Historical Soapmakers? (Ashes and Campfires?)

[MarissaAmes]

Do any members on this site make soap the very-old-fashioned way, leeching alkali from ashes and simmering over an open fire? I'm looking for resources for a magazine article. Please feel free to reply here or PM. Thank you!

 

[BattleGnome]

It's on my list to try but I'm nowhere near prepping a space to do it. Project Gutenberg has a few soap making books but I haven't had a chance to read them yet.

 

[JuliaNegusuk]

I wouldn't have thought many people do, but I was googling once and found someone in America that did make soap that way. (And was quite dismissive of us cowardly custards who didn't!) Unfortunately I didn't keep the link. It's probably the sort of thing a passionate soaper might try once or twice for the experience. Are you after live sources or interested in the history? I have come across a couple of very good websites about the history of soap making, particularly in mediaeval times and in colonial America. One has translations from old English of mediaeval recipes.

I can dig out the links for you if you are interested.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Googling "soap making ash lye" came up with these links...

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-make-soap-from-ashes-zmaz72jfzfre
http://www.countryfarm-lifestyles.com/make-lye.html#.WYg5zieQxjE

I vaguely remembered something like it on TV in Tales From the Green Valley but can't find it now. If you do the same Google search and click the Videos tab, a fair amount of links come up.

 

[Cindy2428]

The HSCG, (soap guild) has various levels of certification - one requires that you make soap from ashes. Doesn't Kevin Dunn's book Scientific Soapmaking describe the process?

 

[Ivanstein]

YouTube has videos about this. Pretty easy to search them out

 

[IrishLass]

Here is a somewhat recent discussion on the subject where our DeeAnna chimed in: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=44951


IrishLass

 

[DeeAnna]

And here's an even wordier version of mine about this subject: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=56235

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

The HSCG, (soap guild) has various levels of certification - one requires that you make soap from ashes.............

I do find that a little odd. Like you would need to be able to fix an old valve-based computer if you wanted to be certified to a certain level of computer technician today.

 

[Cindy2428]

Craig, personally I don't get it either. I feel the same way about folks who want to make soap with a spoon over a stick blender. But to each his/her own.

I think the reasoning behind it, (making soap from ashes) is gaining/appreciating the historical significance of the process - Me, I'll pass.

 

[BattleGnome]

I think the reasoning behind it, (making soap from ashes) is gaining/appreciating the historical significance of the process

This is why I want to learn the hard way someday. I can technically have a bar of soap in a half hour but I want to know more. I think I read too many books about homesteading at an impressionable age (Laura Ingalls Wilder among many others). I learned to knit because I saw it in a book (children's book about a girl who was supposed to knit so many rows before mom would let her out to play). I wanted to make every recipe happened the in any book I read (usually some sort of Christmas cookie).

I will say that I learned to soap "on accident" and am now remembering the books from my childhood that happen to mention making soap.

 

[DanielCoffey]

I remember a scene at the beginning of the Lark and the Wren by Mercedes Lackey (fiction) where the girl gathers the ashes from the tavern in a pit for the Lye Man to come and take away. In return the Inn gets given a certain number of bars of coarse brown soap and a few bars of fine soap once a year. I suspect this may have been how the cottage industries were set up. Maybe rather than use your own ashes, you would pass them on to a collector and accept some goods in return.

 

[Arthur Dent]

I remember a scene at the beginning of the Lark and the Wren by Mercedes Lackey...

I had forgotten that. Now I'll have to dig that book out and re-read it!

 

[Birdsandsoap]

I read the Foxfire Book as a teen. It was written by a group of college kids in the sixties. They went to Appalachia and interviewed the mountain folk while they shared how they lived off the land. There is an entire chapter on soapmaking with an interview of an old grandma describing just how it is done. Maybe you can get your hands on an old copy. You can purchase new copies too.

 

[DeeAnna]

Well, if folks really want to make soap the truly old way, then you'd generally not use fat that was actually edible. Edible fat needed to go into people's bellies, not soap. Instead, you'd collect old grease from kitchens, recover fats from making and fulling woolen cloth, boil bones to get the fat out of the marrow, render dead animals for their fat, and so on. Maybe that's TMI, but that's how it was once done. So if the Guild really expects one to do a truly historically accurate soap from wood-ash lye, then .........

 

[lenarenee]

The HSCG, (soap guild) has various levels of certification - one requires that you make soap from ashes. Doesn't Kevin Dunn's book Scientific Soapmaking describe the process?

Which level is that?

 

[lenarenee]

Do any members on this site make soap the very-old-fashioned way, leeching alkali from ashes and simmering over an open fire? I'm looking for resources for a magazine article. Please feel free to reply here or PM. Thank you!

Maybe historical places such as Williamsburg VA will be able to provide a source of information for you. They demonstrate many old skills and try to be as factual as possible. I've seen soap demonstrations so they must have had someone with the skills.

 

[FannieFinch]

You might try the "Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park" in KY- I believe they may do some soaping on site as they use a good amount of tallow.

 

[reinbeau]

The HSCG, (soap guild) has various levels of certification - one requires that you make soap from ashes. Doesn't Kevin Dunn's book Scientific Soapmaking describe the process?

I just went and looked and can't find this as a requirement anywhere - can you tell us which level it is?

 

[FannieFinch]

I believe making soap out of wood ashes is one of the "HSCG Master Certification" requirements.