Deciding on a Recipe
There are a variety of soap recipes available to choose from, and it is of course
possible to create your own. The recipe you use will depend on the qualities you want
your final product to possess; do you want a hard soap, or soft? Do you want a soap
that will work well in cold or hard water? Are you making soap for sensitive skin?
Some oils are more readily absorbed into the skin than others, and each oil that can
be used for soap-making has different properties. A similar choice must be made
when using lye; it comes in granular and flake forms, and different types of lye can be
used for different soaps. For instance, sodium hydroxide lye is usually used for solid
soap, whereas potassium hydroxide lye is commonly used for liquid soaps and shaving
cream.
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