Welcome Jamesconn.
While some people can and do still make lye from ashes, you'll need to keep in mind that all lyes are not the same. The lye that one can make from wood ashes is called potassium hydroxide, which produces soft soap, although you can use the 'salting out' method when preparing the soap to make the soap harder.
I personally don't know of anyone that makes their own lye on the forum (unless they are in hiding or I just missed those threads :wink: ). I've read on the internet of those that do, but it was mostly in regards to historical demonstations/enactments.
From all I've read, it's difficult to get a good, measurably consistent product when making your own lye, which makes it all the more difficult to make consistent soap with it that won't burn your hide off. That's why it's much better to use patented lye- the kind that we soap makers buy at the hardware store or online. The strength of patented lye is measurably consistent and uniform, which makes it safe in that you can consistently calculate how much lye to weigh out to use in whatever soap formula so that it won't come out dangerously lye-heavy. Oh- and the kind of lye that we use to make hard bars of soap is called sodium hydroxide as opposed to potassium hydroxide. You can buy patented potassium hydroxide, too, but we use that for liquid or soft/cream-type soaps.
Besides Essential Depot that lsg mentioned above, you can buy lye online from several others. I buy mine from AAA Chemical Supply out of Texas. There's also The Lye Guy and Brambleberry as well. If you buy it at the hardware store, make sure the ingredients say 100% Sodium Hydroxide (very important). Ace Hardware sells Rooto brand lye, and Lowes sells Roebic brand lye- both 100 % sodium hydroxide. Bear in mind, though, that they may not be available at all Ace's or Lowe's. Some carry it and others do not.
As for simple recipes, there are several on this forum. There's one called Paul's Wal-mart Soap:
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/forum/vi ... ht=walmart All the ingredients (except for lye) can be found at Wal-Mart. You can also make soap with just lard or tallow, lye and water, but it'll be hard to avoid store-bought unless you are rendering your own fat from your own hogs or cows. You'll notice the above recipe is written in percents and does not contain the amount of lye to use. It's written in percents so that people can easily re-size it to fit in their particular molds, and the lye and water amounts are absent because people like to vary the amounts of each in their formulas (within safe boundaries, of course) in order to suit their preferences. To get the proper amount of lye (patented lye) and water for the oils/fats you are using, you must run your recipe through a
lye calculator (either an online calculator or by hand) to figure out how much of each to use so that your soap will not come out lye-heavy. All of the online calculators assume you are using patented lye, which has a known strength. It's very difficult to know the strength of homemade lye.
I would suggest reading and researching all you can about the process of saponification before attempting your venture so that you will know what you are getting into, and also read all you can on the safety precautions that are needed when handling lye. Besides reading here on the forum, here are some other good sites that teach soapmaking:
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soapm ... e-Soap.htm
http://www.millersoap.com/index.html
IrishLass
