Anyone else into soap and candle making?
![Image](http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l308/mountaincreekphotos/Face%20Book%20Pictures/MakingSoap1.jpg)
![Image](http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l308/mountaincreekphotos/Face%20Book%20Pictures/MakingSoap2.jpg)
Not candles, that is the soap fresh out of the molds.milton wrote:Yep.made some lye soap;strong stuff! I even use it to degrease metal parts.
Those candles you show are interesting,how do you make them?
1 pound lard. 98deg.alnitak wrote:Casa, got a recipe? Is it easy to get started?
Hummm! Not sure as to why you had that experience with your soap.milton wrote:Oh,I see what you are doing!!I tried that soap once and it almost took my hide off!!! maybe I was using too much lye!!???
How does the soap work out for you?
OK, where does one get lard and lye? Grocery store? Can Crisco be used, or is it vegetable oil and not lard?casastahle wrote:
1 pound lard. 98deg.
8 oz. rain water.
2 oz. lye.
Let rain water and lye cool to about 98 deg.
before adding the 98 deg. lard to the blender.
Blend till the soap traces/starts to harden, then pour in molds.
Add a little salt during the blend for harder soap if you like.
ALWAYS WEAR SAFETY GLASSES.
ALWAYS POUR THE LYE INTO THE WATER.
Hey, Wadda he say?AJMD429 wrote:This is from way back, and probably not exact, but the general remembrance I have is that SOAP is a salt of a fatty acid, like the sodium-fat you get when you mix fat and lye (NaOH). SURFACTANT refers usually to an organic molecule with some water-ish (hydrophilic) and some oil-ish (hydrophobic or lipophilic) parts on the same molecule (often they are alcohols or 'poly' alcohols, with long carbon chains saturated with hydrogens, except for one section with several 'OH' alcohol groups instead of the plain 'H'. BOTH have the effect of grabbing some water and some 'oil' or other water-insoluble stuff, and thus allowing them to mix. DETERGENT is a more diverse term, used to mean all sorts of things, although most often including abrasives, disinfectants, etc. in addition to a soap or other surfactant.
There are also 'quaternary ammonium' compounds that are like soaps, but instead of a positive 'cation' combined with a negative and large lipophilic part, they have a negative 'anion' combined with a positive and large lipophilic part. Soaps would usually have an oxygen at the juncture, and the ammoniums have a nitrogen, but they are analogous. Of course some differences in response to pH of the environment exist, and you DON'T want to combine a soap and a quaternary ammonium compound, or you'll get a mess of large lipophilics bound up together (the positive and negative ones), with some salt or lye left over...
Anyway, that's dredged up from a chemistry class in the 1970's, for what it's worth...
So make your own lye, filter water thru hardwood ashes and you have lye, just like granny used to do.JerryB wrote:My cousin's wife made lye soap for years they live in southwest ILL. She had to quit making it because she could not buy the cans of lye, it is used in making meth, we can't buy lye around here either. We still have a few bars of her soap left. Now we have to use store bought soap,just ain't the same.
I haven’t done that “yet” but I think the day is fast coming.J35nut wrote:So make your own lye, filter water thru hardwood ashes and you have lye, just like granny used to do.JerryB wrote:My cousin's wife made lye soap for years they live in southwest ILL. She had to quit making it because she could not buy the cans of lye, it is used in making meth, we can't buy lye around here either. We still have a few bars of her soap left. Now we have to use store bought soap,just ain't the same.
If you get lye on you just wash with vineger, it will neutralize the lye.
Lots of neat recipes for soap on the net.
Have fun
I don't think it works like that.O.S.O.K. wrote:OK, what about using the ash from a fireplace? That's a woodburning fireplace.
Isn't that what they used in the Pioneer days? That, and animal fat - so I guess they put the ash into the water and then stirred in the lard? Did they use a churn or something?
This is a job for Google!