Preserving the timeless craft of soap making, artisan soap makers Dr. Robert and Katherine McDaniel provide instruction and guidance to all levels of soap makers. Using natural ingredients, readers will experience the gratification of processing handmade liquid soaps, cold- and hot-process soaps, melt-and-pour soaps, re-batched soaps, working with fragrances, skin treatments, colors, and shapes and discover the benefits of aromatherapy associated with many essential oils. African Black Soap is also explored for its healing properties for extreme dryness, blemishes, wrinkles, stretch marks and scars.
Dr. Bob McDaniel has a BS in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Missouri at Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology.) After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, he started an industrial career and worked in the soap and detergent industry for some fifteen years. During his industrial career he earned 14 US Patents and their foreign equivalents all relating to surfactants. His work led to construction of multimillion dollar a year plants in the US and Europe.
At this time Dr.Bob teaches Chemistry and AP Chemistry at an independent high school in Southern California. Deeply committed to life-long learning, he became a Registered Patent Agent in Febraury of 2012. Bob and Katie on occassion still offer classes and workshops on soapmaking.
Bob and Katie McDaniel have a wide range of interests. They rode horses in Chicago, played a great deal of golf in Decatur, engaged in fine American crafts in suburban Philadelphia, and engage in target shooting in Southern California. At this point in their lives they successfully, by diet and exercise, regained their weight and conditioning and have matched the weight and BMI last seen as they entered college. If you ask what is next for them, the answer is anything: perhaps even a book on fitness.
