Chapter 270: Chapter 270: Buying Materials and Making Soap

Previously, Gu Qinghuan had made lard soap. Honestly, that pot of lard was worth quite a bit, which drove up the production cost significantly. If she really used lard to make soap for sale, she’d end up losing money.

Given the current circumstances and limited budget, Gu Qinghuan prioritized the cheapest option: rice bran oil.

Rice bran oil is extracted from rice bran. It’s rarely used for cooking and is mostly used in industrial applications such as animal feed, soap, hardened oil, glycerin, stearic acid, oleic acid, and paint resins. This oil is nothing special, but it’s cheap. Soap made from it cleans well and leaves a refreshing feeling.

However, rice bran oil wasn’t available locally—they’d have to try their luck in the provincial capital.

Aside from oil, the other key ingredient is alkali. Here, they used sodium hydroxide, commonly known as caustic soda. Caustic soda could be bought everywhere, but purity was important—it had to be at least 92%, otherwise, too many impurities could cause the batch to fail.

These two ingredients were the most important for soap-making. The rest—like colorants, essential oils, and various fragrances—were optional.

To keep costs down, Gu Qinghuan decided to skip essential oils altogether. If they could get colorants, great; if not, that was fine too.

Xu Huainian rarely left the county in his life, but this time, he made a trip to the provincial capital. After asking around, he managed to buy cheap rice bran oil and colorants. He was clever enough to get the supplier’s contact information, so next time, he could just call and have the goods shipped. Although he’d have to pay for shipping himself, it was still cheaper than making the trip again.

As for caustic soda, it was available everywhere, so he bought some and carried everything back to Xujia Village himself—no shipping costs. He was exhausted by the time he got home, lugging a huge white oil drum with a full 100 jin (about 50 kg) of oil in his big basket.

“Fengqin, guess how much this oil cost per jin?” Xu Huainian asked excitedly.

“How much?” Chen Fengqin was busy helping him take off the basket and handing him a towel to wipe his sweat.

“Less than 0.2 yuan per jin! All this oil, a full 100 jin, plus the big oil drum, only cost twenty yuan in total! Isn’t that cheap? It’s just a pity the oil isn’t edible—only good for industrial use. I also bought the caustic soda Qinghuan mentioned—ten jin for only 0.48 yuan, not expensive at all. The colorant was a bit pricey, though—two yuan for this tiny bottle. But the supplier said it’s concentrated, so just a drop will go a long way. I bought both red and pink—they look nice and bright.”

Xu Huainian happily showed Chen Fengqin all the things he’d bought.

“So you spent only 24.5 yuan to get everything we need?” Chen Fengqin had worried that the fifty yuan budget wouldn’t be enough, but it turned out they’d only spent half and nearly had everything ready.

“Not quite. Including travel expenses, it was just over 29 yuan. I didn’t even buy anything to eat all day—food in the city is too expensive. The pancakes I brought in the morning were long gone. Hurry and make me something to eat—I’m starving after carrying all this stuff home.”

Now that he was home, Xu Huainian finally felt how empty his stomach was.

With all the materials ready, Gu Qinghuan also had the custom molds and drying racks made by Carpenter Xu.

Everything was ready except for the final step.

Gu Qinghuan took some time to return to Xujia Village to teach the couple how to make soap.

Step one: Prepare the materials. Use a small scale to measure precise amounts—no more, no less. The correct ratio is crucial for success.

Step two: Dissolve the alkali. Make sure the sodium hydroxide is completely dissolved in water, with no visible granules. This step is dangerous and requires caution.

Step three: Mixing. When both the lye solution and the oil are between 20°C and 40°C, pour the oil into the lye.

Step four: Stirring. This step is physically demanding—stir clockwise for about half an hour. The saponification reaction starts slowly, but as you stir, the mixture thickens. With no electric mixer, it all had to be done by hand.

When the mixture is as thick as bean paste and you can draw a figure-eight that doesn’t disappear right away, it’s ready.

Now, you can add extras like colorants or fragrances and mix well.

Step five: Pour into molds. Gu Qinghuan had already asked Xu Huainian to order a batch of flower-shaped molds, which were now put to use. She added red colorant, mixed it in, and poured the mixture into the molds. The finished soap would be flower-shaped and look beautiful.

Leave the soap in the molds for three days, then unmold and let it air-dry. When the surface is smooth and no longer sticky, cut it into bars. The cut soap then needs to be left in a ventilated area for some time to finish saponifying before it can be used.

From start to finish, it takes at least a month before the soap is ready to use.

After demonstrating once, Gu Qinghuan guided the couple through the process. It wasn’t difficult—mostly manual labor. The most important part was the initial measuring; any mistake in the ratio could cause failure. Safety was also crucial during the lye-dissolving step. The rest was just hard work.

The couple carefully wrote down Gu Qinghuan’s formula and followed it strictly. Their first batch was a success, though they’d have to wait until it fully saponified to see the final results.

Gu Qinghuan supervised them for a few more batches. Once she was sure they had the hang of it, she didn’t need to watch over them anymore.

The couple, along with their son, spent two days turning all the oil into soap. When they ran out of molds, they quickly had more made. Since this was a collective factory, Carpenter Xu didn’t charge for the extra molds.

Five days later, the first batch of finished soap was ready.

Gu Qinghuan personally led Xu Huainian, his wife, and Xu Wenping in cutting the unmolded soap into bars of equal thickness, stamping each with the characters “Yu Jie” (meaning “Jade Clean”).

With that, the soap-making process was basically complete. Now, it was just a matter of waiting for the soap to finish saponifying.

The first batch was all red, flower-shaped soap, with dried osmanthus flowers that Chen Fengqin had collected from the village. The soap had a light, pleasant fragrance. The red soap with yellow flower stamens looked beautiful and elegant—like something expensive.

Who would guess that each bar only cost three cents to make?

Chen Fengqin did the math: all materials and expenses totaled about thirty yuan, and the finished soap came to about a thousand bars, not counting the scraps. That meant each bar cost only three cents to make. And since things like fragrance could be used for many batches, the next round would cost even less—just over two cents per bar.

Making it themselves was incredibly cost-effective.

However, Gu Qinghuan brought up a new issue they’d overlooked: packaging!

As the saying goes, “Clothes make the man, gold makes the Buddha.” Without attractive packaging, the product wouldn’t sell. Xu Huainian had no clue about this.

Gu Qinghuan decided to make a trip to the provincial capital to find a packaging factory and order a batch of paper boxes as a trial.

For the first batch, she didn’t choose the fanciest packaging—since this was just a test run, decent quality would do.

The boxes were printed with a magnolia flower and the big characters “Yu Jie.” In the lower right corner, in smaller print: “The best love for your family.” The packaging was simple and elegant.

Each box cost one cent, so a thousand boxes cost ten yuan, plus reimbursement for travel expenses.

By now, most of the small workshop’s initial funds had been spent.

Whether they could make money next depended on this first batch.

Chen Fengqin and Xu Huainian were under a lot of pressure. Since they’d taken the lead in starting the factory, they’d faced plenty of ridicule from the villagers. Some accused them of using collective funds for personal gain and not doing any real work. Others asked where the soap was, since they kept talking about production but hadn’t seen any results.

Old fox Xu Mingshan was even stirring up trouble behind their backs.

In short, no one believed in their little workshop.

Only they themselves knew the value of the soap. Once it finished saponifying and sold, the income would speak for itself. Then, who would dare say anything?

Despite the pressure, the couple pressed on!

But trouble was brewing in secret.

Xu Lao’er, hearing from someone that the soap was good, sneaked into the workshop at night to steal some. Fortunately, Xu Huainian had anticipated this and had his eldest son, Xu Wenping, sleep in the workshop every night to guard the soap.

Xu Wenping caught Xu Lao’er red-handed. Being tall and strong, Xu Wenping easily subdued him.

Xu Huainian was furious. If Xu Lao’er had succeeded, all their efforts would have been wasted.

He refused to tolerate this and reported Xu Lao’er to the commune for stealing collective property.

This time, Xu Lao’er really got what he deserved—he was publicly criticized for several days and assigned the dirtiest, hardest jobs, like cleaning out latrines.

This served as a warning to others in the village, and the petty thieves didn’t dare act up again.

Xu Huainian became even more vigilant, sleeping in the workshop himself and making sure someone was always on guard, afraid even a single bar of soap might go missing.

With the soap almost ready for sale, the next issue was pricing.

Gu Qinghuan found that most soap on the market sold for about thirty cents a bar. Since theirs was a new product, they could price it a bit lower to break into the market first."