III.—White castile soap 5 parts
Alcohol15 parts
Rose water15 parts

Soap Powders.

The raw materials of which soap powder is made are soap and soda, to which ingredients an addition of talcum or water glass can be made, if desired, these materials proving very useful as a filling. An excellent soap powder has been made of 20 parts of crystallized soda, 5 parts of dark-yellow soap (rosin curd), and 1 part of ordinary soft soap. At first the two last mentioned are placed in a pan, then half the required quantity of soda is added, and the whole is treated. Here it must be mentioned that the dark-yellow curd soap, which is very rosinous, has to be cut in small pieces before placing the quantity into the pan. The heating process must continue very slowly, and the material has to be crutched continually until the whole of the substance has been thoroughly melted. Care must be taken that the heating process does not reach the boiling point. The fire underneath the pan must now be extinguished, and then the remaining half of the crystallized soda is added to be crutched with the molten ingredients, until the whole substance has become liquid. The liquefaction is assisted by the residual heat of the first heated material and the pan. The slow cooling facilitates the productive process by thickening the mass, and when the soda has been absorbed, the whole has become fairly thick. With occasional stirring of the thickened liquid the mass is left for a little while longer, and when the proper moment has arrived the material contained in the pan is spread on sheets of thin iron, and these are removed to a cool room, where, after the first cooling, they must be turned over by means of a shovel, and the turning process has to be repeated at short intervals until the material has quite cooled down and the mixture is thoroughly broken. The soap is now in a very friable condition, and the time has now come to make it into powder, for which purpose it is rubbed through the wire netting or the perforated sieves. Generally the soap is first rubbed through a coarse sieve, and then through finer ones, until it has reached the required conditions of the powder. Some of the best soap powders are coarse, but other manufacturers making an equally good article prefer the finer powder, which requires a little more work, since it has to go through three sieves, whereas the coarse powder can do with one or at most two treatments. But this is, after all, a matter of local requirements or personal taste.

The powder obtained from the above-mentioned ingredients is fine and yellow colored, and it has all the qualities needed for a good sale. Instead of the dark-yellow soap, white stock soap can also be used, and this makes only a little difference in the coloring. But again white stock soap can be used, and the same color obtained by the use of palm oil, or other coloring ingredients, as these materials are used for giving the toilet soaps their manifold different hues. Many makers state that this process is too expensive, and not only swallows up all the profit, but some of the color materials influence the soap and not to its advantage.

Soft soap is used only to make the powder softer and easier soluble, and for this reason the quantity to be used varies a little and different manufacturers believe to have a secret by adding different quantities of this material. As a general statement it may be given that the quantity of soft soap for the making of soap powder should not overstep the proportion of one to three, compared with the quantity of hard soap; any excess in this direction would frustrate the desires of the maker, and land him with a product which has become smeary and moist, forming into balls and lumping together {650} in bags or cases, to become discolored and useless. It is best to stick to the proportion as given, 5 parts of hard and 1 part of soft soap, when the produced powder will be reliable and stable and not form into balls even if the material is kept for a long while.

This point is of special importance, since soap powder is sold mostly in weighed-out packages of one and a half pounds. Most manufacturers will admit that loose soap powder forms only a small part of the quantities produced, as only big laundries and institutions purchase same in bags or cases. The retail trade requires the soap powder wrapped up in paper, and if this has to be done the powder must not be too moist, as the paper otherwise will fall to pieces. This spoils the appearance of the package, and likely a part of the quantity may be lost. When the powder is too moist or absorbs easily external moisture, the paper packages swell very easily and burst open.

The best filling material to be employed when it is desired to produce a cheaper article is talcum, and in most cases this is preferred to water glass. The superiority of the former over the latter is that water glass hardens the powder, and this is sometimes done to such an extent, when a large quantity of filling material is needed, that it becomes very difficult to rub the soap through the sieves. In case this difficulty arises, only one thing can be done to lighten the task, and that is to powderize the soap when the mixed materials are still warm, and this facilitates the work very much. It is self-evident that friction under these conditions leaves a quantity of the soap powder material on the sieves, and this cannot be lost. Generally it is scraped together and returned to the pan to be included in the next batch, when it is worked up, and so becomes useful, a need which does not arise when talcum has been used as a filling material. Again, the soap powder made with the addition of water glass is not so soluble, and at the same time much denser than when the preparation has been made without this material. It is thus that the purchaser receives by equal weight a smaller-looking quantity, and as the eye has generally a great influence when the consumer determines a purchase, the small-sized parcels will impress him unfavorably. This second quality of soap powder is made of the same ingredients as the other, except that an addition of about 6 parts of talcum is made, and this is stirred up with the other material after all the soda has been dissolved. Some makers cheapen the products also by reducing the quantity of hard soap from 5 to 3 parts and they avoid the filling; the same quantity of soda is used in all cases. On the same principle a better quality is made by altering the proportions of soda and soap the other way. Experiments will soon show which proportions are most suitable for the purpose.

So-called ammonia-turpentine soap powder has been made by crutching oil of turpentine and ammonia with the materials just about the time before the whole is taken out of the heating pan. Some of the powder is also scented, and the perfume is added at the same time and not before. In most of the latter cases mirbane oil is used for the purpose.

These powders are adaptable to hard water, as their excess of alkali neutralizes the lime that they contain:

I.—Curd (hard) soap, powdered4 parts
Sal soda3 parts
Silicate of soda2 parts