I want to make a lot of soap this spring and summer. I've been thinking about doing this since I moved onto farm land a couple years ago. I have some nice ingrediants growing on my property, such as rasberries, chamomile, flowers, appletrees, patchuli plant etc. I have a lot of neat things growing that I think can make good soap and scent.

I understand that different ingrediants call for different amounts of lye, but is there a general ratio known of how much lye is used for how much final bar soap product? If I were to order an excess, are sealing pale containers capable of storing a bulk of lye for a long time? Is airtight good enough to store it well?

How would I go about getting essences of things into bars of soap. Such as pine scent, or the patchuli or chamomile and other flowers... Would a chamomile-scented soap be acheived by incorporating a chamomile-tincture into the soap recipe somehow?

What is the simplest soap I can make for my first trial? ... ie can I use just lye, water, and corn oil for my first run at it? Nothing special just my first trial with my lye, safety equipment, and some household oil from the kitchen or something. Once I do that and convince myself making bar-soap isn't hard, I will start experimenting with recipes.

Anyone have a suggestion for a new soaper?

thanks a bunch

http://www.soapnaturally.org/hayleyr.html#mp

Happy Soaping - Tina_2

Go slow at first when making soap, they're many mistakes that can be made and some experimentation should be done first. After the first recipe has been made it will be at least 1 month until you get a good idea of what you have accomplished. I know you'll feel like an expecting parent soon after you make your first batch.

"I have some nice ingrediants growing on my property,..."

Each ingredient should and take some investigation to do it right; methods, amounts etc..

"I understand that different ingrediants call for different amounts of lye, but is there a general ratio known of how much lye is used for how much final
bar soap product? If I were to order an excess, are sealing pale containers capable of storing a bulk of lye for a long time? Is airtight good enough to
store it well?"

The ingredients that you mention that you might grow on your farm do not require any lye, only fats and oils

"How would I go about getting essences of things into bars of soap. Such as pine scent, or the patchuli or chamomile and other flowers... Would a chamomile-scented
soap be acheived by incorporating a chamomile-tincture into the soap recipe somehow?"

Tinctures, I believe are alcohol based and wont play nice with your soap making.
I have added chamomile into soap by steeping the chamomile in warmed olive oil for 4 hours, then using the olive oil (straing out the leaves), in the recipe. This will give you the benefits ofcamomile as well as the colour(yep, I'm Canadian):)

What is the simplest soap I can make for my first trial? ... ie can I use just lye, water, and corn oil for my first run at it?

I would use olive oil, the Pomice kind, it's cheap and you don't have to use the high quality stuff. And, it makes a pretty good simple soap; you may even come back to this soap recipe years down the road and some people like it even non-scented
Good luck!