Also, I’ve started doing tech writing related blogging over at The Art of Documentation.  I’m still adding content to the “services” section of the site, but I think the rest is pretty much ready to roll.  Feel free to bang on it and tell me what you think!

Also, as you get braver with your recipes, and you realize what a huge difference raw materials makes in your final product, you may decide to go with organic materials, or fair trade or sustainable growth materials.

The oils that go in your soap are the most important ingredient as far as lather, skin conditioning, and quality go. Your oils make up more than 90% of your recipe, so sourcing oils is a really important part of growing your product line. I get asked by a lot of people where I get the organic materials I use for my products.

I’ve used a ton of vendors, and I still source locally when I’m buying small amounts of oils, or doing custom batches, but looking back over purchase orders in the last 5 years, I tend to source all of my organic and fair trade oils from Columbus Foods, via their Soaper’s Choice division.

Mike Lawson is the contact for soapmakers, and he’s probably forgotten more about oils than I’ll ever remember. He’s helped me refine recipes, as well as suggesting potential products. Also, he’s a sweetie.

A few tips if buying from Columbus:

• You can fit six 1-gallon jugs in one shipping box. To save on shipping, try to buy gallons in multiples of six.
• I avoid buying things like palm kernel flakes in the summer. The flakes will melt and you’ll have a big ol block o’ palm kernel. Palm kernel is difficult at best, and a 50 pound block of it is the stuff of messy nightmares.
• Avoid buying butters in the summer for the same reason. (Keeping in mind that my summers are based on living in the center of the sun where it’s regularly triple digits. Your mileage may vary.)
• If you’re buying considerably more oil than you expect to use right away, be sure to invest in some Vitamin E oil at the same time. Adding E will significantly improve your storage time, assuming the oils are kept cool and dry.
• Remember that each gallon of oil weighs between 7 and 10 pounds, depending on the density of the oil. Shipping rates have gone through the roof with the rise is gas prices, and you’ll be shipping things that are freight-weight. Columbus doesn’t have a big shipping markup, but heavy stuff isn’t cheap to ship.

So there you have it; a fantastic resource for high quality, reasonably priced oils. Nothing stands between you and your plans for global soapy domination.

Disclaimer: I have not been compensated in any way for this review, nor do I have a vested interest in Columbus Foods.

I’ll try this afternoon to get a some of the reviews I promised done, and I’m going to start work on this week’s instructable, which I think is going to be chocolate bath melts. Yum!

My poor server guys, who don’t support WP, have been so helpful, but WP really seems to dislike IIS, which is what we’re using because of legacy code for my cart. So, I’m in a position where I may have to lose either the cart or the blog, but I don’t seem to be able to run the both. Buggers.

I dunno. Comments now seem to be broken, the more tag is broken, the navigation is hosed…I can’t figure out what went wrong on this site, but went flawlessly on my test server, which is also a live install. The only difference is that my test server is a linux box and this server…I think…is a MS server because of the legacy code in my shopping cart.

So, stay tuned, I think I may have to delete the database and site and start all over, which would really suck, but I’m not sure what else to try at this point.

Off to search the support forums.

Working with small batches is often trickier than doing the huge batches I often do. But doing small batches lets you get all kinds of creative. Best of all, if you make a mistake, you’re not tossing out hundreds of dollars in materials. It’s fairly easy to “rebatch” a mistake batch when it’s a small batch, where as when you’re staring at 50 pounds of ruined soap…well, let’s just say it gets daunting.

This recipe I designed to fit some groovy little bundt cake molds that I found. Each one holds about 1/4 of cup, and there’s 12 of them. This batch size will also work well in silicon muffin tins, or a small silicon bread pan. (I despise lining boxes, so I use silicon whenever possible.)

Let’s get started!

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces – Coconut Oil
• 6 ounces – Palm Oil
• 1.5 ounce -Castor Oil
• 8 ounces – Olive Pomace
• 3 ounces – Canola

• 3.63 – NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide / Lye)
• 8.5 ounces Water

• 2 tsp Sweet Orange Essential Oil
• 2 tsp Green Tea Essence
• .5 tsp Lemon Essential Oil
• .25 tsp Nutmeg Essential Oil
• .25 tsp Cinnamon Essential Oil
• .5 tsp Clove Bud Essential Oil

• .5 tsp Ground spices consisting of clove, nutmeg, allspice and
  cinnamon.

Recommended tools:

• Big Ol’ Pyrex cup
• mason-type jars or glass bowls for NaOH/H2O
• stainless or silicon long handled spoon
• silicon scraper
• stainless steel (or silicon) whisk
• scale (accurate to at least .00 oz)
• candy thermometer
• microwave (not necessary, but easier)
• mold (mould)
• rubber gloves

Please note that for this project, I do not have my faithful assistant, Igor. This is NOT a project for kids. Lye is very dangerous, and children should be kept out of the area where it is being used.

Assemble your ingredients and tools. This batch moves fast after step two, and you don’t want to be running around looking for stuff. 

Melt oils in microwave (about 2 minutes on high). Measure out your water into one bowl/jar. Measure your lye in a different, very dry, container.

While your oils are melting, pour NaOH into water. 

NEVER EVER NEVER pour water into lye. That would be bad. Crossing the streams bad. 

Wearing your rubber gloves, use the long handled spoon to stir the lye and water together into a milky emulsion. Do not breathe the vapors. The lye water will get hot. Quickly. Normally I don’t recommend glass with lye, but mason jars should be more than strong enough for a batch this size, and stainless pitchers are hard to find. However, for safety, I recommend that you do this step at the sink, and let the lye cool in the sink, rather than the counter.

While the lye is cooling, retrieve your now melted oils. If they aren’t melted, stir and nuke in 30 second increments until it’s all liquid. Sprinkle ground spices into warm oils.

Now let everything come to close to room temp, which will take between 30 minutes and 1 hour. You’re shooting for a temp between 80 degrees and 110 degrees F. Take a break, read a book, catch up on email, take over a small country, whatever works for your schedule. Keep in mind that you can always warm the oils, and it doesn’t matter what temp the lye is as long as it’s cooled down below 120F.

Once everything has reached the right temperature range, add the essential oils to the oils and stir. We’re adding the EO at this stage because it’s the processing on a batch this small goes really quickly, and adding the EOs after the lye may cause the batch to seize.

Slowly pour lye into oils while stirring with a whisk.

Whisk emulsion together, stirring until you reach trace, which is the stage where the soap mix is thick enough that the whisk will leave a trace when stirring.

With this batch, trace happens in minutes. Once it’s tracing, but before it gets much more solid, pour into molds. Gently tap molds to release any air bubbles.

Cover molds with cling film. Press along the soap surface to smooth and level your pour. Find a level surface that’s relatively undisturbed.

Place a towel, then the molds, then fold the towel over the molds to completely insulate the soap.

After about 30 minutes, you can see the soap start to “gel”, as the saponification process gets going. Your soaps will feel very warm at this stage.

This is an example of “full gel”, about 1.5 hours after pouring.

Let the molds sit undisturbed and insulated for about a day. When the soap feels solid, you can peel the molds away from the soap, leaving you with this fantastic sweet spiced orange tea bundt cake.

I thought it was missing something, so I added some icing by mixing titanium dioxide with glycerin and poured a drizzle around the cake.

For this recipe, I’m using ingredients that are pretty common, or easy to find in most areas. Essential oils can be found in small amounts at places like health food stores and craft stores often carry essentials and fragrances. Just make sure, if you buy fragrance oil, that you’re buying “body safe” oils and not stuff for candles.

So, let’s start with a basic recipe in two parts.

Dry ingredients:

• Baking Soda – 8 ounces
• Citric Acid – 4 ounces
• Corn Starch – 4 ounces
• Salts – 4 ounces ( in these pictures, I used Dead Sea Salts, but mineral salts work too, and are easier to find and significantly less expensive.)

Wet Ingredients:

• Water – .75 tbsp
• Essential or Fragrance Oil – 2 tsp (for these I used a Ginger Peach.)
• Oil – 2.5 tbsp (I used cherry kernel, but any light vegetable oil will work.)
• Food coloring – 1 or 2 drops. (Your color will look very dark in the emulsion, but will be light in the fizzies, so as to not leave rings around the tub. For this batch I used one drop red and two drops yellow. The final result will be very light peach.)

Step One:

Begin by putting all of your dry ingredients into a big bowl. Glass is best because it’s non-reactive. Whisk or pestle those pesky clumps out. You want a fairly smooth consistency throughout the entire mix.

Step Two: 

 Blend your wet ingredients together. I usually use a small jar and shake it up. Don’t worry about separation too much, you’re not going to get a full emulsion. Then, while whisking, slowly add small amounts of the liquid to your dry ingredients. Here we see my faithful Igor prepare to pour.

If the mixture starts to foam, you’re going too fast. Quickly whisk the reacting ingredients into the nonreactive part and you should be able to stop the reaction. I add about a teaspoon at a time. When all of the wet ingredients have been added, you should have a mixture with the consistency of slightly damp sand. It should clump together.

Step Three:

Once your mixture is together, you have a pretty limited amount of time in which to get it into molds. To create the giant Soapy Hollow ball of bath doom, I use round christmas tree ornaments that were designed to be filled with goodies. To do a three-dimensional bomb like these, you pack each side, then overfill a tad and the center and press the two sides together. It takes a little practice to get a feel for how much “filling” you need, so don’t get discouraged if your first couple fall apart. Here we see Igor holding a filled ball.

Step Four: 

You don’t need to leave them in the mold for very long, and in fact can tap them out as soon as you fill them. These are four bombs we made with this batch.

You can use all sorts of things to make your fizzies; muffin tins, ice cube trays, candy molds, Aunt Magnolia’s denture case…whatever makes you happy. This batch didn’t make quite enough for five bombs, and it started reacting, so I quickly stuffed what was left of the batch into my “bath cookies” mold. When using objects that surround the seltzer mix, the mix must stay in the object until dry, or it will crumble when you try to take it out. This is what the bath cookies look like after spending the night in the mold.

Step Five: 

Once they are completely dry, store bath bombs in an airtight container or bag. High humidity will make them activate. Because we used oil and water and no preservatives, you want to use them within about 6 months. Assuming you can keep them for that long. Igor demands payment in immediate fizzy baths, but you may have better luck actually getting to *use* yours.

When you’re ready to use one, just drop it into a warm bath, and relax.

For those of us who make our soap using primarily biobased products, and who would prefer to be able to easily source our organic and sustainable growth oils, and who would benefit from being able to use both the label and the preferred procurement channels, this may be worth spending an hour or two on the phone.

The meeting will take place at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, South Building, Jefferson Auditorium, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC  20250. You may participate via an audio bridge by calling 1 (800) 857-5233, verbal pass code “Town Hall.”  For technical assistance, call (202) 720-8560.  All callers using the above pass code will be placed in “listen-only” mode during the presentation of information.  Participants using the audio bridge may verbally join the “Question and answer” portion of the meeting, by pressing *1 on a touch-tone telephone or by e-mailing questions or comments during the meeting to biopreferred@usda.gov.

What’s it all about?

Section 9002 of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (FSRIA) (Public Law 107-171) established a program for the procurement of biobased products by Federal agencies and a voluntary program for labeling of biobased products.  USDA refers to the program for the Federal procurement of biobased products and the voluntary program for labeling of biobased products, collectively, as the BioPreferred Program.  The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-246) continues and expands provisions related to the BioPreferred Program.

Under the voluntary labeling program, the Department will authorize manufacturers and vendors of biobased products to use the label “USDA Certified Biobased Product.”  In establishing the voluntary labeling program, USDA must identify criteria for determining which products may qualify to receive the label and specific requirements for how the label can be used.

USDA has one primary objective in establishing the voluntary labeling program:  to encourage the purchase of biobased products.  USDA believes that products carrying the label will become readily recognizable as biobased products, distinct from those that do not carry the label.  Further, as the program matures and the label is used over time, consumers will recognize that products carrying the label meet certain criteria that set them apart from other biobased products.

The meeting will solicit information on who should be allowed to use the label, what percentage of the product must contain biopreffered materials to qualify, what information must the labels contain, and qualifying which products qualify for preferred procurement.  To learn more about the BioPreferred program, visit the Web site at www.biopreferred.gov.  For more information on the meeting, contact Mrs. Shana Love, Departmental Administration, Room 209-A Whitten Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC  20250-0103; telephone: (202) 205-4008; fax: (202) 720-2191; e-mail: biopreferred @ usda.gov.

The Discussion Draft of the Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2008, introduced by US Representatives John Dingell (D-MI), Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ 6th) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) is poised to radically change and possibly destroy the boutique bath and cosmetics industry.

It is important that consumers be protected, however the current proposals don’t do anything to solve problems like the ones I talked about here. They don’t address the thousands of known carcinogens that are in cosmetics produced by large conglomerate corporations . They don’t propose a budget to enforce the regulations that are already on the books.  They, in fact, do almost nothing to protect the consumer.

What they *do* is require is that anyone who wants to make soap or cosmetics pay a “registration fee” between $2,000 and $12,000 dollars annually. Additional registration fees are applied for those that import anything used in manufacturing, such as oils, fragrances or essential oils and hydrosols. The fees are subject to go up, as they’re a discretionary budget item, rather than a fixed cost item.  There is no difference in the fee structure between Palmolive and a hobbyist who sells her products at the church bazaar.

This legislation will require that every manufacturer have access to legal council that specializes in regulation compliance. As those attorneys generally come with $500 an hour price tags, the cost of translating the legislation will be enough to push most small companies out of business.

The legislation will require manufacturing facilities that are out of the reach of any company under a $10 million market cap. Laboratory and archival requirements add significant cost barriers to entry level or small businesses.

For those who practice aromatherapy using essential oils, the barrier is significantly higher because of those products will be classified as  “drugs”, which requires manufacturing facilities like those of the companies that produce insulin or other pharmaceuticals.  Micron level filtration is completely out of the reach of most soapmakers. And frankly, it’s an absurd requirement.  Nobody has ever died from dusty soap.

The legislation is well intended. Consumers do deserve to be protected. But *this* legislation is fails to consider small businesses, is completely unfunded, generates an extraordinary amount of required paperwork, and will dramatically decrease consumer options, as they’ll be left with virtually nothing but the petrochemical options offered by major cosmetic companies.

Fortunately, this bill is still in committee, and can be modified before it’s presented on the floor of Congress.  If you agree that the bill should have some provision to scale fees and requirements to meet business size, please take a few minutes to contact The House Committee on Energy and Commerce.