There are four basic soap-making methods, although dyed in the wool soap makers think of a couple of them as cheating and as a result, do not count them. Serious soap makers will use either the cold process or hot process for making their soap but melt and pour and rebatching are viable alternatives for beginners.
I started with the cold process method and it is the method I would recommend that you start with if you want to really understand the soap-making process.
If you just want to make your own pretty soaps and don’t really want to do the ‘start from scratch’ thing, please feel free to use the melt-and-pour method. It is just as much fun, does take as long, and is less likely to fail!
Soap-Making Methods You Can Pick From:
Melt and Pour Soap Making
If you want your soap-making to be a family activity, melt and pour is probably the best method for you.
Basically for melt and pour you buy a prepared soap base, which is melted before you add any additional ingredients to make your soap unique. When you have added colour, fragrance, or textures you decant your soap mixture into moulds or shape it by hand to create your bars of soap.
This method is much safer for working with your kids than making your soap from scratch as you do not have to handle any caustic or corrosive chemicals to make the soap.
Cold Process Soap Making
Cold process soap making is the method for making your soap from scratch.
You start with the raw ingredients and combine them in the appropriate quantities to create your own soap base, to which you add colour, fragrance, and texture before decanting them into your soap moulds.
Hot Process Soap Making
For hot process soap, you ‘cook’ your soap base to speed up the saponification of your soap and greatly reduce the aging period for your soap.
Probably not the method of choice if you are a beginner!
Rebatching
Rebatching is a method of ‘remaking your soap’. Basically, you grind up existing bars of soap, add water or milk, and reblend them before decanting them into moulds.
This soap-making method is another good one for sharing with your kids.
Soap-Making Safety Tips
Before you start measuring out your ingredients, for your own good, please take the time to look over this page of soap-making safety tips!
Soap making can be a safe and rewarding hobby, but it can also be a very dangerous pastime if you do not respect the ingredients and the process.
Soap Making Troubleshooting
One of the nice things about making soap is that a disaster does not have to stay that way!
With a little bit of soap-making troubleshooting, just about any ‘bad’ batch can be saved or re-invented by re-batching your soap (for instructions on how to do that check out the re-batching page above).
