Soapmaking from Scratch: Woodash Lye
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Part one of a series looking at the history, archaeology and practical creation of soap starting from ashes and fats.
Today we are setting up a lye hopper to turn wood ash into a strong alkali suitable for soapmaking.
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I watched my grandma make soap every 4 weeks and we used it plus she bought chicken feed with the money
She died at 98 and I miss her loving smile
❤ nice story she sounds like a remarkable woman
How did you collect the ash and make lye? Did you have some kind of special ash hopper device or just buckets?
I'm sorry about that's she sounded nice and sweet
Nice
In a post-apocalyptic world, I think soap making is one of the things I think would be very useful to a community. Hygiene is important!
Very
That is exactly why I am here ;)
@@Kylemcgillicutty glad to see I’m not the only one
Hahaha that’s why I’m here to research soap making haha
Could also rub down with clay in a river
Hands down, your videos are the best out there for actually doing a thing. You show the entire process start to finish, and explain WHY you’re doing it that way as you go. Unlike others, you don’t assume a level of knowledge the rest of us don’t have. Thank you so much!❤️🐝🤗
Agreed!
Hear hear. Thank you for this amazing video.
I have made woodash lye soap a number of times. I filter the ashes, put them in a 5 gallon bucket, fill with water and let sit for a week (sometimes longer if I forget). When I drain the liquid, I have always had the egg float high to indicate a strong solution for soap making.
Thank you I’ll try that.
@@carolinapatriot9651 wondering the same 🤔💯
@@speaklifegardenhomesteadpe8783 I asked too early. You have to watch the entire video to understand the egg deal
I've read in other blogs online the way to do it is to burn what you'd like to use, like banana peels, apple cores, tomatos, carrots, wood etc, then pour the ashes into a bucket and fill it with rainwater or distilled water and let it all sit in the bucket for 5 - 7 days before draining the water out of the bucket. That sitting time allows the natural chemical reaxtion to happen. @@nancygorman
This is also how African Black Soap is made btw, they usually use coconut shells, palm leaves and plantain peels. It doesn't need to be wood ash, any ash will do. The benefit of natural lyes over synthetic ones is that you get the minerals from the plants that you burn in the finished soap, which adds nutrients to the skin. Like magnesium and zinc and stuff like that, which is pretty cool. Synthetic lyes don't have any nutrients in them. That's why I want to try to use ashes from burning different kinds of vegetables of different colors to boost the soaps nutrient content for the skin.
African black soap also doesn't filter the ashes, so you can get pieces of charcoal and carbon in the soap for exfoliation.
Hi! Do you calculate your recipe as the factory lye or do the numbers change? I am soapmaker and i want to give this way a try
I would recommend using lab goggles instead of just glasses because liquid can splash behind the glasses easily, and you really don't want to mess around with something that could blind you. When I worked in a lab, I got quite careless about regular lye/acids on my hands because it takes a while to sting and can be washed off easily; your eyes do not have the same protection and damage happens quickly. Lab goggles can be bought to be wearable over regular glasses too and are cheap.
Another easy safety measure would be to have a bucket of fresh water handy in site to immediately wash off any lye spills from the skin.
Yeah, I second that. A friend of mine who works in a chemical lab recently got a drop or two of sodium hydroxide (an alkali similar to those found in lye) and she got a massive burn on her eye. Doctors said her sight may never be as good as before and there were high chances that, if she delayed to seek medical help, to have lost her sight altogether from that eye. Strong acids and strong alkalis must be handled with great caution.
Totally agree…use goggles. A splash likely won’t happen, but if it could…and it can cause real damage. Just takes a few seconds and your eyes are worth it.
I use swimming goggles when doing experiments and cutting oignons, works well and very easy to find ! (Plus you can go swimming with them!)
My father has a two-inch wide band of grafted skin around his wrist as a reminder to be careful around sodium hydroxide - and to use long enough protective gloves for the job at hand.
Eggs are the most frugal hydrometers. An egg rolls of the table and the dog gets a meal while I walk down to the henhouse for a new egg. While if a glass hydrometer rolls off the table, I have a mess and I 'm out $30 for a new hydrometer. Looking forward to the next instalment, Sally.
Rather than using a bung, I would recommend using a spigot/tap as a safer option. Brewers’ supply stores usually carry them for use on plastic fermenters, so it shouldn’t be any harder to find than the bung, and it would allow a controlled flow pointed downward rather than the gush you experienced. Love your vids, looking forward to more in this series.
She's going for historical authenticity, they wouldn't have had taps in those times!
@unison247 They didn't have Rubbermade Plastic, paddle bits, handheld impact drivers, or a lot of other things in this video. Also make sure you use the right size paddle bit the first time as the middle hole guides everything.
@@unison247 You might be entirely mistaken about that ;) Wooden taps for kegs have been around quite a long time.
@@AlienScientist Or, better than the "paddle bit" - use a Forstner bit, actually designed for cutting smooth round holes as are needed here
@@unison247my grandmother made her own soap up until the 50s. She lived on a farm and had never seen a television so she wasn't brainwashed by commercials like everyone who had tvs
Interesting how y'all do things across the pond. One thing my ancestors did differently is they sieved the ashes to get only the powder and virtually no solids This was said to be one of the most critical steps for a good result. My Cherokee ancestors used to make hominy by putting dried corn in ash-filled pots, with water, next to a fire overnight. Many of my, now deceased, relatives said they'd wash their wooden floors with lye water made from wood ash and then they'd make soap from wood ash. The way they did it was they put the ashes in a cloth bag hung from a dowel rod by a thick rope. Over the bag was a metal tin, syrup bucket, pot or pan with a open bottom wood support holding it up. Basically any thin metal container that held a lot of water would do. They'd then have a tiny nail hole in the bottom of the metal container so the water would drip onto the rope and down into the bag. Below the bag was a crock. Usually this was done on a support post for a shed or porch with the dowel also being used later to hang souse or for other purposes. The idea behind this drip method was the extraction happened best because of the slow drip allowing time for a reaction to take place. The extracted water would then be capped off in the crock and taken to the creek to chill...sometimes for days (depending of the desired use of the lye watet). This is what we homebrewers call "cold crashing" or "cold racking" since the cold causes particles to floculate. They'd then pour off the good water into another pot and pour out the sediment in the bottom. For floors, this lye water was fine. For soap, they'd do the cold racking 2-4 times and then sieve it through clean clothes a few times. Afterwards, they'd then boil the lye water until just over half the original volume was boiled away. After it was cooled, they'd do the egg trick. The fats used varied. Some said beef fat was best for soaps used for household cleaning while others used old, used lard. All seemed to agree pork fat was best. I'm actually doing a contemporary demonstration of making hominy using an electric crock pot and sieved oak wood ash. We have an invasive tree here called Chinese tallow. It was brought here to make soap and candles. Most people are allergic to it. I like to smoke meats with the wood. I'm hoping to see if it has enough potassium in the ash to make lye water for future projects I have in mind
Thank you! 💯🦋🧑🏻🌾🦋💯
my mammy told me and my sister when we where kids that my granny use to make soap like that in the 40`s and 50`s and she had this huge terracotta pot the size of a dust bin for it .
I used to watch my nanna make lye solution and soap (from the safety of the back door step and not a toe closer, she'd say), she had a huge ceramic pot too.
Wonderful video. I have to try this myself as I have been thinking of making soap for a long time.
Great video. The step you missed was having a bucket of clean water to immediately wash off splash. Also, safety googles are a must.
I’m looking forward to part two.
I do mention goggles, and for me, vinegar is stage one safety, but yes, water helps!
@@SallyPointer Coming at this as someone whose education was primarily in chemistry and a medical field, it's usually preferable to use clean water to wash away lye splashes, rather than an acid, simply because of the potential heat etc formed by reacting vinegar with the lye. But either way, you still need a lot of water. Also, even as a glasses wearer myself, I would still recommend properly-fitting goggles (preferably better than the cheap ones that have gaps where they don't meet your face well, but at least some that come with side guards and some protection from above and below the "lenses"). That big gush is precisely why. That could very easily have swamped over regular glasses and any amount of lye meeting your eyes is a huge issue. Obviously, it's your own choice as to what precautions you feel are necessary, but that would be my recommendation.
I obviously second the idea of not tasting lye of any variety (though that zing test is also used by some makers on their finished products to double-check that there's no unreacted lye in the final soap)!
All that said, I loved the video. I've been massively into cold-process soapmaking for a few years now, and although I know some historical facts about the process, and extracting lye from wood ash, it's very interesting to watch the process being done. I can imagine that it wouldn't be hard to see how, perhaps, an open fire, some water, and some animal fats from cooking meat over the flames might end up combining in a way that produced a primitive "soap" product. I'll be interested to see how your lye works out, as generally in the soap-making community, KOH is used for liquid soaps and NaOH is the usual base for hard soaps. So I can't wait to see all the future videos!
Thank you so much for sharing your experiments with us. It's always fascinating and I always learn something new.
@M MacNicol It likely also depends on the fats/oils used as well - hard fats tend to make a harder soap, while oils (and I'm thinking especially of olive oil when making pure castille soap) tends to make a much softer bar, even when using NaOH. But yes, soapmaking can be incredibly simple, but also incredibly complicated too.
@M MacNicol hey, did you find any natural sources of NaOH?
Very much appreciate seeing the process of that which I’ve long been fascinated by and intent upon its creation. Seeing the process offers one So much more clarity…and of course enhanced by group input for one & all 😊. Naturally, as chance would have it, now that I’m forearmed with the methodology, I no longer have a fire ; ) ; ). White vinegar is also my essential standby when soap making - in a spray bottle 😊. // I couldn’t help but wonder if the Lye you garnered was put back into the ash to further steep, it might strengthen? Also leaving the mix to steep for longer initially….? All food for thought, methinks 💞
In my part of the world a wooden barrel would have been used. (I realize you are using what you can source) A foot of straw placed in the bottom and covered with the ash from a hickory fire. Water would have been added and the contents soaked. Then the lye would have been run through a second barrel full of fresh ash and the process continued until the proper strength was achieved.
We also used a hopper made like a baby's crib/manger, lined with straw, filled with ash and water poured over the ash and the ash changed out. A wooden gutter caught the lye and channeled it into the bucket.
An ash hopper was a mandatory fixture in most of the rural back gardens when I was a kid. Most were unused by that time, but you could get a good lesson from the old people just for asking.
Yes, that is how it's done. It is run through a few times and boiled down, in my experience.
Experimental Archeology! My lady! I was an anthropology student way back when, and then life happened. Such that it is. My great grandmother used traditional lye soap that she also made herself and her skin was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I was too young when I knew her for her to feel comfortable letting me work with lye, so I never learned. There's not been anything comparable since. Finding this video is absolutely awesome. I remember some things she did (didn't use the plastic bin, I think she used wood that my great grandfather made), burning logs, pouring water and then I don't recall anything else. She also used lye in making hominy. I remember that.
Crikey, when that lye gushed out over your arms, I was chanting "wash it off"! I've had a couple of encounters with lye water and it wasn't pleasant. Great video, thank you Sally.
Yeah, it was ok, not that much hit me really and I'm a fairly fossilised old bird.
Yes, wash it off as soon as possible, so that it doesn’t turn your skin into soap!
@@ragnkjalol it won't. Lye water can cause burns and skin irritation tho
@@catzkeet4860
It won’t turn the whole skin into soap, that was indeed an exaggeration, but it will turn the skin _oils_ into soap, and it’s not good for the rest of the skin either.
@@ragnkja did I not say that? Cos I could've sworn I did. I'm a soaper..... trust me, I know what lye can do.
Thank you! I came here to see how difficult it'd be to make lye in a long-term survival situation (mostly for making leather clothing / bags, etc), and am pleased to see how simple it is! :)
I made this with my grandmother and mom. I was pretty young so I didn’t remember all the steps they did. Remember mostly the use of ash to make it. Loved seeing the process again. This is old school soap making. Course my grandmother was old school. She had ten children to boot.
I have been researching simple traditional soap making for so long and still feel a little stumped and cautious so i am so happy to see you sharing this!! very very excited!! thanks for sharing!
So excited to see you again! And soapmaking from scratch is a long time fascination of mine! Thank you!
great video im definetly trying this this winter when im at the camp. think ill use the a tap instead of a bung to prevent spills. ty for taking the time to make this video
I've been looking to do this for over a year, and have quite a few kg of hardwood woodash from the fire stove, but haven't found a good video on how to do this. The weather only just improved to be able to do it outside recently, and you make this video at the perfect time!😁👍 Thank you so much! I'm sure your instruction will be REALLY useful!❤
I love this video. You've got a fantastic attitude to experimenting.
Love this! Can't wait for part 2!! 😀
When will we see part 2? I’m excited
Same here! Super excited for part 2!
@@jessicahsarah It's been 4 months! I have lots of wood ash, LOL!
🙏🙏🍻 this is something I want to do with my HS science class. We've made soap using sodium hydroxide, now they're proficient we are going to up the game! Watched other videos - not bad, your video - great! Can't wait for the continuation!!😎👍👍
Mon arrière Grand-mère a fait son savon de cette manière. J'ai tellement hâte de voir la suite!
My grandpa explained the process to me back in the’80’s awesome to see this.
Hi thanks for your video. I’m a 51 year old Georgia girl and I remember my mom and grands making soaps and using pot ash and lye for illnesses. My mom is still living and has lye mixed in a mason jar with other ingredients. It helps illness and joint pain. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing.❤️ I would really like to see more to this series.
I'm making part two this week!
Oooh, fun to see this from the very beginning.
It's easier to mix powdery stuff with water if you do it in layers instead of all at once. Also a better container might be one of those construction-worker type plastic water jugs that have an open top (with a lid) and a bottom tap, so instead of being flooded when you take out the bung, you just turn the tap.
my cousin in Wyoming made her soap from wood ash, She used a Pringles potato chip container. then sliced the soap into perfect round pieces,
@@vernamcguire6759 That is a wonderful idea!
Brilliant video! Very informative. I look forward to watching the next one. Thank you.
Your channel is superb! I adore your areas of study, as I am a retired horticulturist of 40+ years now. And I an extremely interested in ancient ways of doing things, making things and ways of life of humans in the past. So happy to be following and newly subbed! I am also interested in ancient ways of pottery making and plants used for medicinal purposes! I do know that the Native Americans in my area (and in the Southern USA used river cane and cane grasses for many items and baskets , but it has to be cut at at certain time, I think I remember it as September, for it to be a certain pliability. I love this!😊
Hello! Are you going to continue this series? You're the only one that has made a video making lye in great detail!
I definitely am, life is a little busy right now though
This was perfectly timed, Ive been thinking about soap production lately(You watch one post apoclypse show and suddenly youre not watching and youre pondering survival logistics). I look forward to the rest of the series
haha, can relate -- I have a small library of bushcraft first aid type tomes I acquired under similar circumstances 🤭
🤣Imagine 9 million Londoners (plus the undocumented immigrants) swarming the countryside to gather wood for heating and for making soap ...
I love your work! Please keep it up! ❤❤ You gave tips, pointers, and knowledge that is scarce nowadays. It’s so interesting watching you. I want to learn how to make soap from scratch like they did in the old days. I love how you reference and use historical data of soap making. You are bringing an old soap-making art back to life. 🙌🏾Please keep em’ coming ❤
Am looking forward to seeing you finish this project! I've been researching how to turn wood ash into soap, and so far this has been the best video showing how to make lye for the soap
It would only work in smaller containers of 10 gallons or less, but you could try vigorously mixing ashes with water in a wide bucket skimming any floating material as it comes to the surface before pouring it all into a long preferably clear pipe of equal volume and letting it settle decanting the excess to get a relatively clean lye solution with no filter material.
Very interesting stuff, Sally! I'm fully intrigued with your experiments, you have a brilliant mind and a natural curiosity for things! Please, please consider to stop licking chemicals, especially strong ones, you know you could hurt yourself. It would be such a pity to lose you to some mishap over a lye slightly stronger than anticipated.
Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'd already watched a couple videos on this method but I really love the idea of getting your historical perspective on the technique. That, and the thorough, detailed, super hands-on approach that pretty much characterizes your videos . Cause it's one thing to have someone explain a technique and show the final product already made, but watching the whole process with all it's trials & tribulations is way more informative - and way more fun.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and lovely personality here! God Bless you in all your endeavors ❤️🔥🌻
Excited to see the rest of this series!! I am interested especially in the "soft soap" you mentioned in your latest video; it's a hard subject to google given all the modern soapmaking tutorials out there.
Love it most videos on this topic have been a bit sketchy. I look forward to the rest of your videos.
This is amazing! Thank you!
I am interested in -- and largely ignorant of -- soapmaking, so was really pleased to see this, Sally. Also, pleased to see MADE IN ENGLAND on the bin lid. Keep 'em coming, Sally. 😊
Top notch video! This is the only one of your videos that I've seen and it's enough to convince me to subscribe. Keep up the awesome work, and thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. :)
It's really easy to fit a little waterbutt tap to any sort of bucket, rather than the bung. I've done it myself and they're only about £4. Great video, I will save some of my ash and see what I can make.
Wow Thank you that there are some wonderful women left in the world Bless you in the name of Yahweh
❤ an absolute blessing in THE NAME ABOVE ALL NAMES!
I've made soap with commercial lye for years and recently started thinking about lye production using these techniques to continue making soap without having to always buy lye. Very informative video, and I can't wait to see the rest!
When I saw you swatting in front of the plug I thot ‘no, no, no, stand to the side and unplug’. Verrry interesting!!
Great content, thank you.
Thank you so very much. North Carolina here. I appreciate you showing this lovely video.
One can purchase a water hose nozzle to go through outside of container, along w/washers and a plastic nut to connect to nozzle from inside. In other words, one can add a water spicket, instead of just having a faulty hole w/plug.
Isn't it amazing how much patience folks had to have. We don't have that kind of patience today, everything being "instant gratification" or no one's going to do it. But what would happen if our society suddenly changed? Some catastrophe that stopped the world in it's tracks? It's possible since the Weddell sea is warming. Warm too much, and the oceanic conveyor stops, and then humanity is screwed for decades ... or even thousands of years. Tech would come to a halt because it relies on things powered by other things that rely on the oceanic conveyor.
This is absolutely where the patience of our ancestors becomes relevant. Brilliant video.
You're awesome for showing the whole process here.
This is wonderful, thank you for making this series. I've only ever worked with purchased potassium hydroxide, but would love to learn how to make soap from scratch. Looking forward to future videos :)
Thank-you!
This is what a was looking for! The old way.
So happy you show and learn us it.
Thank you so much Sally
PS.....The concentration, boil your home made lye down and the egg will float, you need to play with a hydrometer to estimae solution strength, boiling drives off water, makes solution more concentrated.
great video!
Looking for the next video. Very interested in the next steps
Thank you. Very interesting subject 🙏🙏🙏
Exciting to me! Just found you by chance. I have made all our soap, with commercial (Red Devil) lye, since February 1974. Love the smell of perfumed store soap; cannot stand what it does to my skin. We save in the freezer all fat left in pan after cooking, render it when there's enough (or need to free up freezer space).
So pleased to see another video by you. I am looking forward to following along with the process.
I used to make some soap every year. Besides goggles, rubber gloves and a heavy apron, I always kept vinegar on hand to neutralize any lye that spilled.
This is fascinating! Thank you for your clear explanations. I look forward to further videos on soap making.
This is something I've wanted to try for a while, thanks for putting this out.
Can’t wait to see the end results!!! And try this myself ❤️
Thank you for your amazing videos!
We are going to need a part 2 please
Quite a good idea to keep a squeezy bottle of lemon juice or vinegar around when playing with lye to quickly neutralise splashes, dito strong household cleaners, they are usually alkaline too.
I had an open bottle of vinegar to hand
Please! Always wash an initial lye spill with cool water!
Vinegar on a fresh lye burn can actually make it worse due to the exothermic reaction.
This is awesome, thanks
Really looking forward to further videos on this, I am not sure what our logs are but will find out, we buy them in. I have been cheating by making soap by the ready made melt and pour method, so I was so delighted to see this video as I would rather make natural soap like this. Love what you do, I am going to make some nettle fibre this year trying to find a good patch near me isn't easy, I am going to grow some in my experimental food forest in our quite small garden.💖😊
Very interesting and your teaching style is quite good. I'll be following this experiment thank you so much!
So looking forward to the soap making 😊
Absolutely wonderful demonstration, thank you so much!
Fantastic thanks 😊so much. You explain it so clearly that it can be followed you are a great teacher
hey sally really good informational video.Cheers
Maybe a spigot instead of a bung on your bucket. A good quality plastic one should do you just fine and hold up to the alkali water. Watching this series closely.
I'm looking forward to your next installment in your soap making series.
Great video, very interesting! Love your channel Sally, glad you got to keep your tongue!
hope to see those vids soon
Sally, you are amazing!!
Miss Sally is a lovely old woman, huh? Golly I want to ask her so many questions. I hope her husband appreciates her.
Putting a string below the hole you drilled and letting it dangle down into the bucket would help stop the lye/liquid 'moving backwards' along the underside of the container.
I believe that ‘wood wool” is called excelsior here in the US
I saw the bung, lol and immediately thought - um a tap would have been safer, then it was 'okay, if I do that, a water butt tap it definiely will be.' Love your videos and look forward to each one.
Cool! Waiting for part 2.
Just a thought about the historic use of withies. My understandingly is that for most purposes withies would be twisted until the fibres split and separated into a softer more flexible, mesh like material. This would probably work better for filtering liquids than just stacking the twigs.
Thank you SO MUCH from a scratch soapmaker in the States! I've only been able to find one photocopied page from an 18th century book on how to properly make lye from wood ash, and it was not as thorough as your video. Making soap truly from scratch has been a goal of mine. So far I've only ended up with potassium carbonate instead of potassium hydroxide. I have a feeling your follow up video will explain how to turn the initial wood ash lye into proper soap lye. Very grateful I found your channel!
If you bake it at high temperature it'll drive off the CO2 leaving potassium oxide which becomes hydroxide/lye with the addition of water. Adding the water releases a ton of heat, so be careful.
I found better results soaking the ashes in water vs passing water through.
@@TheBrianna1431 did you end up with strong enough lye to make soap? I read that straw adds some of the salts necessary to turn the potassium carbonate into hydroxide, but I've never tried filtering the ash water thru straw myself. Very curious about your results!
@@DirtyDSoaps Idk to be honest, I haven't tried filtering it with straw. But if you want any results I still recommend soaking over passing through.
@@DirtyDSoaps oh, also I have made soap using this method works great! You end up with a soft soap bar. If you want a completely hard soap bar you have to add lime.
You can make your own lime( calcium carbonate) but it is it's own fun project. You have to bake shells until they are white and flaky. Then add water.
Thank you very much for sharing. May God bless you
Thanks for posting a video again !!! 🙂
And this is such an interesting topic...
My mother made lye soap until she died. Excellent stuff.
Thank you for knowing and using the correct words for your tools (rasp)! 😊
hopefully not repetitive, but the rule i was taught for soap was potash lye is soap making strength when it'll dissolve a chicken feather (in a minute or less i think, faster is stronger, usually won't eat the spine).
So glad you picked up the half-round rasp rather than trying a larger spade bit! One otherwise would have to build a jig with a backing plate and through-bolts on the inside in order to go bigger and holding it centered would still be a challenge requiring a hole saw rather than a larger spade bit. Glad I found your channel. Hello from Alaska.
But OMG!! I couldn't warn you what was going to happen when you removed that bung! Glad you were not injured. Your spectacles are far too inadequate to the task at hand. One can find basically anywhere goggles with which you can still wear your prescription spectacles doing such a task. I'm writing having been employed/engaged for many years using hazardous materials. I wouldn't expect an egg to float for any length of time because egg shells are so porous, i.e. they breathe through the shell. Your egg was saturated within a short time and by rights, sunk within a minute or so. I'm guessing another litmus test would have shown the lye having been of sufficient strength after your first test. I'll look for your follow-up video to find if I'm talking from my nether region...
just found your channel, we have the same interest in how things were done a long time ago
Waiting for the soap making part :)
Looking forward to Part 2.
I was worried when you got some on your arm. I hope you keep a bit of vinegar nearby, when the lye is strong! This video is very helpful. Thank you.
When I first got my wood stove I couldn't get rid of the ashes quick enough, now I don't produce enough ashes for the things I need.
Hi Sally, I love your videos! I believe you can run that water through the ashes several times and get a stronger lye solution each time. I'm pretty sure I've seen videos of Hutterites (modern day) making lye for their soap in this way. And I'm also pretty certain it is mentioned in the Foxfire series of books as well. Love your videos, and I'm excited to see these on soap. Thanks!
It's best to use fresh ashes for each run through, so I just concentrate by boiling
This is fascinating! Really looking forward to part 2.
good job sally !!
Cool and very interesting Video!!! Once a year I'm coking soap with my girls (17- 23 y).IT is a lot fun😊
In the SE US our ancestors often passed the water thru the ashes 2-3 times to increase the amount of lye leached from the ashes into the water.