Debra is a master gardener, a certified herbalist, a natural living instructor, and more. She taught Matt and Betsy how to make soap so they decided to bring her on as a staff writer! Debra recently started an organic herb farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina. You can even purchase her handmade products on Amazon! If you rely solely upon this advice you do so at your own risk. From lattes to muffins, pumpkin is everywhere. So why not make a pumpkin soap? Will infusing oil with fresh herbs work?
Learn how to make African Black Soap, learn about all of its benefits, and start making this nutrient-rich African black soap recipe today! Could it be a mixture of different woods? What if there were small amounts of other materials, such as paper or other burnables, so long as they are permitable burnables? This is a good article, but for most of us, a bit more information would have been nice.
Friend's Email Address. Your Name. Your Email Address. This post may contain affiliate links. Yes, You Can! Happy New Year! Nicolas, you could also try any well-known herbal community for both soapmaking and an interesting look at traditional ways. Herbalists and "forest-folk" those who love plants and their wild habitats deeply -- the ones scattered across the United States right now, still practicing old traditions from whatever cultures' grandmothers' passed-down wisdom -- will likely be very happy that someone's taking an interest.
If you can find those that live pretty simply, without many modern trappings woodstove, etc.? Not sure about the east coast. You can probably find people in N. Carolina and the Midwest. The northeast is pretty urbanized. I'm mostly familiar with the western half of the U. Perhaps at most; my grandparents are from a different country, but my father grew up on a farm, and his mother knew the local herbs.
Would go gathering in the mountains. People in the United States and Europe ate things like chicory and other not-very-well-known easily gatherable edible wild greens in the 's and 's. So, come to think of it, if you're wanting to find out about traditional ways of living, learning about the ways of some herbalists seems like a good avenue to explore down anyway. Plus, it's good to know about the really effective, common "weeds" one can gather: comfrey, plantain, yarrow, etc. And, feeling an herbal salve made out of common plants heal and stop the pain in a common large bruise, cut, or insect string is one of the coolest things that you kind of have to experience yourself.
Like Neosporin, but better. Waco, TX www. Online tutorials only get you so far when it comes to trouble-shooting, and calculating strength of lye, and calculating proportions for lye, tallow, water and additives. Please contact us! Join us for a much anticipated return to the Lone Star State!
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How to Make Soap from Ashes Soap making in the woods can be almost automatic. Hardwood ashes are some of the best producers of lye. If you need a large quantity of lye, you may want to build a lye leaching barrel.
Hardwood ashes are the best lye ingredient. Continue Reading. Make a Lye Leaching Barrel Since lye is used in the backwoods often and for many purposes besides the making of soap, you may find it desirable — as we did — to build your own leaching barrel. Share your thoughts. Long-term exposure leads to lung damage. Small children and pets must stay away from your working area, preferably out of the room. Turn off the phone; you do not want to be interrupted to answer it anyway. Lye solution is an odorless and colorless liquid that resembles water.
To prevent misidentification, the container holding lye must be clearly labeled and kept somewhere safe, so that no one can reach it and accidentally spill or drink it. Ingestion of lye is often fatal. Do this just before dissolution because sodium hydroxide readily attracts air moisture, which results in formation of crust and clumps.
If clumped sodium hydroxide is poured into water, it can cause dangerous splattering. Also, sodium hydroxide readily reacts with carbon dioxide in air to form sodium carbonate, which consumes a certain portion of sodium hydroxide. You should never pour water over solid sodium hydroxide, because it will lead to a very violent, volcano-like reaction.
This is because water poured over a pile of sodium hydroxide causes formation of a moist crust on its surface. The water that penetrates inside the pile i. The crust on the surface prevents releasing of heat and steam, which causes the pressure under the crust to increase, and the crust breaks in a violent eruption. When the first portion of sodium hydroxide poured into water begins to dissolve, the heat starts to generate.
I hope you enjoyed this post on how NOT to make homemade lye. Let me know if you have ever successfully made lye yourself and tell me what you think I did wrong? Then I would add hot water and let it leach out the bottom hole into a cup. Put the water in the top, let it soak in, add more throughout the day until you get about a cup of lye. Then we would get that lye and put it on worms and watch them sizzle.
So there you go, another test to see if your wood ash lye is strong enough. This homemade lye experiment may not have worked for you, but I have learned so much from your write-up and the comments. Sometimes fails can be more informative than reading about the correct way to do a thing. I thank you for posting this! What you are producing from soaking the wood ash is varying amounts of Potassium Carbonate and Calcium Carbonate. When these salts are used to make soap you essentially only end up with soap scum.
Try your method again adding some quicklime to your wood ash solution and you should have a better chance at success! Also grab a cheap pH measuring device. You should be looking for a pH of around Good luck and I hope this helps!
Nathan, Have you ever made soap from wood ash? I have and did not use calcium hydroxide or quick lime. Works for me. So had she not used so much straw and had more wood ash it might have been different. If you read this Kerrie maybe dad can pack up a big old box of wood ash and send it UPS. This time soak the ashes in water and decant off the liquid. Boil the liquid down to increase the concentration until you float your egg and have at it.
Might make a soft soap but it will be soap. I know lye does react with aluminum though so you should never ever use aluminum for the extraction process unless you want a caustic mess on your hands.
Not near enough ash! All this adding stuff is far from correct! You need far more ash. No additives necessary. There are 2 ways to get your lye. If your egg sinks, boil it down in a well vented area until the egg floats. Otherwise, leech your ashes with smaller amounts of water.
If your egg floats too much, add more water through the ash. If your egg floats with about a quarter size exposure, you are right on.
Simple as that! They used wood ash and water. When you make the soap, unless you want liquid or very soft soap, add salt to help harden it better. No offense, but I find it totally baffling that this generation actually thinks it is more intelligent than our distant ancestors. This is a prime example. Did you know how edible pine trees are? How many vitamins and minerals are in them? How about deer poop as a great firestarter? It would be so cool to learn and know all these things for sure and I find it an exciting journey!
If more people had the opportunity to live in the rural country on a farm or in another country outside the United States, I think they would learn these types of things just like our relatives and ancestors.
Maybe the older generations should have protected and passed on these skills to everybody instead of just for the few. I am always amazed by the exceptionalist who believes that the frontiers man was a special breed, quick learning super fixer and problem solver. Not a lost herd up failed immigrants who fell on hard times and had to live of the land aka the main story line of the old movies. There was always an educated woman well read who could say, your filthy if we want to survive here we need to live like the ASIANS build latrines and make some Babylonian soap.
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