Yesterday I made a largeish batch of hemp and castor oil soap, with a bit of olive oil thrown in for good measure.
Since I filled my larger bottles, I have two smaller (1/2l) bottles that I have decided to dispose of by giving away “first come, first serve” basis. This is great stuff – and highly concentrated, typically you’d cut it into 1/2 gal of water, or 2l and it’ll still be plenty strong. If you like “Murphy’s Oil Soap” that’s basically what this is, except without the peppermint oil for scent.
There are various formulations that you can use to make soap that is bubblier or creamier; this is more on the creamy side with a bit of bubble. I use it in my shower and for my laundry. It is fantastic for your hair, seriously. In terms of laundry, it’s comparable to “Woolite” except about 1/1000 the price and with zero odor.
We have become conditioned by marketing weasels to believe that there are special soaps for your dog, which are different from the soap you use on your sweatpants, which is different from the soap you use on your hair. That’s all bullshit – it is perfectly reasonable to have a soap that is good for darn near anything that needs soaping. The only caveat is that you should use unscented soap on your dog because their noses are really sensitive and you might not mind lavender oil but your dog might.
I make large batches of this a couple times a year for some friends that have allergies or are repelled by the sort of artificial scents you get in off the shelf detergents. The stuff I use either has lavender and black pepper oil (vaguely medicinal and makes your skin tingle) or my awesome lemon/lemon/lemon mix – three oils that are not lemon oil but smell lemonier than lemons and are not phototoxic. If you get into soap making or lotion making, you learn to be careful about other people’s allergies and what essential oils break down into nasty things when exposed to UV light. Orange oil and lemon oil are not great, so you can use lemon verbena, or lemongrass, or lemon balm, or all three!
Customs makes it prohibitive to ship this stuff internationally so this offer is restricted to the first 2 people who say “me!” in the comments. You’ll need to sign a 231-page liability waiver, naturally, since it’s not my responsibility if you drink the stuff and experience the unexpected.
If you’re one of the two lucky commenters that will get soap, please state preference for scent, or allergies (I encountered someone who was deathly allergic to lavender) and send me your mailing address, then wait patiently. If you want it unscented, say that. If you have no preference for scent I recommend lemon/lemon/lemon, which is the shizznozz.
Drivers, start your engines!
PS – I don’t mind if you want the soap so you can turn around and give it to someone else. That’s fine, so long as you don’t add any Polonium to it, or anything like that; I can’t stand the headaches that would create.
Damn.
Come on, they have long since gone beyond that. Nowadays, you have soap for men and soap for women. Soap for hands, soap for face, soap for feet, “intimate soap” for butts, and so on.
Me!
Me! I sing in a large chorus, and we gotta be careful about scented anything.
sjdorst@#1:
Me!
That’s one! mjr@ranum.com is my email address.
cubist@#3:
I sing in a large chorus, and we gotta be careful about scented anything.
You’re gonna love this stuff, then. Drop me an address and I’ll send it right out.
Do you have any of the “fight club”soap? I love that scent and need more soap.
Scent free liquid soap is excellent for people like me who have heightened sensitivity to typical smelly commercial soaps. Fortunately I can get litre bottles of the good stuff in Oz.
I made some interesting liquid soap recently that was made from 60% soy (A half gallon of expired Crisco oil), 35% pomace olive oil (The cheap shit that’s left after making EVOO) and 5% castor (for bubbles!)
Everything I had read said that soy oil made nasty solid (sodium based) soap but worked just OK for liquid (potassium based) soap. I figured I had nothing to lose since the Crisco was long past it’s expiration date and I wasn’t going to chance cooking with it so it was either make soap with it or put it in the trash.
After the initial hot method cook it was truly horrible stuff, it was stiff, gluey and just nasty no matter how much I stirred it and therefore I was very tempted to just throw it away and chalk it up to a learning experience, but instead I left it in the big pot I have for soap making and put it on a shelf in the basement thinking that I’ll come back to it another day to scrape it into the trash.
Fast forward a month and I went to throw it out and found that under a thin layer of scum on top there was a pot full of beautiful golden liquid soap! I added some rosemary oil (a great natural preservative and smells nice too) and had about 3 liters of decent liquid soap.
I had initially been cursing my decision to use the full half-gallon of soy oil as a waste of the olive and castor oils but it ultimately all worked out.
I spent some time learning (in a very rudimentary way) to read the labels on shampoos, and they actually are not all the same. In a nutshell: you will see a lot of shampoos that have a long ingredient that is basically “something something something sulfate”. Sulfates are detergents and are super good stripping off all oils. Now, you may, or may not, want to scrub all the oils out of your hair, or off your skin, so it’s good to know if that particular ingredient is in there. Another one, usually in conditioners, is “something something something cone” (dimethicone is an example). Cones will coat your hair. You may, or may not, want that. (Sulfates will scrub them off though.) For some people having their hair coated by cones (short for some type of silicone) is just not on. So again, good to know if that’s in there or not. There are products labeled “sulfate free” or “cone free” and for some people these work really well. Others would avoid these.
I do use MarcuSoap and highly recommend it.
Not for me, thanks, because not military enough. But let me know if you ever make some tactical soap!
@#10
It is scentless soap! Which means you can wash away your scent and become all stealthy! You need to get close to use that tactical spork, right?
Although a tactical throwing soap could be neat as well…
nastes
I actually did make some throwing star molds but the soap cracked too easily
I have some hand grenade molds but it’s hard to get soap to set up in a fully-enclosed mold. I made some bird seed lard bombs but that was right around when Caine died, and I was so despondent that I dropped all my craft projects on the floor and left them there until they melted.
MarcuSoap is the best shampoo I’ve ever used. I have fine hair and it tames the flyaways and leaves my hair shiny and soft. The lemon scent is amazing and it also makes a good body wash.
I also use it to wash my dog, Jack. After walks in the winter I wash his feet to get rid of salt and So far he’s had no cracking of his footpads.
I also used it on my hardwood floors and it removed scuff marks and left a nice fresh scent and shine.
I think it’s good for just about anything. Did I mention the lemon scent is fabulous?
Curt Sampson and cjheery:
I have not made “fight club” in years.
I dunno why. Washing the molds is a pain but its not too bad. Maybe I should do a batch of it in tactical black with licorice/black pepper to make for burning red ninja eyes.
Mailing solid soap internationally is a bit better but not much. It goes into customes and sits a long time.
Hm. I need to get someone to periodically poke me into making a batch of tactical “Fight Club” soap and maybe even more liquid soap. My distribution process is really random, I’m afraid. I make it, mail it out, forget about it, then someone emails me “I am out of soap” and I make more.
Part of why I posted so much about soap-making is because it’s really easy and I wanted to encourage others to try. The liquid is especially easy: you need a canning pot and the ingredients.
@Patrick Slattery#8:
I left it in the big pot I have for soap making and put it on a shelf in the basement thinking that I’ll come back to it another day to scrape it into the trash.
Fast forward a month and I went to throw it out and found that under a thin layer of scum on top there was a pot full of beautiful golden liquid soap! I added some rosemary oil (a great natural preservative and smells nice too) and had about 3 liters of decent liquid soap.
Rosemary is great soap scent!
When it gets to the “evil goo” stage you need to bring a largeish amount of water to a boil, then add it to the pot. Stir off and on until it’s all dissolved and let it set; there’s your concentrated slightly-diluted mix. Once I have it there I tap some off to make sure it’s neutral (I swirl it around in my mouth and if it feels “hot” I add a bit of dissolved borax) Soap that is too strong will bleach the color out of people’s hair…
To get the scum off the top use a gravy separator. ($20) – it’s a thingie that pours from the bottom. So you let the scum form at the surface and pour the sweet honey golden stuff out from underneath it.
The scum on the top is just very very very fine bubbles that feel and look like greasy foam. You can scoop it off, stir it in, or pour it off with a gravy separator. I usually pour it into the bottle that I use for my shampoo.
When you make your soap, if you want it neutral out of the gate, make sure there’s a bit more 5% oil than there is lye to saponify it. That way, your lye will completely react but there will be some oil that is still just oil, floating on the soap. If you chill the soap you can spoon it right off, but it’s fantastic stuff to squirt on your skin if you want to get clean and soft.
One of the things that I can’t get in any of the shops round here anymore is soap flakes in a cardboard box, which were my go to for wool and other delicates washing. You can buy liquid soap flakes (!) in a bottle, so you have to pay for the water they dilute the flakes with and you get a plastic bottle which is obviously far more environmentlly damaging even when reccyled than cardboard, never mind the extra energy for transporting the water over the flakes. Plus in my washing machine if you use a liquid for a delayed wash it seeps down onto the washing prematurely which isn’t great. Liquid soap flakes indeed, pah!
Jazzlet@#16:
One of the things that I can’t get in any of the shops round here anymore is soap flakes in a cardboard box, which were my go to for wool and other delicates washing.
I remember those.
If you tried to make liquid soap you’d be shocked at how easy and good it is. I wonder where you can get potash in the UK? I hate to admit I get mine from amazon. :(