Craftings of The World

Soap is simply fat (an acid) mixed with caustic soda (an alkali); mix them together and you have soap. The old time craft of making lye was very affective. One method of making their own caustic soda (alkali) was to hollow out a log and drill a lot of holes at the bottom. They than put a layer of gravel (for drainage), a layer of straw, a layer of hardwood ashes, and filled the log with rain water. It took a long time for this mixture to seep down and drain through the holes at the bottom. The slimy stuff that came out of the holes was homemade lye. The crude lye was than boiled down until the right consistency for making soap.

Testing the lye strength for soap making was quite creative. The soap maker dissolved salt in water until no more salt could dissolve. A long stick with a weight tied to one end would be dropped into the salted water solution. The stick would bob upright to the top of the water. A mark was than made on the stick at the water line. The stick was than placed in the lye concentrate and at exactly the place marked on the stick would tell the soap maker how much rain water to pour into the lye solution for the proper concentration for soap making. This took the guess work out of the use of using the proper amount of rain water to add to the lye for making soap.

Animal fat was used for soap making; tallow (beef fat), sheep fat, lard (pig fat), was the favorite choices. These fats made a wonderful hard bar of soap. They than heated the fat and dribbled the handmade lye very slowly into the warm fat. When the mixture was all jelled together at just the right time (traced) they would pour the soap into wooden molds. After a few days they would cut the soap into bars. They than let the soap cure for a few months until it would be ready to use.

Source : ezinearticles.com