My mom picked up this book
https://www.discountbooksale.com/p92...ant-Soaps.html
I read through the whole thing and made some notes. but I came to a point where the book contains contradictory information.. This is very dangerous when working with Sodium Hydroxide (lye). So I had a question for anyone who makes lye soap.
The basic hot-process recipe for lard or tallow (a "single-oil" recipe) calls for these ingredients. It's scaled down to 1 oz. and you would multiply by the weight of the soap batch you want to make:
1 oz. lard
1/2 oz. water
1/2 oz. lye
seems straightforward enough until you flip over about 10 pages to a table that gives the saponification values of the oils. You use these values to calculate amounts for making your own recipes.
1 oz. Lard in this table has a saponification value (how much lye to add for 100% saponification) of .138 oz lye.
That is quite a difference, and we are talking about using VERY caustic materials. Too much lye in your batch will make soap that not only removes dirt, but skin too!
so which is it? .5 oz or .138 oz? that's the difference between removing dirt and removing skin...
I got a pound of lard and a small can of lye for $6 today and I want to learn to make my own soap. I don't want to waste the materials and I don't want to burn my flesh off either.. so there's my dilemma.
I've tried digging through the countless websites about soapmaking and most all of them have really complicated recipes requiring essential oils and all kinds of crap I don't care about using. I have no intention of making perfumed soaps.. I just wanna get clean. I want to just use fat and lye and make soap.. simple.
If anyone knows the CORRECT amount of lye to use per oz of tallow or a really good site that has single-oil recipes, please let me know. I really want to learn how to do this. It's part of my self-reliant ideal. I'd have made soap today, but I ran into this problem and can't seem to get straight answers.
