Ever made soap?

i used to have a pretty lame soap making kit. all you really did was put some stuff in a mold though.
but it seems like a pretty cool hobby, it can be good if you know what you’re doing because you can come up with some cool stuff. like, i buy this homemade soap from a lady and it did absolute wonders for my acne, and it was just a few simple ingredients.
so in theory it’s awesome but i’m not real sure about the actual process of making it.

To make real soap you need to render fat and add all sorts of toxic, dangerous and potentially skin melting chemicals so i wouldn’t suggest it. Although if you have good instructions and maybe a home kit for safety then why the hell not.

Haha ‘fight club’ in the topics :D . . . . “Tonight we make soap”

This might be useful.
I’ve only tried making shampoos and shower gels when I was in school, so we had the equipment and environment for it. Never tried it at home, but it looks cool.
I quite like the idea of recycling your soaps, but I’m sure it can be done a bit more creatively than shown in that link.

I used to make soap and did it in a small kitchen. I used special pots and pans that I got from a thrift store, was careful with the toxic materials (lye) and wore gloves.

At first I thought this would be a great, fulfilling hobby that had practical, economical use, would allow me not to use so many chemicals and also be able to custom perfume my own soaps – but the novelty wore off quickly. I found that I was freaked out about using the chemicals in my kitchen, I got sick of having filled soap molds covering all of my surfaces, and I actually wound up spending a lot more money on the supplies. I dunno- when I was making a product like soap it was hard for me to not spring for all the extra details. Ultimately I realized I liked the convenience and lather of my commerical soap better.

I don’t want to dissuade you though, because the first few times were fun, as a learning experience. I would recommend you invest in a small, pre-packaged hobby kit and try it once or twice – then use the soap and see if you really like it and think that all the people you will inevitably give it to for gifts will too.

I think that would be a good way to test drive the hobby, with a low of investment of time or money.

I made soap as holiday presents one year and I had a lot of fun with it. it’s very time consuming, and does require a bit of space and initial investment. i got the supplies from an online distributor http://www.essentialwholesale.com/, but i was limited in the scents by how much i wanted to spend on essential oils. I ended up making mango/coconut oil soap scented with cinnamon and orange oils. it was awesome and that one time made 40 bars of soap, which was great and no one ever got tired of it.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the chemicals. I went to the Salvation Army and got a bunch of used pots and pans, and made the lye mixture outside. It wasn’t that hard, and I didn’t feel like it was scary or dangerous in any way. It’s just delicate.

The only thing is that you need to have something to do with all the soap. One time makes a lot! I had a friend who would make 7 or 8 batches in the autumn and then wrap them up and give 2 or 3 of them as presents.

Also there are melt and pour soaps, which are a lot less complicated, and don’t need any chemicals.