• iegod@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      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.