# Walmart Recipe



## cheesemoose

What type of container will work or this my first attempt at soap


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## Kalne

For mixing the soap in or for your mold? For mixing you can use a stainless steel bowl or pot. Some use plastic, I prefer the SS. For a mold it can be almost anything rigid if you line it with freezer paper. A box or tray of some sort.


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## a4patch

a cardboard box with a trash liner. Any shape that the solid form will easily come out of(no fancy shapes) . I would not use something you serve food out of.


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## jdranch

pvc is a good mold imo


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## tlcnubians

For mixing the lye and milk together, stainless steel (has to be able to withstand some heat and you don't want something like glass that might break and splash you with the caustic mixture); for mixing the lye liquid into your soaping oils, best choice is stainless steel also for the same reasons as above. For molds, anything that can withstand heat - if you want a big block or log of soap, then pvc pipe works great as do cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, plastic boxes. If you want something fancier, I've taught workshops using clean, empty cat and dog food containers (the square plastic "Whiskas" or "Beneful" containers are great). Also the silicone baking molds work well. My husband has even poured soap in empty plastic cookie trays, but those are pretty flimsy. If using individual molds, spray a bit of PAM in them and then wipe off the excess. After the soap has set up for 24 hours or so, you can put the molds in the freezer for several hours and they're pretty easy to unmold. Also, when pouring into individual molds, if you use 1 ounce of sodium lactate in your recipe (as part of the liquid you mix the lye into), you'll be amazed at how much easier the soap is to unmold.


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## cheesemoose

Thank you, I was talking of the molding process. Great answers


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## NubianSoaps.com

David if I could start over I would do PVC rounds, if you ever start selling soap you get more per ounce per bar for rounds than you do for anything else. I soap in buckets, small 2 pound buckets for classes and to start with and now 3.5 gallon buckets which hold 25 pounds of soap. We have tons of info on the PVC rounds, including how you can blow the soap out of the pipes with a small air compressor...which my husband and son and now grandsons think is great fun! 

If you don't want to do rounds, and you are wanting to sell soap, not just make it for freinds and family than move to a commerical molds quickly...you do not want to do what I did and use drawer liners, and then be stuck with the size of your soap and have to do commercial custom molds. We have tons of info up in the molds sticky. 

A commercial gal I know has these big tray molds made, they hold 24 pounds of soap, they are nothing but big boxes her husband makes that she lines with commercial landscaping plastic, she reuses it over and over. But she also has a log cutter so her bars are uniform. Vicki


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## MF-Alpines

Vicki McGaugh Tx Nubians said:


> if you ever start selling soap you get more per ounce per bar for rounds than you do for anything else.


?? Get more what  per ounce per bar? I'm confused.


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## cheesemoose

Vicki do I unestand that you use only white plastic buckets and no stainless steel


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## tlcnubians

David - you can use white plastic buckets; my preference is stainless steel but there are as many ways of making soap as there are soapmakers. Find what works best for you and use that. One caution I didn't think about yesterday . . . many of the fragrance oils and even some of the essential oils will eat right through lightweight plastic cups, so be cautious about that. I use glass bowls for this purpose.

Vicki may mean that people sell round soaps for more $$ per ounce than plain square or rectangular bars. I do 90% of my soaping in individual molds because it satisfies the artistic side of me and I know my customers are very taken with the different shapes and colors, but pouring soap into individual molds can be time consuming and takes a bit of practice since each batch has its own characteristics that you have to be aware of (sets up fast, stays thin longer, etc) depending on the ingredients, oils and fragrances used.

Using PVC pipes for molds is quick and convenient and gives you a nicely shaped soap, but here, too, some consideration must be given to what ingredients are in each batch of soap and the length of PVC pipe you use because if your soap gets too hot inside the pipe you may end up with separation of oils or differences in color from one end to the other.

For Crafts Sake (http://www.forcraftssake.com/shop/) has excellent log molds and soap cutters. Kangaroo Blue (http://kangarooblue.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=20_123) also has silicone-lined wooden soap molds that work with the For Crafts Sake cutters.


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## jdranch

Caroline-

completely off topic- but dang! That goat in your avatar has the longest ears I have ever seen on a goat! Very pretty


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## tlcnubians

Thanks Jennifer! That's one of our junior hersires, M's Sagebrush MK Klass Action. He and one of my other young bucks, Alize Take It To The Limit, both have super nice ears and seem to be passing them down to their kids.


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## tlcnubians

David - An additional response to the plastic bucket vs stainless steel discussion . . . since I use a lot of hard oils in my soaps (coconut, palm, cocoa butter, shea butter), it's easier to mix the oils and lye liquid together in the pot I melt the oils in. Plus I float the lye liquid and after that the melted oils in an ice water bath to cool them to the temperature I work them at so stainless steel mixing bowls and pots work best for me. Since you can't melt oils in a plastic bucket, it seems like there would be a lot more pouring of ingredients back and forth that way, but everyone has their own method, and I encourage you to try different ways of making soap until you find the one that works best and most efficiently for you.


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## NubianSoaps.com

The walmart recipe comes in plastic containers  The coconut oil this time of year is melty so just pour it in your 2 gallon bucket, use the now empty coconut container to measure out your other oil (olive, sunflower, salflower etc), dump it in the bucket. While your doing that and melting your lye into either milk or water, microwave your container of lard for about 4 minutes, just to get it melty so it comes out of the container easily. Line your molds or get your molds ready, put out other additives or colorants and put your goggles and gloves on. By then your lye liquid mixture is cooled off. Stickblend the butters and oils for a second and then start dumping in the lye/liquid and stick blend...viola. No temp taking. That's a soap class here  

My buckets of shea are nearly liquid this time of year as is my gallons of coconut oil, now cocoa butter even a heat strip won't keep it liquid so I take my anger out on it with a screw driver and rubber mallet, keeping shards of it in an old lard plastic pail, to yep you guessed it, melt in the microwave...all other butters I use stay liquid with a heat strip, so you could easily keep them melted on a heating pad, just plug your heating pads in about 24 hours before your soaping day.

It simply isn't that hard to soap, most directions are so complicated when the basic chemistry of saponification is uncomplicated. The walmart recipe makes wonderful soap, after you can make it in your sleep, tweak it with other butters and oils you want to use....no need to change from this bomb proof recipe if you aren't anti lard....I can't sell a lard soap, although I teach this recipe. Put your tweaked recipes through the calculator to see if you really improved it 

Yes I soap much larger batches now than the walmart recipe, but still use the same room temp techniques. Yes I premix all my lye for the week, so it's room temp when I soap with it. Vicki


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## tlcnubians

So you're no longer using "all milk" in your recipes?

Like I said, everyone has to figure out what works best for them. The way I make soap is very different from the way you do but in the end my way works just as well for me as yours does for you. When I actually have an entire day to make soap, I use my wax melter to melt 10 gallons of soaping oils and then just siphon off as much as I need for each batch. Otherwise, I use the two burner hot plate and melt my hard oils as needed. My base oils are soft but not liquid right now, although I guess if I put them outside in this 100+ degree heat they would be liquified. . .

I do prefer to know how hot my oils are before I start putting the lye mix into them because different essential oils, fragrance oils and soaping oils behave better or worse at different temperatures. I need to know this because for the most part I put my soap into individual molds rather than into one big tray, log or pipe. It pays off down the road if you keep track of what you're doing at the beginning so you have something to refer back to if or when you run into trouble six months or a year down the road.


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## NubianSoaps.com

David is new to soaping, hasn't even done a batch yet, so what I tell him to do, the Walmart recipe is different of course than what I sell. The Wallmart recipe ingredients is easily found in any town and also is bomb proof, if you ruin that soap it's your scent or not stick blending long enough or your measurements. It also makes a wonderful bar, many still can use even with sales. I can't have lard on my labels, so my recipe is tweaked of course. All the walmart recipe soap I make when I teach classes are special labeled for Christmas sales.

I soap 4 nights a week, making 300 to 400 6 ounce bars a night, depending if I am pouring logs or slabs. The 5th night is added in August for Christmas sales and the stores restocking after the first of the year, which means cutting soap Saturday morning, which I hate, so I am going to try to soap one more pour during my normal soaping, to even do that I have to tweak something else, so talking about having my oils premixed which will mean a tweak of my recipe to do that, I also will pour heavier pours. No way can I spend time freezing milk and then defrosting it with lye anymore like I used to. I make a 50% lye solution, then add the rest of the liquid in milk, cucumber puree, pomegranate juice, coconut milk, aloe vera juice depending upon the recipe., at emulsion. And there are those on the forum who make more soap per week then me, way more  Vicki


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## tlcnubians

I'm jealous! Would certainly love to be able to make it more than once or twice a week. I was sneaking out to the soap building in the evenings occasionally but now with Mother in a nursing home in Bremond (30 minutes from the house, an hour+ from work), I'm driving up to see her after work every night and trying to get her house in Houston cleaned out, there just aren't enough hours in the day! Or days in the week. Hopefully I'll find a little bit more time once the house in Houston is cleaned up and rented out.


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## Tim Pruitt

Ok, I think I have mastered the Walmart recipe using lard. I have successfully made a number of batches. Now, I want to make it w/o lard. What are the substitutes for lard and where do you find them? Is it something you order on the internet or you buy locally?

What recipes do you recommend?


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## jdranch

For me, Palm. It is a pain to work with imo. I get mine from Soaper's Choice. I use the organic sustainable but will probably try the homogenized cube when it is cool enough to ship.


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## NubianSoaps.com

Start at Millersoap.com her whole site is wonderful! Click on properties of oils. In subbing out your lard, you have to move to something that is equal to it in the iodine range which is biggy, and then your linoleic an oleic fatty acids etc. Put the walmart recipe, if you like the soap, into a soap calculator http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp or just google one, there are alot of them....and then with your new oils or butters you want to use, try to repeat the fatty acid numbers in the walmart recipe. Any butter and any oil will make soap, if you can't sell or don't want to use lard, think about tallow (which is beef fat) that doesn't have the bad connotation that lard has, I can't sell either but would if I could  You will likely have to freight in most of your oils and butters from soaperschoice.com he is great to work with. You are also close enough to Shreveport to have restaurant supply houses, and speciality stores, in which you can buy from them. But really look at the prices with freight, I still can buy with my Kroger card and my case discount now, safflower and sunflower oils cheaper than buying it in bulk. For me their prices on coconut oil and olive, I can't beat locally.

Most folks recipes they use for sale, are top secret, including mine  Since the walmart recipe starting as a teaching recipe, it really is the only reason it is up. I needed local things everyone could buy. V


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## tlcnubians

My teaching recipe includes Crisco, olive oil and coconut oil, all things you can also purchase at WalMart. Or a combination of olive and sunflower oil (also readily available at most grocery stores). I've never used lard to make soap although I have used tallow and like the end product. I agree with Vicki that millersoap.com is an excellent source of soapmaking information and recipes. I began my soapmaking adventure several years ago by purchasing and reading Casey Makela's book, "Milk-Based Soaps," available at amazon.com for about $10.


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