Soapmaking from Scratch: Woodash Lye 

I watched my grandma make soap every 4 weeks and we used it plus she bought chicken feed with the money She died at 98 and I miss her loving smile

In a post-apocalyptic world, I think soap making is one of the things I think would be very useful to a community. Hygiene is important!

Hands down, your videos are the best out there for actually doing a thing. You show the entire process start to finish, and explain WHY you’re doing it that way as you go. Unlike others, you don’t assume a level of knowledge the rest of us don’t have. Thank you so much!❤️🐝🤗

I have made woodash lye soap a number of times. I filter the ashes, put them in a 5 gallon bucket, fill with water and let sit for a week (sometimes longer if I forget). When I drain the liquid, I have always had the egg float high to indicate a strong solution for soap making.

Eggs are the most frugal hydrometers. An egg rolls of the table and the dog gets a meal while I walk down to the henhouse for a new egg. While if a glass hydrometer rolls off the table, I have a mess and I 'm out $30 for a new hydrometer. Looking forward to the next instalment, Sally.

I would recommend using lab goggles instead of just glasses because liquid can splash behind the glasses easily, and you really don't want to mess around with something that could blind you. When I worked in a lab, I got quite careless about regular lye/acids on my hands because it takes a while to sting and can be washed off easily; your eyes do not have the same protection and damage happens quickly. Lab goggles can be bought to be wearable over regular glasses too and are cheap.

This was perfectly timed, Ive been thinking about soap production lately(You watch one post apoclypse show and suddenly youre not watching and youre pondering survival logistics). I look forward to the rest of the series

I’ve been reading up on making buckskin, and have seen the egg test mentioned several times in making the bucking solution. I’ve only ever used commercial lye & am excited to use oak ash from my wood stove this summer! Now I’ve got another thing to try, I better set another bucket out for more ashes! My poor husband… bless his heart… he doesn’t understand but is supportive nevertheless. 😇

my mammy told me and my sister when we where kids that my granny use to make soap like that in the 40`s and 50`s and she had this huge terracotta pot the size of a dust bin for it .

Rather than using a bung, I would recommend using a spigot/tap as a safer option. Brewers’ supply stores usually carry them for use on plastic fermenters, so it shouldn’t be any harder to find than the bung, and it would allow a controlled flow pointed downward rather than the gush you experienced. Love your vids, looking forward to more in this series.

Can’t wait until you post your second and third video on this topic!!! Keep doing what your doing sister and God bless🙏

Thank you! I came here to see how difficult it'd be to make lye in a long-term survival situation (mostly for making leather clothing / bags, etc), and am pleased to see how simple it is! :)

Experimental Archeology! My lady! I was an anthropology student way back when, and then life happened. Such that it is. My great grandmother used traditional lye soap that she also made herself and her skin was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I was too young when I knew her for her to feel comfortable letting me work with lye, so I never learned. There's not been anything comparable since. Finding this video is absolutely awesome. I remember some things she did (didn't use the plastic bin, I think she used wood that my great grandfather made), burning logs, pouring water and then I don't recall anything else. She also used lye in making hominy. I remember that.

Great video. The step you missed was having a bucket of clean water to immediately wash off splash. Also, safety googles are a must. I’m looking forward to part two.

The traditional way of making soap where I live was to run that same water back through two or three times to get it strong enough to float that adventurous egg. Mountain women only made soft soap from homemade lye, though.

Sept. 13, 2023 - just checking to see if there is an update to this video? I love that you're well rounded and try a variety of things and not just stuck on one gig. I do primitive living with the Natives that will teach whites and soap was one of the things I wanted to do. It takes some time to know if you've got soap and has to go through the saponification and gel phase before it's safe to use so it might not be a good class to teach since we can't actually use what we make. I make soap now with lye produced for soap makers but learning the primitive or "old fashioned" way of doing things is much more interesting and satisfying. Anyhow, I hope to see the follow-up soon and I pray all is well. Thank you for the videos. They're very informative. Kind regards, Mrs. Thibodeaux from Southeast Texas ❤🇺🇸

Looking forward to part 2 of this soap making process! I love your videos Sally

So excited to see you again! And soapmaking from scratch is a long time fascination of mine! Thank you!

I made this with my grandmother and mom. I was pretty young so I didn’t remember all the steps they did. Remember mostly the use of ash to make it. Loved seeing the process again. This is old school soap making. Course my grandmother was old school. She had ten children to boot.

I've been looking to do this for over a year, and have quite a few kg of hardwood woodash from the fire stove, but haven't found a good video on how to do this. The weather only just improved to be able to do it outside recently, and you make this video at the perfect time!😁👍 Thank you so much! I'm sure your instruction will be REALLY useful!❤

I see the wiretap has been listening quite well. We just finished making a few soap bars tonight. I’ve longed for a video or how-to to make this. Very pleased and you’ve renewed my interest to try it!

I have been researching simple traditional soap making for so long and still feel a little stumped and cautious so i am so happy to see you sharing this!! very very excited!! thanks for sharing!

🙏🙏🍻 this is something I want to do with my HS science class. We've made soap using sodium hydroxide, now they're proficient we are going to up the game! Watched other videos - not bad, your video - great! Can't wait for the continuation!!😎👍👍

Medieval life has to have been the most interesting and enjoyable time to be alive in our entire history I think. Modern "life" is dominated by working "jobs" that serve no purpose but to waste our life and time in exchange for literally nothing but pain and misery. At least in the Medieval era all work you would do would directly contribute to the home, you would make your own clothing and raise your own food. I wonder what evil I committed in a past life to be cursed with existing in modern times, what I wouldn't give to live true life back in history. Excellent video!

Crikey, when that lye gushed out over your arms, I was chanting "wash it off"! I've had a couple of encounters with lye water and it wasn't pleasant. Great video, thank you Sally.

My grandmother was from northern Maine and made her own lye soap. She never taught us so this is fascinating! Even after she moved to California I remember her keeping a stash of lye soap under the kitchen sink.

Thank you SO MUCH from a scratch soapmaker in the States! I've only been able to find one photocopied page from an 18th century book on how to properly make lye from wood ash, and it was not as thorough as your video. Making soap truly from scratch has been a goal of mine. So far I've only ended up with potassium carbonate instead of potassium hydroxide. I have a feeling your follow up video will explain how to turn the initial wood ash lye into proper soap lye. Very grateful I found your channel!

Brilliant video! Very informative. I look forward to watching the next one. Thank you.

Your channel is superb! I adore your areas of study, as I am a retired horticulturist of 40+ years now. And I an extremely interested in ancient ways of doing things, making things and ways of life of humans in the past. So happy to be following and newly subbed! I am also interested in ancient ways of pottery making and plants used for medicinal purposes! I do know that the Native Americans in my area (and in the Southern USA used river cane and cane grasses for many items and baskets , but it has to be cut at at certain time, I think I remember it as September, for it to be a certain pliability. I love this!😊

Love this! Can't wait for part 2!! 😀

This is where the value of RU-vid lies. Soap making rabbit holes, or whatever else you might want to learn about, however deep you’d like to go. Took me the better part of a year to get this far. Thank you for your efforts. It is appreciated.

In my part of the world a wooden barrel would have been used. (I realize you are using what you can source) A foot of straw placed in the bottom and covered with the ash from a hickory fire. Water would have been added and the contents soaked. Then the lye would have been run through a second barrel full of fresh ash and the process continued until the proper strength was achieved. We also used a hopper made like a baby's crib/manger, lined with straw, filled with ash and water poured over the ash and the ash changed out. A wooden gutter caught the lye and channeled it into the bucket. An ash hopper was a mandatory fixture in most of the rural back gardens when I was a kid. Most were unused by that time, but you could get a good lesson from the old people just for asking.

Interesting how y'all do things across the pond. One thing my ancestors did differently is they sieved the ashes to get only the powder and virtually no solids This was said to be one of the most critical steps for a good result. My Cherokee ancestors used to make hominy by putting dried corn in ash-filled pots, with water, next to a fire overnight. Many of my, now deceased, relatives said they'd wash their wooden floors with lye water made from wood ash and then they'd make soap from wood ash. The way they did it was they put the ashes in a cloth bag hung from a dowel rod by a thick rope. Over the bag was a metal tin, syrup bucket, pot or pan with a open bottom wood support holding it up. Basically any thin metal container that held a lot of water would do. They'd then have a tiny nail hole in the bottom of the metal container so the water would drip onto the rope and down into the bag. Below the bag was a crock. Usually this was done on a support post for a shed or porch with the dowel also being used later to hang souse or for other purposes. The idea behind this drip method was the extraction happened best because of the slow drip allowing time for a reaction to take place. The extracted water would then be capped off in the crock and taken to the creek to chill...sometimes for days (depending of the desired use of the lye watet). This is what we homebrewers call "cold crashing" or "cold racking" since the cold causes particles to floculate. They'd then pour off the good water into another pot and pour out the sediment in the bottom. For floors, this lye water was fine. For soap, they'd do the cold racking 2-4 times and then sieve it through clean clothes a few times. Afterwards, they'd then boil the lye water until just over half the original volume was boiled away. After it was cooled, they'd do the egg trick. The fats used varied. Some said beef fat was best for soaps used for household cleaning while others used old, used lard. All seemed to agree pork fat was best. I'm actually doing a contemporary demonstration of making hominy using an electric crock pot and sieved oak wood ash. We have an invasive tree here called Chinese tallow. It was brought here to make soap and candles. Most people are allergic to it. I like to smoke meats with the wood. I'm hoping to see if it has enough potassium in the ash to make lye water for future projects I have in mind

Oooh, such fun! I was a scientist when I was still working (mostly physics), and I've often wondered how this kind of process came into being! Very much looking forward to the rest of the series 👍

PS.....The concentration, boil your home made lye down and the egg will float, you need to play with a hydrometer to estimae solution strength, boiling drives off water, makes solution more concentrated.

Mon arrière Grand-mère a fait son savon de cette manière. J'ai tellement hâte de voir la suite!

I've read about testing the strength of homemade lye by floating an egg but never seen it done. Great video and very informative. Looking forward to the rest of the videos in your series. Thanks so much!

It would only work in smaller containers of 10 gallons or less, but you could try vigorously mixing ashes with water in a wide bucket skimming any floating material as it comes to the surface before pouring it all into a long preferably clear pipe of equal volume and letting it settle decanting the excess to get a relatively clean lye solution with no filter material.

This is extremely interesting. I've always been interested in the history of tar and tar making but soap is really cool too

I love your work! Please keep it up! ❤❤ You gave tips, pointers, and knowledge that is scarce nowadays. It’s so interesting watching you. I want to learn how to make soap from scratch like they did in the old days. I love how you reference and use historical data of soap making. You are bringing an old soap-making art back to life. 🙌🏾Please keep em’ coming ❤

Oooh, fun to see this from the very beginning. It's easier to mix powdery stuff with water if you do it in layers instead of all at once. Also a better container might be one of those construction-worker type plastic water jugs that have an open top (with a lid) and a bottom tap, so instead of being flooded when you take out the bung, you just turn the tap.

I've known this in theory for quite a while but it's so nice to see someone doing it for real! I knew about the egg floating test but hadn't heard anything about feeling or even tasting it to determine its readiness... Looking forward to the next video!

Am looking forward to seeing you finish this project! I've been researching how to turn wood ash into soap, and so far this has been the best video showing how to make lye for the soap

I'm so excited to watch this series! I've long wanted to know more about soapmaking but not necessarily the kind of sleek hobbycraft that youtube's mostly doing.

Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'd already watched a couple videos on this method but I really love the idea of getting your historical perspective on the technique. That, and the thorough, detailed, super hands-on approach that pretty much characterizes your videos . Cause it's one thing to have someone explain a technique and show the final product already made, but watching the whole process with all it's trials & tribulations is way more informative - and way more fun.

Love it most videos on this topic have been a bit sketchy. I look forward to the rest of your videos.

I've made soap with commercial lye for years and recently started thinking about lye production using these techniques to continue making soap without having to always buy lye. Very informative video, and I can't wait to see the rest!

Wow Thank you that there are some wonderful women left in the world Bless you in the name of Yahweh

I am interested in -- and largely ignorant of -- soapmaking, so was really pleased to see this, Sally. Also, pleased to see MADE IN ENGLAND on the bin lid. Keep 'em coming, Sally. 😊

When I saw you swatting in front of the plug I thot ‘no, no, no, stand to the side and unplug’. Verrry interesting!!

I had a dream that I was suppose to be making soap and hair pomade. Thank you kindly for educating me.

Very interesting and informative. Thank you for this information. Looking forward to part II 😊

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and lovely personality here! God Bless you in all your endeavors ❤️‍🔥🌻

I love this video. You've got a fantastic attitude to experimenting.

Hi thanks for your video. I’m a 51 year old Georgia girl and I remember my mom and grands making soaps and using pot ash and lye for illnesses. My mom is still living and has lye mixed in a mason jar with other ingredients. It helps illness and joint pain. Thanks.

sally, what timing!! you got me into nettle trying to make nettle fibre, so i'm so, so excited for this series of experiments, just as i've been looking to do my own reading on prehistoric soaps!!!!

Very interesting stuff, Sally! I'm fully intrigued with your experiments, you have a brilliant mind and a natural curiosity for things! Please, please consider to stop licking chemicals, especially strong ones, you know you could hurt yourself. It would be such a pity to lose you to some mishap over a lye slightly stronger than anticipated.

This is amazing! Thank you!

Very interested in more soapmaking with homemade lye videos!

Fascinating, thank you! The first batch may not have been terribly strong, but the color of it when you tested the egg was stunning!

Great video!! It’s so cool to make things yourself. I’ve used good grade lye to make authentic Bavarian pretzels. I wore gloves and eye protection but some of the lye water ran down my wrist. I didn’t immediately rinse it off and later it burned a bit similar to hot water burns but not as painful. I’m sure wood ash is not as strong though. I had redness and a slight itch for a few hours then I was fine.

can easily avoid that pressure surge when opening by using pvc pipe with a valve. they also have threaded parts that you can add a rubber gasket to create a seal. then glue up your pvc with valve, and as an added step, a 90 degree elbow to ensure the flow goes straight down.

It's really easy to fit a little waterbutt tap to any sort of bucket, rather than the bung. I've done it myself and they're only about £4. Great video, I will save some of my ash and see what I can make.

Wow... Looking forwards to this a lot. Thank you for all of the info!

Thank you, Sally! I appreciate all the awesome videos you do.

This is wonderful, thank you for making this series. I've only ever worked with purchased potassium hydroxide, but would love to learn how to make soap from scratch. Looking forward to future videos :)

I have been researching this. So glad to watch you do this. Thanks!

I'm so excited for this series!

Absolutely wonderful demonstration, thank you so much!

This is what a was looking for! The old way. So happy you show and learn us it. Thank you so much Sally

So looking forward to the soap making 😊

So pleased to see another video by you. I am looking forward to following along with the process.

So excited to see a new video!! Excited for this subject specifically, too 😊

Thanks for taking the time to go into detail, looking forward to learning more.

This is fascinating! Thank you for your clear explanations. I look forward to further videos on soap making.

You're awesome for showing the whole process here.

Sally, you are amazing!!

This is awesome, thanks

Can’t wait to see the end results!!! And try this myself ❤️ Thank you for your amazing videos!

Thank you for sharing.❤️ I would really like to see more to this series.

AWESOME video! thank you for this video Sally ma'am...........❤

Thanks for posting a video again !!! 🙂 And this is such an interesting topic...

Fantastic thanks 😊so much. You explain it so clearly that it can be followed you are a great teacher

Great content, thank you.

Thank you so very much. North Carolina here. I appreciate you showing this lovely video.

Really interesting! Thanks for posting 😊

Love this video :) thanks for the useful walkthrough

My aunts made lye soap when I was growing up. Can’t wait for part two

Top notch video! This is the only one of your videos that I've seen and it's enough to convince me to subscribe. Keep up the awesome work, and thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. :)

Can’t wait to see the rest of the videos

Cant be scuffy when so adorable! Beautiful actually darling and wonderfully intelligent, knowledgeable and caring of others to share it as a teacher. You are a blessing. Lovely to have yt put your videos in my feed.

Isn't it amazing how much patience folks had to have. We don't have that kind of patience today, everything being "instant gratification" or no one's going to do it. But what would happen if our society suddenly changed? Some catastrophe that stopped the world in it's tracks? It's possible since the Weddell sea is warming. Warm too much, and the oceanic conveyor stops, and then humanity is screwed for decades ... or even thousands of years. Tech would come to a halt because it relies on things powered by other things that rely on the oceanic conveyor. This is absolutely where the patience of our ancestors becomes relevant. Brilliant video.

Thank you for knowing and using the correct words for your tools (rasp)! 😊

Excited to see the rest of this series!! I am interested especially in the "soft soap" you mentioned in your latest video; it's a hard subject to google given all the modern soapmaking tutorials out there.

Thank you. Very interesting subject 🙏🙏🙏

This is fascinating! Really looking forward to part 2.

Just the other day I watched Ruth Goodman in the Edwardian Farm series talk about soap from woodash in order to launder clothes. Maybe it's a sign that I should bathe more often?

Thank-you!

Excited to see the next step

I love your videos!