Soap can be made from fats and oils, sodium hydroxide, and water.
Soapmaking can be as simple as dissolving sodium hydroxide in water,
melting fats together, adding the sodium hydroxide solution (lye) to the
melted fats, and stirring. It can get more complicated, but it needn’t. This
book starts at the beginning, assuming the reader knows nothing about
soap-making. Chemistry is discussed, but in digestible portions and only
enough to get a good working feel for the observable process. I survived
high school chemistry only with the help of a motivated friend. I am well
aware that those kinds of friends and that kind of motivation are not so
common anymore for me and my post-teenage readers. Accordingly, this
book has been written sympathetically, for the reader who does not have an
interpreter. The chapters are arranged to take you step-by-step up to,
through, and beyond the soapmaking process.