You can buy SFIC bases in small quantities from kangarooblue.com (located in Illinois) or Acorn Soap Supply (located somewhere in the west). I have purchased from both of these places and both are very reputable and have great service. I would not purchase SFIC from WSP; it is overpriced, their shipping is outrageous, and the SFIC base I got from them was a very pour quality- wasn't anything like SFIC should be- it felt like a block of candle wax instead of a block of soap wax. In fact, I really thought they had sent me candle wax mistakenly. SFIC bases are the only soap that we can use because of our allergies and sensitivities to additives. The other bases that WSP offers are excellent, I understand, but are a different formulation that SFIC. If you don't need a specialty, hypo-allergenic base, the regular WSP bases are much cheaper than SFIC bases. Susan

what exactly is it you want to swap?? suplys or soap??

"I want to make a lot of soap this spring and summer. I've been thinking about doing this since I moved onto farm land " Go slow at first when making soap, they're many mistakes that can be made and some experimentation should be done first. After the first recipe has been made it will be at least 1 month until you get a good idea of what you have accomplished. I know you'll feel like an expecting parent soon after you make your first batch. "I have some nice ingrediants growing on my property,..." Each ingredient should and take some investigation to do it right; methods, amounts etc.. "I understand that different ingrediants call for different amounts of lye, but is there a general ratio known of how much lye is used for how much final bar soap product? If I were to order an excess, are sealing pale containers capable of storing a bulk of lye for a long time? Is airtight good enough to store it well?" The ingredients that you mention that you might grow on your farm do not require any lye, only fats and oils "How would I go about getting essences of things into bars of soap. Such as pine scent, or the patchuli or chamomile and other flowers... Would a chamomile-scented soap be acheived by incorporating a chamomile-tincture into the soap recipe somehow?" Tinctures, I believe are alcohol based and wont play nice with your soap making. I have added chamomile into soap by steeping the chamomile in warmed olive oil for 4 hours, then using the olive oil (straing out the leaves), in the recipe. This will give you the benefits ofcamomile as well as the colour(yep, I'm Canadian):) What is the simplest soap I can make for my first trial? ... ie can I use just lye, water, and corn oil for my first run at it? I would use olive oil, the Pomice kind, it's cheap and you don't have to use the high quality stuff. And, it makes a pretty good simple soap; you may even come back to this soap recipe years down the road and some people like it even non-scented Good luck!

"Tue, Aug 19, 08 at 16:32 I've just started making soap (more like a mess than anything...) and need tips. Its mostly just MP soap right now, but I plan on making soap from "scratch" once I get the hang of it. Most everything I've made so far is too soft or just plain runny. A couple of my soap-making books suggest using beauty bars and unscented bar soap to make a higher quality product (by adding oils of course). I currently have palm oil, almond oil, coconut oil, a few tiny bottles of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap (base I guess...), and Kirk's Castile soap bars on hand. Recipes are welcome! :) Thanks! " Hi Abby, I have not attempted MP (nor really want to), so keep this in mind; I am coming from purely a "from scratch" experience only. If you are wanting to make your own soap, buy yourself a good quality scale. I use a triple beam scale, but you could get a digital scale that will measure down to the gram or tenth of an ounce, with a tare feature. To me it sounds like your soap has too much added oil in it You said that you are mixing ¾ of a cup of added oils/fats, to 2 cups of already made soap. First of all, measuring by the cup is not accurate for CP soap (MP, I am not sure of remember) Volume by the cup, is very different then by the weight. How much air is in that cup? In order for the oils/fats to be incorporated into the grated soap, would have to be far less than the amount that you have used according to that recipe. Most soap on the shelves, if it is indeed soap, the superfatting (this is what you are really doing, by adding the extra 0oils/fats, is at best around 8% and definately not close to zero at all. (Anything less than zero will burn skin = chemical burn from the sodium hydroxide, and just above zero could irritate) I make CP soap at 3 ½% superfatting, and that is low to most soaperÂs preferences. So, I would guess that the already made soap that you are grating is between, 4 to 9%; then you are adding more oils/fats. The amount that you should consider to add to that may be around 2 to 5%, but this is only a guess because we do not know how much "extra"/superfatting is in the store bought soap. The oily soap that you have made must have far exceeded the 8 or 9% that I have mentioned. This will not harden up for you. That soap is not usable in that state. Salvageable? Probably, but not at this stage of the game. Find yourself a good scale, and a mentor for making your MP soap, even a local hobby shop may be a good start? I hope this helps a bit and have fun with it! I check this forum infrequently but post any more questions; some others may help as well.