The Soapmaker's Companion: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques & Know-How Kindle Edition

The Bible of soap making!

I bought this book right after I took a class in cold process soapmaking, so I was a beginner, but not an absolute beginner. As of this writing, I've made about 6 batches of soap, and this book has been a big help. I've used The Soapmaker's Companion as a reference for things like properties of various oils and herbs.There are a couple of charts that I constantly refer to when creating new recipes. I have not, however, used any of the author's recipes, and I doubt I ever will. They tend to be rather detailed as well as sometimes refer to ingredients in grams - sometimes listing an ounce equivalent, sometimes not.I wish the book had a hard cover, too, for the spine isn't holding up well. My other complaint is with the ink and printing process. Two colors are used throughout the book: an evergreen color, and a salmon color. The intensity of the colors vary throughout my book. In places where the headings are in the salmon color, some pages the print is so light that I have trouble seeing the headings, yet I can turn a few more pages, and it's nice and dark. This may just be a fluke with the printing of my book.All in all, The Soapmaker's Companion has been a wonderful resource for me. I've only had two questions that I couldn't find the answers to in the book: (1) The SAP value of monoi oil, and (2) Guidelines, a rough range, or any discussion whatsoever on how much essential oil to add per pound of soap.I recommend absolute beginners don't buy this book with thoughts that it will teach the soapmaking process. Either take a class first or find a better first book, and then buy this one once you've learned the basics.

Attractive, nicely formatted, attractive, and the visuals are very helpful. It is also fairly priced.

This is a great book for beginners, with a lot of neat tips and tricks and some fabulous recipes.The lack of photos are a definite drawback, but the book does have illustrations, for what it's worth. The author also has some definite bias against certain methods (she doesn't like rebatching, and she doesn't encourage readers to use a freezer to unmold soaps), and it's good to keep an open mind when you read this. But then, Ms. (Mrs.?) Cavitch herself would probably encourage you to try things for yourself rather than just taking her word for it; you get that sense of personality from her writing.I have found that the batches in this book are VERY big, and I have cut them down myself and found them to take a LOOOOONG time to trace (upwards to an hour or more). I'm not sure if this is just my lack of experience or her recipes; since I use an electric mixer it's not that much of a problem to me, but it would be to someone mixing their soap by hand.This is an excellent book for beginners who want to learn how to make vegetable-based soaps. I will say, however, that you should be mindful that her recipes are probably more expensive than other books prescribe; after buying the specialized oils (coconut, palm, olive) and essential oils, plus the electric mixer, you will definitely have spent a lot of money. But if making non-animal-fat based soaps is worth it to you, by all means -- buy this book.

The only time I write a review is if the product either really sucks or is really awesome. This book...is really awesome. I've read quite a few articles about soap making, along with many how to and recipes (yes that includes making them) and this book is by far better than any of them. If you're thinking about getting into soap making or already do it, this book is a great tool to have on hand. The thing that makes it the most useful is the fact that everything said is backed up with the science behind it, not just "well I feel blah blah blah". Anyways to make a long review short...stop being a cheap @$$, buy the book, its worth your money.

This is my fifth book on the subject of soap-making. I just received the book yesterday and the content of the book is quite thorough BUT, I feel that books on crafts are more interesting when they feature pictures of the craft or recipe that they are making. The book is illustrated, but wouldn't the subjects of stained glass soap or marbling have been more interesting with color pictures? My second complaint is with regard to the print quality. The book is printed on an off-white recycled paper... consistent with "natural and green" interests of many soap makers. The print color is green and headings are pale red. The book is hard to read with less contrast than black print on white paper. Compounding this problem, about half of the text in the book is in a text that while attractive is more faint than typical book fonts. In short, I wish I'd bought the Kindle version instead. All that said, it is clear this book will be a valued reference though not something that my eyes will allow me to just sit down and read

I read a lot of reviews before purchasing this book including this book's reviews on US/UK Amazon and all of the negative reviews (which are significantly less that the positive ones.)For a person new to soap making and new to cold process soap making, (and wanting to use vegetable based oils in cold process) this book is really good. It contains one recipe for a single bar of soap and a good selection of recipes for other types of soap. These easily act as a guide for you to create your own recipes or to go ahead and make the recipes straight from the book.It is true that the recipes all contain around 7 teaspoons of essential oils. Keep in mind that these oils sell for £5 plus for 10 ml. A teaspoon is 5 ml, so you are looking at 35 ml of essential oils per recipe. It ups the price of the finished bars considerably. However on the plus side, the recipes state the essential oils are optional. There are also ideas for combining the oils to achieve different smells.I don't know if the grapefruit seed extract referred to in the recipes - used as a preservative because of the 10% discount - is necessary or not. One could always run the recipe through the lye calculators readily found on the web to use a lower discount. This would do away with the need for the addition of this ingredient altogether. However you do get the impression that the author has a lot of experience in soap making so to make real quality soap, perhaps her way is best. I am not experienced enough to know.There is no reference to costs when it comes to batches of soaps. Using current costs, and using sweet almond oil instead of palm oil, the single bar of soap recipe was £1. The costs of a 1100 gr batch using a recipe from elsewhere - olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil and almond oil being the main ingredients [totalling 900gr] was 65p/100gr bar, though this is before the bars have been rested for the 4 week period after producing them. (I've added this in because it was something I would have liked her book to address, just to give some idea of the home manufacturing cost from the raw ingredients.) Using her recipes could see the costs rise as her recipes contain more ingredients. Her recipes would cost more to pass by a chemist too if the end result of the soap-making procedure was to sell for profit in the UK.Aside from this, she covers laundry soap, bar shampoos, men's soap, transparent soap, lip balm, a guide to the use of soap making oils, question and answer trouble shooting tips, looking at resins, minerals and clays as additives to soaps, natural colorants and other more chemistry related soap making information, making the whole book a great referencing source.I didn't find the lack of photos or the green ink off-putting. Youtube and the web give a lot of information for soap makers, but it takes time to find what you are looking for. A few Youtube clips on how cold-process works and then carefully following her recipe was easily do-able. For less than £9.00 this was a very worthwhile purchase though no doubt because it is a paperback it won't last as long as one would like.

As a newbie, I can honestly say not to start with this book. This is the next step for a total beginner.1. For Absolute beginners start with the Melinda Coss book on Handmade soap, as this has small recipes using lard to practice and make mistakes with.After 5-10 batches, move on to this book.2. This book is a gem - as once you get started, you'll notice the different temperatures recommended - and this book will explain all that. Even better troubleshooting guide for temperatures 80-90 F, 95 -105 F, 110 - 120 F and 125 - 140 F.3. You'll want comparision charts of oils for lather, trace times, fluffy lather, stable lather, conditioning. This book is the only book that I've found with such charts.4. Good troubleshooting guides, for Transparent Soaps such as cloudiness, opacity, softness or slippery feel.This is the "next stage" book, that handles in an easy to read format, all those wonderful things that can wrong or right. If you understand these, then you're ready to really experiment with confidence.

I am very pleased with this book which clearly informs the reader what you need to purchase. So far I have made one batch and everyone loves it. I decided to make soap for myself and as gifts as I have a thing about nice soap but have developed sensitivity to highly scented soap and wanted to make some nice soap that was not scented (although I can take some essentials oils) and this book enables me to do that. I have just ordered more oils etc to make another batch as I also gave some bars as gifts and am now all out. The only drawback from the book, being in the UK, is that I have had to convert the measurements.

Easy to follow instructions for the absolute beginner

Item as described and divered on time.