I found a recipe for home made clear soap (like neutrogena) here it is:

CLEAR SOAP

1 C. tallow 1/2 C. melted coconut oil (or olive oil) 2/3 C. Glycerine 1 - 1 1/2 C. isopropyl alcohol 3/4 C. water 4 Tbsp. lye flakes (Red DEvil brand is the only pure lye) yellow food coloring (or whatever)

Melt tallow and coconut oil (described elsewhere on orig. website) Cool to lukewarm, by "floating" pan of oil in a tepid water bath. Stir lye into cold soft water. Cool to luekwarm. Pour lye into fat, stirring to emulsify. When creamy, add glycerine. Pour into mold greased with petroleum jelly.

After 3 days, grate soap into the top of a double boiler. Begin to heat over gently boiling water. Add alcohol and stir constantly. When the liquid is transparent, lift the spoon. If a ropy thread forms, remove from heat. If a skim forms immediately upon removing from heat, pour into molds.

Unmold after a few days and stack to air cure for 2 weeks.

Sounds easy, even though the lye section would requre care(rubber gloves, apron and protection for the kitchen counters) since that is such nasty stuff.

I have all the stuff now, and now am just wondering if I have a big enough pan for the double boiler, and what I will use for molding the soaps.

Anyone have experience doing this? What types of soaps did they make? What kind of essential oils did you add/use?

I can't wait to try this!

Now I just have to finish planting my hummingbird garden before I can start this.....

Oh! also: What can be used instead of tallow? can you just use all coconut oil? Could you use bacon grease (rendered out and clean) if you had to?

-- (sis@home.con), April 20, 2000

Answers

sis: Sure, you can use bacon grease if you don't mind attracting all the cats and dogs in the neighborhood!

;^)

Just kidding! Linda

-- Linda Mc (jcm@telepath.com), April 20, 2000.

What exactly is "tallow"? Where do I buy it?

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), April 21, 2000.

Kritter I think Tallow is the rendered fat from sheep. Now how we are going to get that, I'll never know. Maybe we can just use all olive oil or all coconut oil.....

-- sis (sis@home.con), April 21, 2000.

Tallow is the rendered fat from dead animals. Bacon fat, properly rendered qualifies nicely.

http://www.askjeeves.com/main/askjeeves.asp?ask=What+is+tallow%3F&orig in=&site_name=Jeeves&metasearch=yes&x=21&y=12

-- sis (Sis@home.con), April 21, 2000.

hi sis......

here is a site that has a lot of good basic information about soapmaking

http://www.waltonfeed.com/old/ soaphome.html

it goes into the way the different ingredients (tallow....fats....lyes) work together

it's a part of Al Durtschi's site.........don't know if you're familiar with him....he helps run Walton Feed

al moderated one of the gary north forum sections, and always seemed like a pretty cool dude....very helpful, and open to questions (tho i never corresponded with him myself)

so if you come across something there that you don't understand, at least you'd have someone responsive to ask questions of

his email is on the site (and i assume it's still valid.......the site was updated may 11th of this year)

hope this is helpful....... i never got around to trying soapmaking myself, but got a lot of good information from al's "old timer" site section pre Y2K http://www.waltonfeed.com/old/ default.htm

andy

ps.......al always stressed: BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN WORKING WITH LYE!!!

-- mebs (mebs@joymail.com), June 02, 2000.

pps...

you're gonna have to take the spaces out of the urls i gave ya above

i still don't know how to post a url here without those pesky spaces showing up

: )

andy

-- mebs (mebs@joymail.com), June 02, 2000.