Glycerin Method Liquid Soap Making.
The most common method for making liquid soap involves adding Potassium Hydroxide to distilled water to make your lye solution. Glycerin can be substituted for the water in liquid soapmaking. Glycerin speeds up the saponification process so that you achieve the various stages of creating your paste much faster and cuts down on the hours upon hours of cooking time. I also find that diluting the paste made using the glycerin method is also a much quicker process and often require less dilution water. The glycerin method is also very forgiving and almost foolproof as long as your recipe is run through a lye calculator so that you have the correct amount of Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) for your oils. Brambleberry's and Summerbee Meadow's Lye Calculators using a 0% - 3% superfat (make sure to set it to Liquid Soap) have never failed me either.
As with any soapmaking method, there are a few basic rules but beyond that, everyone has there own techniques and methods to achieve their final product. Here I will show you my method for creating liquid soap using glycerin in place of water.
You will need the following
9/4/13 - ETA: I have had several people ask for the formula I used for this tutorial. Since this is a formula that I carry in my line of soap products I cannot give the exact formulation. However, I can tell you that this tutorial uses 20 ounces of oils (14% hard oils, 86% soft oils) calculated Potassium Hydroxide and glycerin amounts. As usual, always run your formulation through an appropriate lye calculator.