Make soft soap from wood ashes and leftover fats and oils. 

Thank you! the ash & soap videos were the first ones I did for youtube and it took me a bit to learn how to use video editing software. Glad you like it, and I am tickled to hear about your successful soaps :) I let the one I made in this video age a bit and now, several months later, it is starting to glaze and will make a real nice scoopable handsoap for in the kitchen.

Thank you for this video, i have been looking for a method of using natural ingredients to make lye as i am allergic to store bought soaps. I will try this until i get it perfect. May i ask if its possible to use home made natural herbs infused oil s

In my experience, CP works as we can buy chemically pure lye crystals to dissolve into a lye liquid of exactly known strength. Without laboratory equipment to measure what is in a natural lye and devise its strength, I do not think it is possible to make a balanced soap from woodashes with any oil/fat using the CP method.

@@susanverberg thanks for sharing your experiences with us.🙏🙏Greetings from Turkey🇹🇷👋👋👋

that is a fantastic idea I will most definitely try next time I make soft soap! I have tried pH strips but found the ones I could easily use not to be detailed enough to make much of a difference (my testing consistently showed a pH of upper 10 to lower 11). Knowing a detailed SG number would be very helpful in emulating our processes. Thanks!

This type of soap is a soft soap, a potassium soap, which makes a gel, not bars. Sometimes it can be molded, somewhat, but it still dissolves like a soft soap, it does not hold shape when used. If you would like to see the result, look at the beginning "As seen in Mother Earth News": the image under soft soap is what will be produced. The soap will become better over time - I prefer to make mine, and store it in a large mason jar for a year or so, before using it.

This video shows you how to make the same gelatin soap as your grandma made. The end result is the same, a soft potassium soap from wood ashes, although the process to get there is slightly different - my process uses almost-but-not-quite hot process, and she uses boiling hot process. Hers is a bit more difficult as it needs more experience to know when to give if time and only simmer, and when to push it and boil. If you do my version a few times and pay attention how it shifts through the different stages, then you should be able to do an open-fire process as well. I have, and as she said - it takes forever LOL about 8-10 hours, and over open fire, you need to be around so it does not burn to the bottom. Good luck!

@@susanverberg Thank you very much! I will try this soon!

you mean ashes made from burning charcoal? you can use any wood-based ash but be aware that any chemicals used to make charcoal might be incompletely burned and transfer to the lye, and then the soap. I recommend to only use ash made from clean untreated, unpainted, etc wood.

@@susanverberg Thank you.

How many hours did you cook, at what temperature? And what does the "oil" look like? what color and consistency does it have?

@@susanverberg First of all, thank you very much for your help🙏🙏 Since I don't have a crock pot, I used a pot. I cooked it on low heat for four hours because I didn't realize what the temperature was in your video. Unsaponifiable oil was yellow , the saponified part was light brown and like cream.

@ it sounds like it has not finished yet. a crockpot is quite hot, just below boiling - i like to use it as it is consistent with a low change of burning. If you cooked on low heat, which is good as over open fire it would be much easier to burn, then you just need to keep going. If you use a higher heat and nudge it right over the point of cooking, i will separate. Then you went from near-boiling hot process to full-out hot process and that is not as easy for beginners. My suggestion is to either keep heating at the same temps, and it might take several days. Or heat a bit higher, and hope for the best. Or heat high enough for it to become a hot process and just go with it (google hot process for more specific instructions). whichever way you choose, cook until it looks like vaseline. Sometimes the soap is a bit lye heavy (not all the lye saponified) and it will draw water out of the air and leech brown fluid a few days after it has been made. It does not sound like that is happening with you, but it it is (the liquid will be caustic, thus shock your tongue if slightly touched) just stir the whole batch well, put it in a large glass jar, and let it sit. It might take a few months, but mine always settled out as a nice soap eventually. Because of the not-really-measured process this type of soap needs time. In history it would be made once or twice a year, and the longer it sat, the better it became :)

@@susanverberg Thank you for your help😊 I will try again and again. I hope I can make soap as good as you. Take care of yourselves. Greetings👋👋

in this case olive oil, but I've also used sheep tallow and lard. I find olive oil to work a little easier for beginners as the oil is already liquid at room temperature (tallow and lard, as well as numerous plant oils, are solid at room temps which adds an extra step of heating while making sure there is not too much of a temp difference between the fats and the lye)

oh... that sounds interesting! Could you share the source and perhaps recipe with me, I would love to follow up on that. One of the problems I ran into was that recipes would skip repetitive steps, and in modern interpretations, that instructions would show pictures of hard soap while making something completely different!

@@susanverberg there are several recipes on there that are pictures out of old newspapers and recipe books. Good luck!

@@susanverberg I'm going to attempt to try the one I mentioned, but I have my doubts it will work!

@@janeEyreAddict on where?! now you made me curious ;)

@@susanverberg sorry I sent the link awhile ago but RU-vid made it disappear apparently