Making soaps throughout history: Castile Soap

Hello Soapsmith Nation!

I have been reading about how soaps were made in various parts of the world and at different points in history and I thought it would be fun to recreate some of them. I started simple with probably the most commonly known soap which is a castile soap. In my interpretation a castile soap is a 100% olive oil bar although sometimes anything that is mostly or all vegetable oil is also called castile soap (I disagree with this so I did what I consider to be a true castile soap). I did add one small twist so I wouldn't have to wait for close to a year before using it. I used a method called dual lye which uses 5% potassium hydroxide (KOH) and the remaining 95% is sodium hydroxide (NaOH) as my lye. Soap made with KOH is more soluble in water and can help boost the lather of this bar soap. There is a chance it will be "softer" than a regular sodium hydroxide only bar soap but castile soaps are rock hard once they have had a good cure so I was not worried about that. This sounded more like a soap I would enjoy over some of the traditional single lye castile soaps I had made in the past. This is currently curing, I plan to try it at the 4 week cure mark to see what it feels like and if I like this new to me method of making an olive oil bar of soap. 

Some things I noticed about the making process of this soap was that while it took some time to reach emulsification it was shorter than I expected, maybe 30 minutes of me intermittently mixing and hand stirring. After those 30 minutes I felt I had a good emulsification and placed it in the mold to do its thing. I left this batch uncolored and unscented (there is something so lovely about the sweet nuttiness that an unscented soap has to it). I wrote in my notebook that it was still very "wet" about 10 hours later and to reduce the water portion next time but I was able to unmold within 24 hours without manipulating it in any way so it really was not a huge issue. I used a full water portion which I sometimes do with new formulations before I start tinkering and making changes. So, would I reduce the water for next time? Yes most likely I would so I can unmold with in about 12 hours but is it absolutely necessary to do so? Not in my opinion. 

Where would a 100% olive oil soap be historic to? Well the story goes

that it is "truly" historic to Castile Spain but we all know that olive trees are very common in many regions of europe and eastern europe, desert regions such as Syria and also parts of Africa so what I have been able to find are variations of types of olive oil soaps from many places which is pretty neat. 

So join me on this fun little journey through soaping history as I attempt to make a variety of soaps as close to the traditional recipes as possible. When possible I hope to use traditional methods just to see how the process may have been done in the past.

Stay soapy my friends

~Your Soapsmith