Choosing a soap maker is an important task, as your skin is depending on it. There a couple basic questions that should allow you to determine the competence of your soap maker immediately. Some handmade soap makers are really melt and pour soap makers. They take pre-packaged melt and pour soap, place it in the microwave for a minute, add color and fragrance, pour into molds and call this handmade soap making. This is really a task for keeping the kids busy on a rainy day. There is very little skill involved, almost anyone can do it. The worst aspect however is what the manufacturers have to put into the basic batch in order to get it to behave this way in a microwave. The number of chemicals are too numerous to list. This is a bad choice on all counts.
Handmade soap must go through the process of saponification in order to be true handmade soap. There are newer hot process methods but these are not the methods that the finest old world soap makers use. If you were to visit the finest castile soap makers in Europe you will find they are using a method called cold press soap making. This timeless method that uses lye as the saponification agent makes the finest soap...