Soap Recipes: Seventy Tried-And-True Ways to Make Modern Soap With Herbs, Beeswax and Vegetable Oils

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, but the price is too high.
Review: This book contains excellent soapmaking instructions, more recipes than any other book published, and it's all done in an entertaining and amusing style. The only thing wrong here is the price: for a small paperback done in black and white, the price seems a bit much. Even so, I bought it and would do so again. It's a wonderful book on cold process soapmaking. If I could only have two books on soapmaking, I'd get this one and one by Susan Miller Cavitch. Both are highly respected soapmakers, and each presents a very different view of the soapmaking process.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Beginners!
Review: This was my first soapmaking book and after reading about a dozen books on the subject, I still think it is a great place to start. Small recipes mean that a beginner's mistakes won't cost a large volume of expensive oils and won't take a lot of special equipment. Recipes are included for any type of oils imaginable and instructions are kept to the basics. I don't worry about matching the recommended temperatures--that gets pretty exacting. The soaps turn out fine even if you ignore the exact temperature readings and just use a general range for temps.The recipes are well calculated and the instructions are clear. After trying literally dozens of soap recipes my favorites still come from this book. When you are ready to get into more technical info. and larger volume recipes get the books by Susan M. Cavitch.

Rating:
Summary: Give Me A Break!
Review: We're on shaky ground here! The author doesn't write enough about SAFETY! No translucent soap recipes, encourages cheating by buying pre-made bars and melting it down,etc.Troubleshooting index was okay.Did learn things from this book that I didn't from other soap books.Appendix K was very insightful. The vegteable based soap chapter was nice, but it's too expensive to be buying palm oil and the like! Basicly the book is boring. Author wasn't very creative on the whole preperation of the book. I recommend The Complete Soapmaker by Norma Coney instead.