Soap Making Supplies – Important Information Before You Buy

Finding soap making supplies at a reasonable price and deciphering between all the different options was probably my biggest struggle when I first started out making soap.

There are so many different “styles of that” and “types of this” that it becomes increasingly hard to find the right equipment and locate the best place to buy.

I’m here to help you out! In this section, my goal is to highlight each soap making tool, explain how it’s used, and let you know what equipment I use myself.

Hopefully, I’ll help you eliminate some of the guess work, and avoid the confusion and pitfalls that I ran into while first learning how to make soap.

Below, is a list of basic soap making supplies and ingredients that you’ll need. Click on each item that’s highlighted in blue to learn more about it or to find out where I bought mine.

1. Safety equipment – You must have rubber gloves and goggles to protect yourself from the hazardous chemicals. Out of all the soap making supplies, this one is the most important!
2. Soap recipe - When you’re first starting out, it’s a good idea to use a pre-tested formula. In the beginning, you won’t know which oils and fats have complementary characteristics that form the perfect bar of soap. After you become more experienced, you can create your own recipe.
3. Lye – essential chemical that is involved in the soap making reaction
4. Your choice of oils or fats – the oil or fat is the acid that reacts with the lye to form the soap. There are many different types that will work for soap making. In the beginning, follow the recipe for which oils or fats to use.
5. Your choice of essential oils or fragrances – remember to use the ones suggested in the recipe especially if you’re a beginner.
6. Your choice of extra nutrients and preservatives.
7. Skin safe soap making dye – You can be creative with the colorants, or just follow the recipe’s suggestions.
8. Digital kitchen Scale – make sure that the scale measures in both grams and ounces or have one scale that displays in grams and the other that displays in ounces.
9. 3 quart Glass or Ceramic Container – make sure that you don’t use any form of plastic as it will melt with the heat of the reaction. Use heat resistant glass, ceramic, heavy-duty white rubber, silicone, enamel or stainless steel only when making soap!
10. Large pot with lid – this is where the actual soap making will take place as lye is combined with the oils or fats
11. Large 3 Quart Sauce Pan – this is usually used for heating your solid oils, fats and additives
12. Wooden utensils - I personally use wooden utensils for mixing my soap solutions. One drawback: After enough contact with lye, the wood will start to corrode and flake off into your soap solution; so you will need to buy new utensils often. Some soap makers swear by heavy duty rubber or silicone utensils that never ware.
13. 2 cooking thermometers – you must have two accurate thermometers to measure the temperature of your lye and oils.
14. Your choice of soap making molds - you can use beautiful and creative individual mold shapes, or a large wooden tray that requires the soap to be cut into customized bars.
15. Wax paper – this needs to be placed within the wooden tray in order to remove the cured soap. You don’t need to go to a store that specializes in soap making supplies. Just go to your local supermarket and pick up any brand.
16. Tape – I usually use masking tape to secure the wax paper on the wooden tray or mold.
17. Soap Cutter – a soap cutter is used to cut the soap into bars if you’re not using individual molds.

Now that you know about each of the soap making supplies that you’ll be using, gather your equipment, get your work space organized and start making soap from scratch. You’re going to have an absolute blast!