Scientific Soapmaking: The Chemistry of the Cold Process

I began looking into soapmaking months ago, probably close to a year ago now. I found several helpful YouTube Channels, but it was a lot to try to pick up and I spent months because I can't afford to waste materials. I made a few successful batches, but still had so many questions.Elly, from Elly's Everyday Soaps on YouTube mentioned this book in a few of her very, very helpful videos and I knew I wanted this book. I started at the beginning and I've been working, sequentially, through this book and Wow =D this book is the place to start if you really want to understand the ins and outs - if you want to be able to experiment on a bar by bar level (the advantage of which is that you can only "waste" a few ounces if your ideas go sideways. Any new hobby can be a lot to learn and expensive. This book gets you started on your journey with the reassurance that your learning curve will be upward, fruitful, and affordable!

Very informative book. A basic high school chemistry background is all that's required to fully digest the material. It really helps if you have at least seen some diagrams of molecules before so you don't instantly freak out when you see one. But he explains it well enough to grasp it on the first run. I've had science labs in high school and a few in college, and I have a degree in Math, but none of that was required to follow his explanations. It does not read like a cookbook. There are no recipes in here to follow. He instead teaches a process that can be used to create soaps of specifically desired qualities in such a way that it scales up very easily. The book starts out with definitions and processes and lays a foundation for the last half of the book, which is what you probably bought it for if you aren't a novice soap maker.The last half explains a few experiments he did to test various qualities in soap like whether there is a difference in a lye discount and superfatting. I found the explanation of soap curd vs neat soap to be very interesting and the experiment on melted soap vs unmelted in water was enlightening. This is a book I recommend you read if you want to know more about making soap than what you'd find in a youtube video.

Highly reccomended book,but not for the beginner looking to learn for the first time,and this is not a recipe book but more of a laid back chemistry class type text book (wish i had this guy as my science teacher in high school-I wouldnt have failed,lol!).First learn with other books that have recipes,get comfortable and confident in the process,get a few batches under your belt then get this book.It helps you understand the science behind the reactions and helps you understand how to do it better there is a lot of math and calculations.I am a "scientific"thinking person, but had I bought this book first to learn all the "beyond the basics"of soap making.....I would run the other way and never given soap making a second thought,lol!You can and should learn with basic books first,decide you love soap making,then get this book.Because if you don't love soap making, you probably won't get past page 10 of this book.Soap making is a science/art and this book is all science full of experiments like in high school.ALL IN ALL, THIS IS A ROCK STAR OF A BOOK AND WELL WORTH THE PRICE.YOU GET AN ENOURMOUSE AMOUNT OF CHEMISTRY KNOWLEDGE YOU WON'T FIND IN ANY OTHER SOAP BOOK,BUT YOU HAVE TO LOVE SOAP TO APPRECIATE THIS BOOK.I did have an issue with my order through Amazon and they were very quick to resolve the problem for me,I am now pleased with my order.Amazon was super fast in making it right and quickly processed my request, and it was even a weekend.Thank you Amazon.

Scientific Soapmaking is a book that takes soap very, very seriously. It's dense with information, but that information may not be exactly what you expect. While a lot of the book does indeed cover the underlying chemistry of soap and tackles some of the important issues soap makers face, a huge portion of the book is all about doing your own experiments. The entire first third of the book is teaching you how to make small (1-bar), highly accurate (measuring ingredients in grams to two decimals out), quick-turnaround (you're buying a roasting oven to speed things up) test runs.This degrees of accuracy and reproducibility is such that I can only imagine a full-time professional being interested in jumping through these hoops to get there. The problem is that he doesn't gear the book just towards professionals, or even experienced soapmakers; he tries to bring beginners - who have never made a bar of soap, let alone used a lye calculator - up to speed. Beginners who have never made soap before should not be relying on this book to get them started: he asks you to make a substantial investment in equipment, chemicals, and time (leaning how to do things in very specific ways) when you don't even know you're going to like the hobby or stick with it. He should have started with the assumption that anyone who would want to pick up this book has made soap already. The book grinds to a halt every time he starts talking about why you have to mix oils for the best results or what a slab mold is. Everyone who has read another soap book knows what coconut oil brings to the party, how to use an online lye calculator, and they've probably made their own castile at some point, so stepping slowly through these issues like you don't know a thing about them becomes tedious.I suppose he's trying to be inclusive of beginners to make the book suitable for students in a chemistry class. Not only does he guide you through a bunch of experiments, a lot of them aren't even soap-related. The first part of the book leads you into soap chemistry by asking you to perform a whole series of experiments with acids, bases, alcohols, and more. There are also "Practice Problems" at the end of the chapters. I skipped all this and decided to just take his word on the fact that Xg of acid would neutralize Yg of alkalines. I'm a hobbyist soap-maker and I do this for fun: I didn't want to run my own experiments, I just wanted to know the results of his.All this chemistry talk does eventually lead into what I was really after: namely, what happens when lye meets oils. And I was excited when a couple of big, fat light bulbs went off over my head. I learned about rancid oils, what happens during the curing process, and why Castor oil behaves differently than everything else. Once I slogged my way through a bunch of skippable math instruction and background info, things got much more informative.Finally, the very back of the book is where he answers the questions a soap maker is really after. Soda ash, DOS, lye discounting vs superfatting, water discounting, temperature changes, and more have been tested and laid out in charts.My final verdict? Professionals should probably own this book, and hobbyists would benefit by reading through it at least once. There's some very good information in the pages, but an average soap maker can skim half the chapters, skip the experiments, and ignore the instructive problems. I suppose this book is also written for classroom instruction, but the very things that make it a good introductory textbook make it a slow, frustrating book for soapers. Still, I'm a soaping hobbyist myself and I'm glad I bought the book.