Making Soap 

This video has been re-uploaded because I made an error in the last one. I said ashes have sodium hydroxide in them, when they really have potassium carbonate, which is converted to potassium hydroxide by treatment with calcium hydroxide or oxide. I hate having to reupload, but the error was too big for me to let go. I do not like the idea of spreading misinformation. I hope you guys can understand!

Soap is the literal definition of: "I used the grease to destroy the grease"

As a kid, I used to freeze shampoo thinking I would be able to use it as soap.

I can’t break the number 1 rule but I’m amazed RU-vid would recommend the soap and the margarine videos after I literally just got done watching that movie.

Nile: grabs burning objects with his hand in other videos Also Nile: puts plastic on a beaker when mixing the ingredients for soap with a hand blender, because he's scared it might spill.

Nile red in 2019: making soap Nile red in 2021: making meth only using an easy bake oven

Soap beaker: cinnamon Soap beaker: lavender Soap beaker: cocoa Soap beaker: *METH*

Made this tonight with my kids, used a slightly higher coconut oil content from the adjusted version of the recipe you used. Pretty easy and the kids enjoyed watching it happen. Thanks for making the video.

A random person on a plane was explaining this to me and he then tried to sell me soap

"I do not like the idea of spreading misinformation" we need more people like you

Nilered: wears gloves while handling strawberries and soap Also nilered: wears no gloves while handling LYE

Narrator: “what do you do?” Tyler Durden: “I make and I sell soap”

As someone who made a few soaps it's not this difficult! It's actually really fun and if the rules here were not so strict and the fees for permits and such in the EU weren't so high I would consider making it a small side business for fun. He made a thick trace and some of the additives accelerated the soap even more, once you get a light trace most soap will pretty quickly go to a thicker trace so it would have been better to go for a light trace and just mix those with seeds and such a little bit longer until the seeds were suspended, if he had more coconut oil in that blend the soap would have hardened before he could get the soap out of the beakers. With any additives you should consider the amount since to much of some things can cause irritation and others is fine to add plenty, cinnamon is best left as a spice it does not belong in skin products at all, it can easily burn and cause rashes. Other additives like honey can heat the soap so it makes a soap volcano, where it can bubble out of the form if you ad to much or have the mixture to hot to begin with, so you have to do some research before trying something new but there's plenty of good information and simple recipes online for beginners and once you get a bit more comfortable with the basic steps you can make your own recipes by using a soap calculator changing just one oil can make a completely different soap, or just go with a recipe you like and play around with additives or color designs, the possibilities are basically endless. I do like that he acted normal about the sodium hydroxide, so many soap forums and videos are treating it as it was a volatile explosive, yes it gets hot fast (make sure the beaker or whatever you use can handle that), and yes it's not good to get on you but protect your eyes, always add the powder to water and let it cool down a bit before moving and you'll be fine, never got it on me by just treating it respectfully but confidently. If you get it on your skin the oils there will become soap and you will be left with a completely dry spot intill the oils build up again, this ofc can feel irritated and be more sensitive but its not dangerous, in your eyes its ofc a lot more sensitive so protect then and also don't breath in the fumes your lungs won't like it. When using sodium hydroxide as a drain cleaner it actually makes soap in the pipes if you have any oil or fat down there, but it will wash away quickly since you don't let it cure.

*me, sitting on my couch licking cheeto dust off my fingers* : hmm yes, triglycerides, that makes sense.

these 5-minute-crafts are kinda getting out of hand. edit: oh my god guys it's a joke.

honestly this is the one of the more informative sources on soap making available, most of the articles I looked at instructed users to just buy already manufactured soap, melt it, and add food coloring.

The poppy seed one is like a polka dot soap and this one is the most beautiful one you made.

Other youtubers making soap: "We don't want to add too much perfume! Just a few drops is enough." NileRed: *pours in half the bottle*

"This idea of using more oil than is needed is generally known as superfatting" Yeah, my mom does this every time she cooks

Ive watched so many Soapmaking videos over the years, and this video is up there in terms of entertainment and shock factor, and the best part? big science words :)

This is such a cool video. While watching I started to notice how much work he's done to his videos when it comes to editing, how he's changed his speech to be faster and cut out fill words, just surprised how much has changed and how much better he got.

7:50 _purposefully dips in finger to show how not harmful it is_ *Next scene* _has gloves on_

For some reason, I laughed really hard when your mint soap turned orange. I've watched a lot of videos and you're explanations of complex processes are so clear, so when you messed up food coloring so drastically It was funny.

Ugh.🎀💖💖 I have been out of school for a substantial and unfortunate amount of time. But watching this video I cant tell you how amazing and reassuring it feels to be able to call out lessons and words I remember before you mentioning them, like sapponification, ester bonds, triglyceride tails etc.., it feels so amazing and I love watching your videos because your blend of down to earth understanding and comprehensibility, mixed with simple-to-learn new advanced topics is the perfect combo and just makes me feel so happy. Love your content so much!!!

Most videos I ever watch, I won't re-watch. But some of the videos on this channel hold every value to make them rewatchable. They are educational, entertaining, and calming, and esthetically pleasing - everything. Nigel has a very nice voice, his presentation, and his the manner of speech are also just right. I know this sounds just very general, but it's true. It's difficult to make a good channel which represents your passion, so every once that succeedes deserves praise.

This dude just got addicted to soap making vids and then was like “wait i have a RU-vid channel”

As a soap maker it's really entertaining to see a chemist know everything but struggle

My grandpa used to make lots of soaps! They were really good, and they had lots of pastel colours.

This reminds me of an old friend of mine, a pharmacist who often made her own fancy soaps to give away as Christmas presents.

*Starts pouring in additives without a measuring spoon* Me: He's going to add too much. "In each case, I think I added way too much stuff."

Just as a little note. Please never use ANY form of cinnamon in soap. Even if you want to get a cinnamon sent, dont use essential oil. It can burn your skin. Use fragrance oils (as they are synthetically made) and if you want the look of cinnamon, use poppy/apricot/blueberry seed

I did a soap lab in Grade 12 as apart of our organic chemistry unit. It's great to understand everything.

“Soap trusted you, I thought I could too, so why in bloody hell does Makarov know you?”

I love this because he's just making soap but it's still in a lab

"After mixing for a while, it somehow became orange instead." That doesn't look too ba- oh.

Fantastic video! I appreciate the in-depth explanation of the chemistry behind soap making. It adds a valuable layer of understanding to the process. Keep up the amazing content!

We made benzaldehyde in AP chemistry in the late ‘90s!! In fact, it was my 2nd fav class in highschool. My first favorite being gifted chemistry. Yes, I liked it so much I took it twice!

So technically, in my will, i can ask to turn my ashes into soap Hell yeah

no one: nilered: soap that makes you HURT

6:52 i used to work at a soap factory and would come home with lye burns all up my arms, i even have a scar on my ankle from when a bead landed on my sock and i didn’t notice for awhile. not super dangerous, but definitely would recommend to avoid touching it as much as you can.

*"where is my mind" started playing in background*

Nile, your videos help me SO much in my OChem class, especially when you go over mechanisms. thank you for everything you do. if i wasn't a broke college student, I'd be a patron

Just so you know, in Fight Club, Tyler kisses the hand of the narrator before aplying the sodium hydroxide. The watter from the lips interact with the sodium. In the book, his hand is burned in the form of Tyler's lips

I just found your channel and subscribed.. you are amazing kid. Intelligence is a dying art... You should start making educational videos for schools or for begining chemist... The one thing that teachers never understand.... When students watch a 90 year old man talking about the subject on a video they automatically tune out... But a young sharp peer Showing the same info would help students drop their guard and retain more of the information... Best of luck to you in all that you do

I used to work at a big grease plant and the most common oil we used was hydrogenated castor oil, at least for the basic lithium soap I cooked. They had two other major types of grease. One was called poly-urea and the other contained a large proportion of bentonite and was called aeroshell. There were dozens of different additives like these weird plastic goos, metals like molybdenum or aluminum, pigments, graphite, and once I used a large amount of acetic acid which I thought was odd. It was added after the lithium had already been pressure contacted with the solid castor oil and some thinning oil, like a bituminous oil or something like that. We used some oil that smelled really off. Every couple of weeks the whole place would smell like a Chinese restaurant and jalapenos. I swear we got recycled oil from restaurants or something. That place was so huge, but it's gone now, up in smoke.

*"A really nice almond flavour that smells like cherry candies"*

I physically recoiled when I saw how much menthol he added to one of them. Good LORD

im studying nutrition on college and one of my asignatures is biochemestry. the introduction of the video helped me a lot with the understanding of fatty acids and their reactions, thank you neil

Nile: "wash it with a bunch of water" Also Nile: "I didn't even wash it with water ."

Note: when you get concentrated NaOH/KOH on your skin, do NOT wash it just once. Wash *until the skin stops feeling slippery*. It gets soapy because the base (KOH) reacts with fats secreted by your skin, producing glycerol and some surfactants - soap, essentially. And if lye is concentrated enough to hydrolize fat, it's concentrated enough to (at the very least) dry out your skin and exacerbate any skin issues you have. If you work with lye AND toxic compounds, keep in mind one little-known toxicology fact: surfactants tend to increase chemical permeability of your skin. Which means that anything toxic or mutagenic has a much easier time getting through the protective layer down into your tissues. So don't leave any leftover soap or KOH on your skin when working with benzene. Not even if you wear gloves. Gloves can sometimes have holes, as I've learned the hard way. In my case, I was hasty one day when working with some pretty concentrated KOH and benzene. I didn't notice my glove had a teeny-tiny hole near the middle finger. I also didn't pay attention to the steadily worsening itching in my finger: I usually had that reaction to gloves. I only took off the glove at the end of the lesson - and saw that my skin was both soapy and had that tangy smell of benzene to it. Massive, albeit fortunately local, inflammation ensued a couple days later; my fingernail was spoon-shaped for three years after I got that crap to subside, and my usually mild eczema got exacerbated to blood-seeping-from-cracked-flesh levels of unpleasant. I'm pretty sure the acute inflammation and the deformed fingernail is just what happens when a finger gets an hour-long meet-and-greet with concentrated KOH, but the eczema was probably made much, much worse by the surfactant-benzene combination.

I used to study all of these theories and practice back in college. Now I feel what people say about "learning/studying is fun when there's no one tell you to study"

No matter how old is a nilered video, if there's anything that I understand before he explain, I feel very glad by the fact that I actually absorbed something I learned in class.

This is just the perfect side hustle for me to spend my insomniac nights on.

I love how the "essential oils" are actually just random chemicals.

My mom makes homemade soap since 2019 and still learning how to make better soap. This video honestly made me think of her and how the soap she makes keeps us in our roof. (and cleans our hands too)

I actually didnt know what soap was before this, thank you. I've got to go buy some!

I showed this video to a league of legends player and he's now a chemistry major

As a perfumer watching him pour that much bitter almond oil and cinnamon oil into the soap made me want to cry

This is ten times more interesting than any of my chemistry lessons

He just gave us a well explained chemistry class on how to make soap

next up: gaseous soap

i love how in trying to make relaxing minty soap you ended up making painful burning orange soap. chaotic

there's nothing in this world I love to watch more when I'm high than your videos man, and for that thanks a lot

This is quite interesting because his charts/examples don’t need much experience to understand but he is teaching high level science.

“Don’t get this stuff on your skin. You see how I’m putting it on my skin? Don’t do that!”

Cool to know that you managed to explain how and why soaps work in 5 minutes in my second language and I understood it more than how my teacher explained it

ive been considering making my own soap since im becoming a naturalist freak. and now i literally will. thanks for the SIMPLEEEE tutorial i was almost gonna shell out money for squatch bars

the fact he totally reuploaded this instead of just making a note of it in the comments or description though 💯 mm. 10 out of 10. Just *chefs kiss*.

When he added that cinnamon oil to the first soap thing I was like "oH nO" bc cinnamon oil is not smth you wanna be rubbing all over your skin omg

I thought it said "Making Soup" and you converted into a cooking show

This is the first time I see/hear accurate information about sodium hydroxide. I work with it to make pretzels and it is exactly like Nile says. Protect your eyes, but as for the rest, it's not such a big deal. It also doesn't make water cook and splash like crazy as it's sometimes portrayed. When I make a 4% solution for the pretzels I even use warm water to begin with to get it to dissolve faster.

I wanted to make soap for ages and I’m just listening to this getting really excited about learning this stuff so I can get nerdy when talking to my sister who would likely to such things with me. 😭

*makes soap from scratch* Tyler Durden *wants to know your location*

This dude: talking about chemistry and showing some formulas Me who failed chemistry every year: mmmmake the soampppp soap soap when soap show soap

Friend: *makes soap like a hobby* NileRed: *makes soap like a science experiment*

I am taking Chemistry this year. I love the feeling of actually understanding what he's talking about.

Strong alkalis feel soapy as they quickly start making soaps out of the fat in/on your skin. If you get splashed in the lab and it feels soapy wash it off quick, Conversely acids give you skin a grip, again wash it off quick.

Nile: "I made one beaker with menthol, [...]" Me: "thats a good idea lad, a little bit will lead to a nice cool sensation..." Nile: *pours like half a pint of pure menthol oil* Me: *bruh*

Hot process completes saponification faster and so can be safely used after you finish the cook. Cold process should finish saponification within about 48 hours and then is safe to use. Finishing saponification and curing are two different things. Cure is more about letting the excess water evaporate making the bars harder and more long lasting. Both cold and hot process soap take 4-6 weeks to cure. In fact, many times hot process soap benefits from a longer cure time than cold process because it is generally made with more water.

I love my homemade soap. I do it a lot different, but that's the beauty of soaping. Long as you use online soap calculator you get what you want.

"The best fat for making soap, comes from humans." -Tyler Durden, Fight club

I thought you labeled your 6th batch "Meth". lol

i remember making a soap in our organic chemistry subject, it took more than an hour to stir manually 😭 gladly we finish before our subject ends that day and after a month, my group got the highest score because our prof loves our packaging lol

Captain Price is gonna be tweaking when he sees this

As an experienced soaper, this video both entertained and horrified me lol

I like how NileRed never changed to cater to the wider audience his videos get nowadays. The level of detail in this video reminds me of College Applied Chemistry Lab. It's a legitimate Lab session but online. Great video all around.

Other soap makers on RU-vid: "Please don't add cinnamon oil! It'll burn your skin!" Nile: *dumps in cinnamon oil* Also, the changing of color in the menthol one probably has to do with a reaction between the menthol and the dye. The additives can totally interact with each other. Professional soap makers even keep that in mind when creating their soaps

"Soap." "I make and I sell soap."

You might not want to give away that cinnamon soap, you used too much oil for the size of the soap and cinnamon oil is a skin irritant and a common allergen. Might be fine, maybe test the little cinnamon soaps on yourself first

Can you try to extract nicotine from tobacco?

Hey Nile, very interesting and informative video!! One thing I'd like you to see is you trying your hand at making some shaving soap!! Be safe and be well.

I came here in case i get turned to stone and wake up 3700 years later and need to make soap to survive.

3:03 "when it comes to liquid soap it can be surprisingly complicated" Missed such a great opportunity to say "soap-risingly"

"Salted fatty acid" sounds like fast food...

The thumbnail is the reason why I loved eating soap as a kid

the seed soap you made looks like a big chuck of stuck animal crackers, it looked so good lol

NILERED, THIS IS IMPORTANT HUGE COMPANIES LIKE DOVE ARE RIPPING OFF YOUR IDEA OF MAKING SOAP YOU NEED TO SUE THEM

The first rule of fight club is: Make your own soap.

Soap trusted you, I thought I could too.

i might be legitimately following this video in the next couple days, since i prefer solid soap for showering and i'd like to add scents myself. ill be adding eucalyptus, orange, pine and maybe some other oil (not necessarily all of them into one bar, doe) it'll be the first video of yours i follow