As a soap maker, it is advisable to keep your soap-making utensils separate from the utensils you normally use in your kitchen, particularly if you are making your soap from scratch.
Essential Soap Making Utensils
The most important tool in your soap-making equipment inventory is a good-quality kitchen scale. If you don’t already have one, I suggest you get one that will measure in both grams and ounces. That way you do not have to convert recipes from one measuring system to another.
Some of the utensils and soap-making equipment you will need are common kitchen tools and utensils, like wooden spoons, or a grater (for grating bars of soap for rebatching), and can be purchased quite cheaply from any supermarket.
- Long-handled wooden spoons x 2
- Measuring cups and or spoons
- Medium-sized paring knife
- A grater
The long-handled spoons are used for stirring your fats and oils and your caustic soda and water mix. I recommend that you have at least two. You need to mark them in some way so that you use the one for each task during the soak-making process. That way you can avoid any issues of cross-contamination.
The measuring cups and spoons are handy for measuring out any additional ingredients you plan to add to your batch after tracing. You never know when you could use a good sharp knife. The grater is optional. You are only likely to use it if you want to rebatch your soap or if you need to grate any of your other ingredients before adding to the batch.
Harder to Find Utensils
Then there are some utensils and tools you will need that are not so common and include:
- Candy thermometer x 2
- Soap Knife
The candy thermometers are used to measure the temperatures of your fats and oils and the caustic soda and water mix. You need to have both at about the same temperature before you start to mix them. The caustic soda and water mix can get very hot, as can the fats and oils. Candy thermometers are made to withstand very high temperatures which makes them suitable for soap making.
Again, I recommend that you have at least two. Mark them in some way and use the same one for each task every time you make a batch of soap.
Soap knives are wide blades that are used for cutting a tray of soap into bars. To get one of these, you will have to buy one from a soap-making supply store. These soap-making utensils could probably just be considered as the basics. There are many more that you could buy and would probably use, but the utensils on this page are enough to get you started.
