my hands when I am not home. They just end up smelling ‘artificial’ and it doesn’t smell pleasant to me anymore. Your senses definitely adjust without you even knowing.