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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
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Homemade Lye Soap: How it was Done
People made their own homemade lye soap before soap manufacturing
became big business. They made it out of lard and lye. They made the lye
out of wood ash. They saved the lard from killing hogs in the fall around
the time when the first freeze or frost hit. They go the wood ash or potash
from the ashes from their wooden stoves and they had a bin for putting
the ashes into. o make the lye during the soap making process they poured
water into the ashes and drained the water from it; this was called lye
water. The soap was made by mixing the lard and lye into a kettle they
placed over a fire, the homemade soap maker had to stir this admixture
for many hours. A paddle was used to stir it. When the lye soap was thick
enough, they poured it into metal container and let it harden or cure.
The curing time was a couple of weeks, perhaps a month.
Once the soap was hard enough, the soap maker cut it making bars for home
uses like washing clothes and bathing. A lot pf people have gone back
to making their own homemade lye soap, there are many soap making recipes
on the Internet. If you are going to make your own homemade lye soap then
follow all of the safety precautions. You can also put fragrance in your
lye soap and use oil instead of lard. When you make your own lye soap
you may get a bit of the pioneer feeling, which is part of the fun.
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Granny's
Lye Soap
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