A soap maker makes soap. I make soap. If you don’t make the soap you are doing arts and crafts with soap that someone else made. Both are fine and fun but you’re not a soap maker if you don’t make the soap.
I mean like store bought lard and such not pre-made soap. I know a lot of people that “make” soap and a few people who do actually make soap and they usually do it for allergen reasons because even the fragrance free products irritate their skin.
As long as you’re buying oil or fat and lye or potash and making soap that’s soap making. You’re making soap. Most of our soaps are lard based but use other oils to improve the texture. Some, like our shaving soap, have no lard in them. I’m just taking about the people who buy big blocks of soap at the craft store, melt it and pour it, and call themselves soap makers.
If you did 99% of that and added 1% of premade oils/scents, is it still soapmaking? 80%? 40%? Where’s the arbitrary line? I can see your point but I wouldn’t die on the hill. I’d rather distinguish my product by virtue of exactly your process. That’s far more valuable than the label.
The process of making soap separates the state where soap does not exist from the state where soap does exist. If your process begins with fats and a base and ends with soap you are making soap. If your process starts with soap and ends with soap with color, trinkets, perfume, and glitter in pretty shapes you are not making soap, you are doing arts and crafts with soap that someone else made.
Sometimes, we use tomatoes, peppers, and onions that we grow in our garden to make spaghetti sauce. Sometimes, when we’re pressed for time we open a jar and pour sauce into a pot. In one case we are making sauce. In the other we are not. If I take that jarred sauce and add sliced sausage I am enhancing the sauce but I am not making the sauce.
So, in your question, if 99% of my process is buying soap that someone else made and 1% of it is adding oil to that already made soap then, no, that is not making soap. If you saponify that 1% of oil into soap then the 1% of soap did not exist before and does now so you made that 1% of the soap.
As I’ve said repeatedly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing arts and crafts by buying melt and pour soap, adding trinkets, glitter, colour, and perfume and pouring it into interesting moulds but there is no saponification and therefore no soap making happening. You’re making pretty bars of soap but you’re not making soap.
As long as you’re not saying you have to raise pigs to be a soap maker I agree with you.
A soap maker makes soap. I make soap. If you don’t make the soap you are doing arts and crafts with soap that someone else made. Both are fine and fun but you’re not a soap maker if you don’t make the soap.
I mean like store bought lard and such not pre-made soap. I know a lot of people that “make” soap and a few people who do actually make soap and they usually do it for allergen reasons because even the fragrance free products irritate their skin.
As long as you’re buying oil or fat and lye or potash and making soap that’s soap making. You’re making soap. Most of our soaps are lard based but use other oils to improve the texture. Some, like our shaving soap, have no lard in them. I’m just taking about the people who buy big blocks of soap at the craft store, melt it and pour it, and call themselves soap makers.
If you did 99% of that and added 1% of premade oils/scents, is it still soapmaking? 80%? 40%? Where’s the arbitrary line? I can see your point but I wouldn’t die on the hill. I’d rather distinguish my product by virtue of exactly your process. That’s far more valuable than the label.
The process of making soap separates the state where soap does not exist from the state where soap does exist. If your process begins with fats and a base and ends with soap you are making soap. If your process starts with soap and ends with soap with color, trinkets, perfume, and glitter in pretty shapes you are not making soap, you are doing arts and crafts with soap that someone else made.
Sometimes, we use tomatoes, peppers, and onions that we grow in our garden to make spaghetti sauce. Sometimes, when we’re pressed for time we open a jar and pour sauce into a pot. In one case we are making sauce. In the other we are not. If I take that jarred sauce and add sliced sausage I am enhancing the sauce but I am not making the sauce.
So, in your question, if 99% of my process is buying soap that someone else made and 1% of it is adding oil to that already made soap then, no, that is not making soap. If you saponify that 1% of oil into soap then the 1% of soap did not exist before and does now so you made that 1% of the soap.
As I’ve said repeatedly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing arts and crafts by buying melt and pour soap, adding trinkets, glitter, colour, and perfume and pouring it into interesting moulds but there is no saponification and therefore no soap making happening. You’re making pretty bars of soap but you’re not making soap.
Just because you’re so passionate about it I feel like arguing you, but I can’t come up with any soap-specific arguments.
We could argue about something else.
No we couldn’t!
I came here for an argument. That was just contradiction. An argument is a collective series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
I may be arguing on my spare time.