|
Curative
Lye Soap
Woodash
and Commercial Lye
Homemade
Lye Soap: How it was Done
Finding
Lye for Lye Soap Making
Testing
Colorants For Homemade Lye Soap
|
Lye Soap to Get the Dirt Out and as a Curative
It seems that the Amish and the people of the Appalachian
Mountains have an old tradition in common: making and using lye soap to
really get the dirt and stains out of clothes. In the Smokey Mountains
people also use it to heal poison ivy or poison oak. It also exterminates
bugs like lice, bed bugs, and mites. Other uses of handmade lye soap are
numerous. For instance, some people use it for eczema, acne, keeping mosquitoes
away, psoriasis, ridding animals of fleas, clean cement, chigger bites,
shampoo, sunburn, laundry, cure leather, to bleach white clothes, and
stops itching of athletes foot.
If you are planning to go in the woods you can use lye
soap as a preventative measure against poison ivy. Moisten your fingertips
with water and scrub them across the bars of soap to make a cream and
rub this on your skin. This will keep the oil from the poison ivy from
getting into your skin. When you come back home cleanse your skin with
hot water and the lye soap. Rub your arms and legs, stroking away from
your body.
Lye some is more versatile than many other soaps as you
can see from the many ways people use it. Lye is also used to clean pipes,
but when it is mixed with oil it changes chemically, the process is saponification.
Once this process takes place you have soap, but no more lye when the
mixture is made in the right proportion.
|
|
Granny's
Lye Soap
|
