[soapring]

Hello,i want to try making my own soap and one stage - saponification seems to take such a long time according to this article i am reading: http://artofmanliness.com/2011/05/12/how-to-make-bar-of-soap/

This part

Let them sit for about four weeks so that all of the chemical reactions can occur. Lye mixed with oils creates a process called “saponification,” and once this process is complete, the ingredients in your soap no longer include “lye” itself, but “saponified oils.” Now your soap is set and you’re ready to scrub!

Four weeks seems such a long time and i was wondering if a catalyst can be useful here.I stumbled across Thymol and i looked it up on wikipedia and i found out it could act as a catalst for saponification.

My question is,can it be possible to cut the saponification process from 4 weeks to a week or days.

Thanks.

[Arkcon]

If you're going to follow a home recipe, you should use the recipe as stated, and I know that many recipes require a lengthy aging process.  Other posters on these boards have found their skin is irritated by slightly under-aged soap.  The recipe, as written needs this aging process for just the reason specified -- to insure all the alkali has been consumed by an excess of fat.

There are other methods for making soap, like careful stoichiometry, catalytic saponification, using alcohol at the beginning to speed up the initial reaction, or using salting out to separate soap from byproducts.  If you have the technical ability, you can apply chemistry knowledge to monitor the process and adjust, just like large soap-makers do.

You can't do a little bit of both ways, and a small amount of "something you heard" and be guaranteed of making a safe product.

[Rayoohoo]

The use of 0.5% Thymol decreases room temp saponification time to about 80 to 120 min. So does O-cresol.
Google "B. Khalid". The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Committee allows the use of Thymol and O-cresol   at up to 0.5% in cosmetics.
Dr Ray Schep.