Need assistance on soapmaking without additives

[betimkin]

Dear Friends,
I am not a soap maker but assisting village women in Turkey with their soap making and marketing. They use wonderful ingredients such as olive oil and bay leaf oil but also caustic acid. They say they cannot make it without it. The traditional way is to use wood ashes but they find it too difficult to harden the soap. I would like to find out ways to make soap completely naturally and without boric acid. I hope the forum can help. Please write in simple language. Thank you, Beti

 

[dagmar88]

There's no soap without lye; simply impossible :wink:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap

 

[carebear]

to make soap, both oils and caustic are needed. caustic can be obtained either as lye (purchased) or can be made by running water through wood ash.

if purchased lye - sodium hydroxide - is used, then the soaps are hard. if wood ash is used, the soap contains potassium instead of sodium and the soap is soft.

you can make the potassium (ash) soap harder by boiling it with sodium chloride (salt) but I do not know specifically how that is done.

You might get very specific help from Dr. Kevin Dunn, who is a chemist who understands a great deal about soap. His email is [email protected]

I wish you the best of luck.

 

[judymoody]

There is nothing wrong with using caustic soda (lye, sodium hydroxide) in soap. If a recipe is made correctly, the chemical reaction between oils, water, and lye results in soap (a salt) and there is no free lye left in the soap. If their methods work for them and produce mild soap, I don't see the need to change them.

Making lye from wood ashes is time consuming and the strength of the finished product is inconsistent. As carebear mentioned, it is potassium hydroxide, not sodium hydroxide and it will result in soft soap not hard bars.

Good luck to you!

 

[louiet]

Hard soap the natural way

Find the fat from a sheep, goat or cow. You'll make good clear fat boiled down. Clean animal fat. Make your wood ash lye strong. Boil it to make it strong. Mix 3 parts good fat and 1 part oil. Example: 3 liters fat to 1 liter oil. Easy. Mix them. Heat to 120F. Make about 3/4 liter strong lye water. Have more ready.

You add strong wood ash lye slowly until color looks like skin. Tan, almond or sand color. Soap gets thick above melting point. 110 F. Re heat and pour. Soap will be firm in one hour. Hard soap.

Go easy with lye. Stir, stir stir. You got it?