Soap from Scratch?

[sallyinwales]

Any soapmakers here that start with a carcass and woodashes and work from there? I make a lot of traditional soap and I'm hoping to work on perfecting my woodash and fat method this winter if time allows,would be good to hear of other peoples experiences:)

[Scotty]

Hi Sally, I've not made soap from the woodash/animal fat method before, would be interested on hearinh about the proper process.

I have used natural alternatives to soap like horse chestnut and silver birch leaves to good effect, the first works amazingly well, really lathers up!

[sallyinwales]

I havent used birch leaves before, must try that, I wasnt aware they were saponin rich at all.

Soap making can be a bit of an arcane art, a lot depends on the quality fo the ashes to make it work well

[OregonDave]

http://waltonfeed.com/old/soaphome.html

Perhaps a start on your project?
OD

PS - Plague rats? There's a market for 'em? :o

[sallyinwales]

Got loads of 'old time' recipes dating from 800ad onwards, my eventual aim is to reconstruct as many of them as I can so I can compare the effectiveness in the new book, but also developing a modern interpretation of the 'from scratch' method using woods we commonly burn today. So far my biggest difficulty is gather ing the quantity of ashes, we do have a woodburner at home but a whole winters worth of ash for us is barely a bucket full of the quality of ashes needed for soapmaking.

And plague rats, yes indeed, I have many addicted cats whose owners come back roughly once a year for a new fix for their moggy:lmao: Good value things plague rats, most cats get a solid twelvemonth of play out of them before they wear out

[JP]

I havent used birch leaves before, must try that, I wasnt aware they were saponin rich at all.

Soap making can be a bit of an arcane art, a lot depends on the quality fo the ashes to make it work well

Birch works well in this country, but better in sweden the ones over there feel very sticky when squeezed in the hand and you get quite a lather out of them when wetted and rubbed between your palms and squeezed.

[canadianbushcrafters]

I've never used homemade soap.

[sallyinwales]

Oh you should try it, when its made well its wonderful stuff, you can use it for everything from dishes to hair to laundry (makes great camping soap) and its much nicer to the environment than the stuff they sell in the supermarket. However, it does need making carefully

[yarrow]

So my question is, could you feasibly make soap at home in your kitchen? If so, roughly how long would it take? I know this seems like a really stupid question as you would first have to get together the ingredients and things, plus the fact that doing anything new takes a lot longer than normal, im just looking for a rough idea time wise to see if it would be worth doing, or if it would not be simpler to buy some from a pro such as yourself. Also do you incorporate any antibacterial properties into your soap?

[sallyinwales]

So my question is, could you feasibly make soap at home in your kitchen? If so, roughly how long would it take? I know this seems like a really stupid question as you would first have to get together the ingredients and things, plus the fact that doing anything new takes a lot longer than normal, im just looking for a rough idea time wise to see if it would be worth doing, or if it would not be simpler to buy some from a pro such as yourself. Also do you incorporate any antibacterial properties into your soap?


Assuming you are still talking woodash soap, then yes, you could make it in the kitchen but you would first need to leach water through several bucketfuls of hardwood ashes to produce the lye. The soap I have certified for sale (there are some amazingly complicated rules and regulations around selling soap) are all based on historic recipes but I have to use a modern lye source (NaOH or KOH depending on the soap type) to allow me to prove that each batch is made the same. That is much easier to make at home, but you trade off needing to weigh ingredients very accurately.

There are two sorts of soap you can make at home using bought lye, the sort that is currently very popular is 'cold process' soap, you mix fat with lye at a fixed recipe, then pour it into moulds and let it react and cure slowly over about a month before you can use it, I use the older method which is hot process, where I cook out the soap as the chemical reaction happens, takes about 2 hours to make a batch and its ready to use the next day, but it has extra 'dangers' in that you have a small wannabe volcano on the stove for that time.

I would say have a go at cold process first, there are loads of websites out there to talk you through it and you will have very useable soap, then, if you like soapmaking, look at the more traditional methods at that point.

As for antbacterial properties, I don't put essential oils etc into my soap, the cooking process would remove any active properties (so does cp in most cases actually, the heat of the reaction does for most everything except for the scent), but real soap in itself is antibacterial in as much as it very very effectively removes things you don't want on skin, thats why many hospitals are going back to scrubbing with soap rather than using fancy cleansing products. Additives like dried herbs, oatmeal, almond meal etc also add 'scrubby' properties which are very handy if you like getting grubby :)

[JP]

Grubby eh, id better put sand gravel and iron filings in my soap then:redface: lol, sounds like a real science to it ive never tried it knowing my luck id blow my kitchen up :rolleyes:

[sallyinwales]

I did set fire to mine making soap once, I turned my back and it exploded, and of course boiling fat catches fire really really easily, add hot caustic lye and the stuff was like napalm. And then I had to clear it all up before Gareth got home and saw what I'd done to his cooker (oops)

[JP]

:o yup that would happen to me lol :rolleyes::wink:

[yarrow]

Thanks for that detailed reply. Sounds like a nice winter project. Welcome to the site, appreciate you spending the time to share your info