[method269]

Hi everyone,
I'm wondering where I can buy chemicals to make soaps (dish soap, hand soap, and detergents).  I found some websites and they are quite expensive.  Plus the shipping and handling are very pricy. I'm looking for some affordable chemicals, if that is possible at all.
Thanks!:0

[sophotect]

At a minimum, you need veggie oils & lye; many recipes add essential oils later in the process for scent.
You could make a simple hand soap with olive oil & lye. http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soaprecipes/a/castrecipe.htm
Olive oil is available at grocery store, lye at the hardware store. Make sure you read the labels closely to be certain there are no adulterants; only use 100% sodium hydroxide (or potassium hydroxide, which would be unlikely in the US.)
Both are available in sufficient quantities for a few dollars each. However, I have found the reagents usually cost a fraction of the cost of the necessary equipment. Soap can be made with ordinary cooking pots & pans but I wouldn't ever use them for food again. Don't use pans with any kind of interior coating. Stainless steel or glass only. Do NOT use aluminum utensils or vessels with lye.

The following is both general advice & specific to making soap in a household where surprises are commonplace:
Before you start make an inventory of all required items & arrange them appropriately. Be sure you understand the sequence of steps & risks. Identify where in the process things can go wrong, have a plan to deal with it. Wear old clothes. Use gloves, goggles. Lye is unforgiving. Have a 5 gallon bucket partially filled with cool water for emergency cooling of the pans (about 1/3 full). Put away pets or send them outside. If you live with others or guests may arrive, make sure you tell them beforehand what you are doing. At my house, cooks always have the right of way & the authority to expel anyone from the area without notice.

Commercial dish soap & detergents usually have surfactants which can reflect a substantial portion of their cost. I'd suggest being comfortable with making hand soap before trying liquid soaps. Although you might try cheap detergent by putting some bath soap chips in warm water & adding some washing soda, stirring til it is all dissolved.

[billnotgatez]

@sophotect
What do you suggest for an emergency wash for the preparer (not just the equipment)?
What do you think about preparing outside to avoid any fumes produced?
Do you have a good book that you suggest for making soap?

@method269

You can also try GOOGLE search using "biodiesel" as well as "making soap" when hunting for supplies.
There must be resources out there that are not that pricey.

[sophotect]

Both myself & wife have had lye pellets and/or aqueous droplets land on skin. We immediately brush pellets off, then rinse with water & vinegar. We both have the same number of scars as before soaping. I do have ONE scar from lye from ages ago. I intend to keep it that way.

Making soap outside is counterproductive, imo. Too many airborne contaminants. If it was done under glass, maybe, but that seems a needless complication of a straightforward process. There aren't serious inhalation hazards, at least, not when using common sense & typical ingredients. Some essential oils could pose an inhalation hazard. The dose makes the poison. In my experience, the major safety risks are mixing the lye & water too fast and spills caused by crowding or poor planning.

There are probably good books on soap making. Sadly, I haven't read any. I watched videos, read wikis, then started doing it.

EDIT: Here is a link to my wife's soaping blog. It has pics & explanations of both good & bad results. She mentions that if you only use olive oil, the cure time for the soap will be several months. Including harder oils (solid at room temperature) reduces cure times to a week or two. Some examples would be palm oil or coconut oil. Here is a useful calculator that can help optimize soap batches: http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

[method269]

I'm looking at the ingredients, and they're usually oils.  I guess I can buy these oils at a grocery store right? They're similar to cooking oils?

[sophotect]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap has a table of commonly available oils, often used for cooking. I am quite certain that all except tallow are readily available at a grocery or health foods store.

I'm not a soap expert, my role in this endeavor has been to help the missus find the necessary equipment, chemicals & educate her on basic safety, which seemed to be relevant to your initial question. I have participated in making several batches of soap so I have some practical knowledge but am unable to advise you on the merits of particular recipes. My personal chemistry interests/projects as of late tend to be cement, ceramics, glass related.

[billnotgatez]

@sophotect

My personal chemistry interests/projects as of late tend to be cement, ceramics, glass related.

Maybe you want to start a separate thread - that is some of my interests as well

@method269
I was thinking more that stuff like Sodium Hydroxide and Potassium Hydroxide from good, reputable, and reasonably priced Internet sites (Soap making and biodiesel) might be useful. I was not thinking about oils from Internet sites.
But as others have pointed out, chemicals can be got from other sources and there is a sticky at the top of this forum that suggests some locations.

[sophotect]

I probably will start a separate thread when I have useful results. Right now it's in the stage of recreating known recipes & generating large amounts of precursors, like zinc chloride, aluminum chloride. Those typically aren't used in traditional cements where the reactions are driven in a kiln or klinker, but I have the added requirement of the cements & glazes need to form at room temperature. Then I react the chlorides with sodium silicate, forming the corresponding metal silicate.

http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/cements.html

I did make some zinc oxychloride cement, like old timey dentists used to make for filling teeth, but it sets too fast & is too brittle for my application. For those interested, you just need some phosphoric acid, zinc oxide, zinc chloride, & ammonium chloride. Zinc chloride is the only thing I had to make myself. I bought some zinc powder on eBay, put it in water, then bubbled HCl through it. I generate the HCl like so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGjd7xxTuZw Using water results in lower purity & concentration of the end product but it is safer for the people doing this at home. I could have reacted the gas directly with the zinc but couldn't think of a way to deal with the pressure buildup.

Next are some attempts at making low-temp auto-catalyzing aluminosilicate cements & glazes. In fact, I should get started on that right now.