Soap Making
When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.
- Fran Lebowitz
What is Soap???
Soap is the product of a chemical process called saponification, which occurs when acids in the form of animal or vegetable fats are combined with an alkalis (a solution of sodium hydroxide and water, called lye) and produce a mixture of soap and glycerin. Quite simply it’s a slippery substance that produces bubbles. Yes you are right....the kind your kids love to swim around in, in the bathtub!
Soap making is fun AND it's an ancient craft. Prehistoric people may have discovered soap when fat and ash met and saponified as they cooked over open pits. A soap manufactory was uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii, and the Greek physician Galen wrote about soap in the second century.
How Soap is Made
Interestingly, few people knew what soap really is. Several of the cleansing bars that you buy at the store and use in the shower or bath, for example, are detergents--and not soaps at all (betcha didn't know that huh?). The same holds true for many liquid hand soaps and shampoos. If you have ever wondered why your skin felt dry and you had an itch after bathing, it is because the Glycerin has been removed to sell them, to cosmetic companies. A lot of commercially made soaps have salts and other harsh chemicals added to remove the glycerin. It will cleanse by harshly stripping away the skin’s protective oils.
Soaps, unlike detergents, are made by combining lye, animal fats and /or vegetable oils, and water in a process known as saponification. Detergents on the other hand, contain petroleum distillate rather than fats or oils. Glycerin is good for the skin and Black Kettle Soaps never remove the Glycerin. We use the finest natural ingredients and essential oils in our soaps.