Soap Making Methods

There are four basic soap making methods, although died 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!

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 color, fragrance or textures you decant your soap mixture into molds 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 color, fragrance and texture before decanting into your soap molds.

Hot Process Soap Making

For hot process soap, you 'cook' your soap base to speed up the saponification of your soap and greatly reduces 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, adding water or milk and reblending before decanting into molds.

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 past-time 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).