The Complete Soapmaker Tips Techniques and Recipes For Luxurious Handmade Soaps

The Complete Soapmaker Tips Techniques and Recipes For Luxurious Handmade Soaps

Soapmaking, once a practical necessity for the homemaker, has almost passed out of the repertoire of home crafts. Nevertheless, one can still make homemade soap with delightful fragrances and interesting textures. This book provides detailed instructions and recipes for basic lye soaps made with animal or vegetable fats and for hand-milled and specialty soaps using almond meal, chamomile, glycerin, and milk that expand on those basic formulas. Shampoos and liquid soaps are covered as well.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars This book has been a blessing!
I have used the recipes and followed the detailed instructions from this book since about 1998…I have never had a single failed batch, and my soap has always been kind and luxuriant, never a bit caustic. Using the recipes for basic soap found in this book have gotten rid of my acne and my dandruff! I have bought other soap-making books, but have found none that were as helpful and as knowledgeable as this. I thank you, Norma Coney.

5 Stars Soapmaker review
this book is awesome. I was very pleased that the book was exactly as described and was recieved very quickly. I would definately buy from this person again.

1 Star Bad Recipes and more…
I see that other reviewers have already meantion this, but I feel it’s worth repeating. The overall review rating of this book is still pretty high, and God-forbid someone purchase this book and not read the reviews to know what they are getting. I am GENUINELY concerned for those novice soapmakers out there, which of course, are the people most likely to buy a book such as this (and are the target audience). Too often people assume information in books is perfect and accurate, and it is obviously not always so. For crying out loud, the 1996 edition of this book (the book being sold on Amazon is 1997) had people adding water to the Lye, instead of the PROPER method of adding Lye to the water. People could have been SERIOUSLY injured because of this and the author/publisher would have been legally liable. What a disaster. Further more, no attempt at recall was ever made of these books (yes I know it’s hard to recall a purchase as simple as a book, but they should have tried).

Another problem is that the recipes are off with water and lye ratios. No superfatting is done at all, which is asking for trouble with novice soapmakers. It’s to the point where I will run EVERY recipe that I get through Soap Calc to make sure everything is kosher. Is that a bad practice? No, not at all… and I would recommend it to every soapmaker if you’re not already doing so. But the fact is that published information should be trusted, and this book can’t be trusted at all. Honestly I’m surprised it even got published.

So, all you new soapmakers out there… please don’t take recipes from this book. Some of the other information contained within is fine (like equipment information), but other than that, this book is no good at all. Consider purchasing one of these titles:

“Soapmaker’s Companion” by Susan Miller Cavitch

“Smart Soapmaking” by Anne L. Watson

And for those of you who don’t already use it often, bookmark [....]. This allows you to input and create recipes for soap and quickly ensure everything about he recipe is safe and to your liking.

2 Stars Marginal
I bought this book at a second hand store to add to my soaping library. For a couple of bucks, it’s okay. However, it is marginal at full retail.

First off, it’s pretty dated. I understand that the dangerous lye instructions have been corrected in later editions, and for that I am glad. I am also hoping that the advice about fabric dyes has been removed. These are not skin safe, and really have no business in soap.

The methods are also outdated. Mixing takes forever using these methods, the re-batching (handmilling in this book) is messy and nasty, and the soap oil combinations are adequate but nothing to write home about. Run the soaps through an online lye calculator to adjust the lye amount before proceeding….you really don’t want lye heavy soap.

On the plus side, the book did give me a couple of nifty ideas for molding, some interesting ideas for additives for my own, safer recipes, and it’s very beautifully laid out with lots of color photos.

If you’re an experienced soaper looking for some ideas, I’d say buy it. If you’re a newbie, you will be much better off with Alicia Grosso’s “Everything Soapmaking Book” or Ann Watson’s “Smart Soapmaking.” Both are safer, up to date, and will have you producing soap with a minimum of fuss.

4 Stars pretty good book
I was rather amazed at some of the negative comments about this book - if you’re thinking of buying it, be aware that many of them are a little melodramatic. This is a decent book, good for starting out. I would supplement it with information from other books and the web.

Obviously lye must be added to water and not the other way around (you may get away with it but you risk a caustic “volcano”); this apparently has been corrected in newer editions, so what is all the fuss about?

Not sure I get why several reviewers are screaming about the recipes being lye heavy. I did what they suggested and ran several of her basic recipes through 4 different online calculators and got almost exactly the same results. I followed her recipes for my first few soaps _precisely_ and the soaps I made turned out beautifully, very gentle and not caustic at all.

Another class of negative reviewer obviously does not understand the difference between actually making soap and “melt and pour”. The difference between the two could be roughly compared to the difference between baking a cake from scratch and mixing up a box of Duncan Hines. This is a “from scratch” book - maybe too much effort for some, but EXACTLY what many of us are looking for!

I also agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who praises this book for not wasting your time with the typical nonsense “history of soap” which can be found, fully regurgitated, on dozens of websites. Said “history” is full of speculation presented as fact, and sparse with actual facts.

Overall, this book is a welcome addition to my library!

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