Teach Soap

When I was a young lad I was always trying my hand at doing things the old fashioned way and using everything I could from the surrounding woods. While I was able to get a decent lather from plants that contained natural soaps such as soapwort, yucca, and blue cohosh, I never really had much success making hot process soap. I trickled water through the plentiful wood ashes we had from making maple syrup, boiled it down till it was quite caustic, then boiled it with olive oil in the hopes that with excess lye I would get some sort of soap floating on top. I had no luck whatsoever, and it's been so long I don't even remember if the oil was in any way visibly changed. A decade later I'm making soap by cold process but I have this itch to want to make soap the old old fashioned way. Has anyone here done it? Please share if you have! I also realize now that I was only using potassium hydroxide which would have produced some kind of soap paste such as might be used for a liquid soap, and I would need to add salt to get some ion exchange and get a hard soap to cake on top.

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Just call me "Apo"

There is no way to know how strong your lye is. My mother and grandmother made soap this way, but used it for laundry. If you want to experiment, by all means, do so, but please don't sell it.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

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Just call me "Apo"

I work in a hospital lab, and there is a regular patient that comes in on my weekend shift especially to be waited on by me because I used to work for him at a bank a few years ago before he retired. He came in one day when I'd brought a box of soaps to give to coworkers so I gave him one too (HP spearmint!). He loved it so much that he decided he wanted to start making his own. He did make a few HP batches that I know of, mostly unscented and for laundry. He told me when he was a child he had a neighbor who did the whole lye from ashes thing and said he wanted to try it himself. Luckily I think he lost interest in soapmaking and never tried that, haha. It was a funny story though, my coworkers all got a big kick out of it. I think they all secretly think I am strange for being so obsessed with soaping, hehe. Crafting, handmade, homemade, natural type things really aren't that appreciated where I live, sadly.

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Laura<3

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now know as Gwenann's Sudz...

Have you had a look at the book "Essentially Soap" by Dr. Robert S. McDaniel? Dr. McDaniel is a chemist with years of experience studying oils and fats. His book details lye making, including a test to see if the lye is strong enough. The test is to see if a raw egg (in the shell!) will float in the lye solution. If the egg floats, the lye is supposed to be strong enough for soap making.

My SO is a big old science geek - I would not put it past him to try making lye.