http://www.thedailysheeple.com/congr...-safety_042015
Big Brother wants to put a stop to our soapmaking!
Sherry in GA
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http://www.thedailysheeple.com/congr...-safety_042015
Big Brother wants to put a stop to our soapmaking!
Sherry in GA
Has anyone here ever made soap from fire place ash? If so how did it turn out?
If the steps are simple enough include them -- I would really like to know what people think of the lye and how it turned out
Get this book ... http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Tr...back+to+basics
O.W.
Making soap from ash is a bit of a stretch.Quote:
Originally Posted by world?
Making lye from ash......and then making soap from that lye and animal fats......is highly recommended against.....by those who don't believe that wise decisions nor experienced approach is possible among us unwashed heathens.
:mrgreen:
A friend and I made extensive wood ash lye for tanning buckskins.
We poked a few small holes in the bottom of a plastic drum, setting that drum over top of another, cut in half for a holding tank, and leached water through the ash. We filled the barrel with sparkles ash...... (plastic barrel, remember.......do not use metal for this evolution)
The higher your resultant liquid ash will float a good egg, on the surface of the lye, the stronger your solution.
We never made soap from our own
lye......but it's on the short list.
They tell me it's easy to get wood lye soap a tad strong (like burn your skin in effort to clean it :) )
I think this is a good thing.....IF one pays attention to detail and determines stable recipe for both, high caliber soap
for serious work, and gentler soap for the skin.
My my late wife made lots of lye soap.....and, thankfully, taught my eldest daughter well in that art.
Soap from lye made from wood ashes will be SOFT soap. Commercial lye is Sodium hydroxide. Lye made from wood ashes is potassium hydroxide.
If you want bar soap and are going to be using homemade lye, you'll need to use beef tallow. The leaf lard (the good, hard stuff from around the inside organs in a hog) will also work, although the bars won't be as solid/firm.
You won't be making hard soap from any oils with wood ash lye.
It's very easy to get ANY lye soap "too strong"... at least at first. Measure carefully and accurately, and follow a GOOD soapmaking calculator to find the proper amounts of fat to lye, and there will be very little "free lye". However, the saponification process isn't instant, so any homemade soap should be aged a *minimum* of a month.
The old timers used to say "soap improves with age; fat spoils".. meaning, get your fat turned into soap as soon as possible. I've used homemade soft soap that was 25 years old, and it smelled good and worked great.
Oh, and it MUST BE hardwood ash!
Summerthyme