How to Make Your Own Lye Soap

[[Guardian Wolf]]

My mentor was a young lady who lived by herself in this old house. It was an old house built around the turn of the century and it had no AC or heating. In order to cool the home, she had a window based AC unit and in order to heat the home she would use her wood stove.

Since I was one of her few actual friends, sometimes her and I would hang out and I would help her with stuff (I admit, she was beautiful).

Every summer, she would split these pieces of Oak for her stove. She would always have a winter's supply of wood cut before winter ever came. She would burn the oak and use it for soap making. I also learned that you cannot use pine or soft woods because they do not make good lye.

We would take this ash and put it into a barrel. The barrel had a tape at the bottom We would then add rain water until the rain water soaked all of the ash until there was several inches of standing water in the barrel. We would leave the ash and the water in there for a weeks. After about a week, the ash and water would turn into lye.

From there, you take the lye and mix it with water. You want 3 ounces of water for every 1 ounce of lye. They can have some noxious fumes, so remember to open your windows. It also gets really hot, so you need to let it cool for awhile.

Then you want to take lard and melt it until it all melted and you can stir it with a spoon. If you use any sort of oils in the soap, you would add those to the lard.

Once you do this, you need to stir in the lye and water. Eventually it will turn thick. Once the texture changes, you're soap is in liquid form. At this point you need to pour them into your soap molds and let them set for a day. After this your soap is done.

[IsisUnknown]

I haven't tried it yt so im not sure but I also heard that if you just strain water threw the wood ash untill it stops running red then you can use it right away for lye. Is the set time necessary or does this method work also?

[Y0m]

this seems really cool.
i might try making ash from a fire ritual
maybe ill be blessed every time i shower with it

Anyway, can i use something besides lard?
Cuz that's animal fat if im not mistaken.


Love.

[WitchyLady506]

Some people use vegetable oils and sunflower oil to make lye, but it's not real lye and it's no where near as cleansing in my opinion. PLus it's not lye soap then it's glycerine.

[calico]

I make my own soap, but wow! making my own lye is way beyond what I want to bother with. I buy Red Devil 100% lye, and use a mix of oils. Coconut oil to make a good lather, and castor oil to make large bubbles- after that I use whatever I have handy. To get good soap you have to get the right amounts. Majestic Mountain Sage, on the internet (Google that with soap making) has a lye calculator, where you can put in how much of which oils and it will tell you how much lye to use. Homemade soap is wonderful, and easy to make.

[IsisUnknown]

its difficult to fnd lye sometimes though so making it may be easier in some areas. Many stores have stopped carrying it all together due to it being used frequently for illegal purposes. The ones that do still carry it will usually keep it in the back were you must request it & show ID (18+) before they'll sell it.

Lard is indeed animal fat. Vegetable shortening is simular in consistency but like stated not quite the same.

[shadowx]

It isnt the consistency that is important, soap is a mixture of acid and fats, when dont correctly it will form a molecule, half of which sticks to fatty oils (like the oil in sweat for example) and the other half sticks to water. So when you wash your hands the soap sticks to the oil and grime on your hands, then when you put water on your hands the other half sticks to the water and then the water pulls the grime away.

To get that effect you need to use a fat of some kind. I dont know how well plant oils would work, if at all. Synthetic chemicals may work but that sort of defeats the object of making the soap yourself!