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Just wondering

T

Tam

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Feb 10, 2005
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I would like to know if any of you have ever tried your hand at making lye soap? It is an old art that has gone like so many others, eazier to just buy than is to make it anymore. If you have do you have a favorite recipe? :)

And have any of you made homemade hand lotions? do you have a recommended recipe :-)
 
We made some in chemistry class in highschool back in the Dark Ages.
Since then I've seen it done on TV but I think they were just adding stuff to glycerine soap to make it smell good and look pretty. Bet you could find some recipes doing a Google search. I'll be interested to hear how it goes. I picture you standing over some steaming huge black kettle out back with your sun bonnet and long apron on! Watch out for that lye- and don't tell us you're going to try to make the lye by leaching wood ash first!!! :shock:
 
My grandmother always made her own soap. I recall her admonishing us kids to be careful of the lye, and for heaven's sake don't put any in our mouths. She was a great lady, and had a lot of influence in my upbringing.
 
You can get several recipes off the internet.

My grandsons are home schooled and I thought I would show them how to make lye soap from scratch. We had a lot of drought killed hardwood which we burned. Took the ashes and put them in a plastic barrel and leached water through the barrel.

Ended up with about 5 pounds of lye which we mixed with fat from every which place - bacon, beef, etc.

Long story short - it didnt work. Probably because the mixture wasn't right.

Eash way. Buy a can of Lewis Lye (if you can find it) and follow the directions on the can. Making lye is just too much work.
 
I haven't tried to make the lye yet but might someday. But I did make two small batches of soap today from pure flaked lye and beef tallow. One I left pure and the other I scented with lavendar. And no NR I wasn't out in the back yard in my sunbonnet I made it in my kitchen. :-). I have made it in the past as gifts for family and friends so a friend asked me if I would go to his home town fair and demonstrate how it is made. They wanted to have a section on how things were done in the old days. I don't know why but it might have something to do with Saskatchewans 100th Birthday this year. In the past I was also asked to come and demonstrate how to make and use ear candles which is another art gone by the wayside. I just thought some of you might have an old family recipe that would be different than the one I have gotten out of books. The pure soap isn't hard but the fun part is the added little things that make it different. Like cinnamon to make a lightly abrasive soap that smells good enough to eat, maybe kids wouldn't have minded getting their mouth washed out with soap if it was cinnamon flavored. :wink: Then there is sand for a highly abrasive soap, and oatmeal for an abrasive complexion soap. If you have any thing different I would be interested in hearing about them. Thanks
 
Jinglebob said:
Hey Tam, why the new avatar?
Click to expand...

Haymaker after months of telling me I have a butt two axe handles wide, he saw the picture of me and now he think I have a chicken butt. I couldn't find a picture of a other end so I just used the end that Macon had. You know Avatars by Haymaker as Big Muddy would say. :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Tam,
Soap with sand!? Your post about washing out mouths with soap reminded me that my mother washed my mouth with handsoap a few times for airing some naughty words.

Maybe if she'd used soap with sand in it for my first error there'd never have been a second!
 
nr said:
Tam,
Soap with sand!? Your post about washing out mouths with soap reminded me that my mother washed my mouth with handsoap a few times for airing some naughty words.

Maybe if she'd used soap with sand in it for my first error there'd never have been a second!
Click to expand...

Yes nr, sand, its called pumice soap. You put a small amount of fine washed sand in and it acts like a piece of very fine soapy sand paper. It is great for taking grease or ground in garden dirt off your hands.
 
the_jersey_lilly_2000 said:
Speakin of Haymaker, where is he? He must be gone to that A-I class or somethin.
Click to expand...
I saw where he posted a poll over on Bull session so he must be home. He is probably just busy with his bar room Hussie taking french lesson. :wink: :lol:
 

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