how to make soap from wood ashes (lye water and tallow/lard)

so I've been collecting ashes from the barbecue grill over a period of months now this is what remains from the ashes and what I did is I basically just took what was inside here and ran it through basically like a screen for a window so that way the ash would fall through but then the remainder of the carbon the charcoal would stay separated from it and the end result is basically I have a large portion on a good amount here of cigarette cigarette ash of charcoal ash okay from the grill okay this is a lot when it got down in here okay but very little charcoal is inside there that's the point so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put water and this and we're gonna basically make a slurry so I've just been mixing this for not even 30 seconds but I want everything to be broken up in there and suspended and we have a nice thick mixture here but I'm gonna add a little bit more water to this another name for it is product or potage depending on where you're from and it has a lot of potassium in it in spot caught it and potassium okay and water is made up of h2o so there's more hydrogen okay h2 2 hydrogens per oxygen so when we mix these together we're going to end up getting hydrogen I'm sorry we're going to get that when we mix these two together we're gonna get potassium hydroxide okay so we've got our potassium we have our hydrogen and we have our oxide we have our but it needs to lead to be staying here for a while and I'm gonna say that is probably good and so I'm gonna let this basically be suspended in this water very much like this leave it outside few days perhaps and let this water absorb as much potassium as it possibly can this ash should sink to the bottom and when it does I should have somewhat of a clear liquid that I can decanter or decant off of this and it's basically going to be a very light form of lye and that's gonna be the first thing that we're gonna need to make so it's been setting for a few days and now you can see the top has cleared up quite a bit now this is basically live water that is probably not very concentrated but we're gonna we're gonna concentrate this now if you want this to be stronger with all these ashes in here you can just boil all of it right just boil all of the 15 20 minutes and then this will be actually be stronger okay but I'm sending for a few days like this should be adequate enough to take enough of that potassium out of that that potash there or pull Cash depending I don't know if I mentioned this or not but when you're using ash you want to use hardwood like you don't really want to use ash from trees that have a lot of resin like pine and doug-fir and things like that you want to use something that's like hardwood now this is Mesquite and I know Mesquite's got resin in it so I'm not completely sure how this is going to turn out okay but that's that and also this particular soap that we're going to end up making it's not going to be really as hard as store-bought so and store-bought soap you don't they put a lot of they put other stuff in there right and also they use sodium hydroxide this is potassium hydroxide and there's a little bit denser we're gonna end up kind of cheating the system a little bit later by adding a little salt to this so that way it hardens a little bit better and then also this is not gonna ladder up like you would see like a normal bar so that is because they add stuff to it okay nowadays soap is more like a detergent but this will clean you know this will clean your clothes this will clean your this will clean your dishes this will clean your hands this will this will clean this is old school soap so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this water try to leave as much ash behind as possible if you want to run this through a t-shirt or something like that you can in order to try to get some more of this debris out of here it's cool if not don't worry a lot of this stuff is going to end up separating when we start reducing it but I'm going to pour this in a stainless steel pot you don't want to put this in aluminum okay you want to put this in stainless steel or glass why reacts to metals so make sure that you don't do that so I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and pour this and then we'll go to the next step [Applause] there's a little bit of ash coming out with this right now and I'm trying to prevent that as much as I can a little bit is gonna be okay okay so there's still a little bit of water in here but I'll let that sit technically I could put more water in that and like I said I could boil it and I'll end up having a more concentrated lye lye water so and this is just an old t-shirt that's been outside for a long time from the last time actually I did this so so I've got this on the stove during the time that this is heating up this can create some pretty nasty fumes that you really don't want to be breathing so it's probably better you do this outside now my stove is just a couple of few feet from a sliding glass door so my door is open and I'm gonna be monitoring this so if it starts smelling too nasty or whatever like that too toxic I'll just turn the heat off and take it outside and then figure out a way to finish it outside but I've done this before it wasn't really too bad or anything inside here but just word of warning you are dealing with lye here so we're gonna go ahead and start bringing this to a boil and also how do we know when this is concentrated enough well we're gonna be doing the old a t-test which also works with a potato if we take an egg or a potato and then we put it in the water it should float and this one does not okay so that tells us this is not concentrated enough let me go rinse this off and rinse my hands off and when this thing floats and it starts kind of coming out at the top a little bit that tells us right there that this is the proper concentration I'm gonna let this reduce probably about two and a half or three inches and then I'm going to try the potato again then because we want to have we want to have a concentrated live water when you're me and so it's really important that the ratio between live water and fat is you know pretty much on the money now back in the day they didn't have a bunch of fancy measuring equipment when they were doing this out and about it was just do experience and testing and stuff like that when they were able to do it and that's pretty much how we're gonna do it generally as a rule of thumb at least for if you were making like crystals because if we just kept boiling this and then turn the temperature down to where it was just kind of evaporating Avenger we would have like crystals okay which would be as concentrated as we can get it so let's go ahead and let this continue what Sabrina's gonna let this boil for a while and as soon as this reduces it'll clear up - it'll clear up - don't you know - attendant the seating up but we're just gonna go ahead and let this kind of boil down concentrate a little bit okay so what we're gonna do is we're going to take the lye water that has reduced considerably and we're gonna pour it in here and try to keep a lot of the stuff that's on the bottom on the bottom so we can clean this out and then concentrate it some more so the pan has been cleaned out and the lye water has been clarified fairly well if I let it rest for about five minutes some more ash will fall to the bottom of the container I'm not completely worried about that so let's go ahead and pour this back in and I'm gonna rinse this container out but I'm gonna let this go ahead and continue boiling down a little bit more okay so the egg is floating and the amount of egg that is basically showing up on the top of it it's about the size of a quarter which is about right so we have our live water and it's to the right concentration so to kind of give you an idea of exactly how much we have left over after we boiled all of that down so this is about how much we've got left after all of that boiling it down and stuff like that okay so I've got a pan right now that I just rinsed out I mean part this is the same one that I was making the lye water in and concentrating it there's a little bit of water inside here I'm just going to let that evaporate and where my do is as soon as this evaporates or I just take a paper towel to speed this up this is on low okay this is on a low temperature and I've got one cup of lard okay one cup of lard and we're gonna go ahead and melt this we don't want this to get too hot we're just trying to melt it we want this to stay just so we basically want this at a temperature that keeps it in a liquid state but not much hotter than that right so maybe like 110 120 maybe maybe 130 or something along those lines [Music] and during the time that this is melting down I'm going to get 3/8 of a cup 3/8 of a cup of the concentrated lye water that I had made as soon as this melts the rest of the way we'll go ahead and run a floral white water in here and during the time that we're gonna be stirring it we don't really want to be using a metal spoon and it once again I'm using stainless steel here not using aluminum but I want to use like a wooden spoon or maybe something plastic something that the lie is not gonna start eating so I'm going to call that good and then now we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna pour our water in here and that's pretty much gonna be the ratio is for every cup of fat we're gonna use 3/8 of a cup of the lye water okay and a few things about wood ash so okay few things it this is very very old-school you know first is this is going to end up being softer than the type of soap that you'd buy in the store generally okay now if we want to make sure that this gets a little hard we can go ahead and we can put salt in here maybe like a teaspoon or so and then that will that will harden this a little bit more so here's a little bit of just regular salt this is not iodized salt this is sea salt okay now technically that's something that you would want to heat up and get it to dissolve completely but I think it's gonna dissolve just fine in this and basically we're just gonna keep stirring this and then the stirring it can take a while we can take anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours four hours five hours at who knows but we're gonna go ahead we're just gonna keep stirring this until we get to what's known as a trace and a trace is think of this where it turns into something that looks like pudding and if you put your fork or something through it it'll leave a mark in there and like it'll stay right and you want to make sure that when you're doing this you don't let this mixture get too cold because if it gets too cold let me turn this down if it gets I turned the heat off completely if you if it gets too hot it'll actually cause separation so we don't want to do that like it at personal help bind everything but then across separation now where was I oh if it gets too cold even get what's known as a false trace where it looks like it's kind of solidified but it's really just because it's gotten too cold and the fat is starting to set up okay so you want to keep this warm but not really too hot at all so I mean it was on low I just turned the fire off and this is probably gonna be good at this temperature for probably a good ten minutes and I'm just gonna continue stirring this allowing the saponification process to continue and homemade soap like this made from Y from wood ash like I said it's generally softer it doesn't usually smell very good you can add fragrance to this if you want but then what's the point this is the type of stuff that you would only make if you absolutely have to anyway there's really no reason for you to to make this other than just for the sake of saying that you know how to make soap from wood ash you know but if you do add a fragrance you want to use something like an essential oil or something you don't want to use anything water-based when you sum that's one of these if you want to use one of those hand mixers to speed up the process you can do that if you want to but we're just gonna say no we're just gonna keep stirring this and let the saponification process happen now this will work to bathe you know you this you know so you can bathe yourself you can use this to clean clothes you can use this to clean dishes this is an all around so it's an all around soap so well we're just gonna keep doing this for a while so I've been stirring this for about 15 minutes or so and I can feel that it's getting a little thicker you can definitely smell that beef fat and that's that's one of the things about traditional soap like this is you know like I said mentioned before it doesn't really smell that fantastic but it does clean it's not gonna make a lot of bubbles you know like suds but bubbles and suds don't add anything to the cleaning process so it's basically just for her appearance quite honestly but we're gonna keep working this until we get a trace okay so this is definitely starting to thicken but it's not quite there yet [Music] they give it about another 15 minutes okay so I'm gonna go ahead and add a little bit more ly water to this I think I needed to concentrate my white water a little bit more but I'm getting close to a trace but it's taking a long time so I'm going to add a little bit more and keep stirring it okay it's definitely thicker problem is is like you know you add the lye water and if it's not come if it's not concentrated enough you're adding water to the solution as well so I'm gonna I'm gonna stir this for maybe like another 20 minutes and then after that I'm gonna call it good I mean it's it's it's definitely a lot thicker than it was but I don't really want to spend all day on this and not only that but I think I could have concentrated my light water a little bit more and then this would definitely probably already would have started tracing but it's it's getting there it's getting there it's just taking a while that extra water is gonna end up keeping this stuff a lot more liquid then originally I wanted but as long as it still works you know as long as it so works and hey we're good you'll see that it's really close to tracing yeah it's like really close and with that extra water that's in there I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get this to trace completely but it's it's really close I mean because you can see that this is almost like a pancake batter like a thin pancake batter and ideally we'd want it to be thicker than this we want to be able to see that trace if I go like this I want to be able to see you know that that line that the fork is made God that trace is so close I'm so close to that trace stir it it's driving me crazy you know man I I think that if I would have liked maybe taking them maybe another cup of water out of the lye water this would be this would be money man that's the problem you know when your macgyvering stuff and you're doing things the old-fashioned way so I've been stirring this a little bit more it's thickened a lot more and you can see that it's it's almost it's almost traced it's definitely almost traced I mean when I move this back and forth it takes a second for it to kind of fill up that gap it needs to be thicker than this quite honestly but I think because of that water the lye water that I used I don't know them to be able to get this as thick as it needs to be but it's definitely thickened quite a bit I'm gonna give this maybe another ten minutes and then I'm gonna give up because it's just like I'm kind of kind of over this already I've been stirring for so long okay mm-hmm we have a trace we have a trace do you see that that is a trace and that looks good that looks good man I was thinking it was never gonna happen but okay we're good to go so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna take this and pour it into a mold and basically let it sit there for a day or so to harden up and what I'm gonna use as a mold it's just a plastic cup okay so poured it inside this container and I'm gonna put a paper towel over the top of it and let this basically just kind of set up and wait till it solidifies and then soon as it does I'm going to take it flip it upside down cut it into the pieces that are you know one for the soap and then just let it sit for like four or six weeks let it kind of cure even though I've got a trace on this and generally when you're when you're making soap with regular lye which is sodium hydroxide and this is potassium hydroxide generally what will happen is the next day it'll be hard enough that you can cut it into pieces but this might stay soft it's hard to say no I did put a little bit of salt in there and this has got a good trace so who knows we might get lucky hard to say but that's that guys the rest of it is just waiting now so that's how you go about making soap from wood ash so anyway hopefully you learned something from it and whatnot like I said this stuff is like a science man the ratios have to be like really close to being right on the money or you're gonna end up having a nasty products or it won't work and a lot of times you're going to be doing a lot of experiments you're going to be doing batches and badges and batches until you actually get something that actually works you know now I'm not really a soap maker even though I know how to do it and obviously and then I'll you know I'm more like candle maker that's more along my lines but this is gonna work this is gonna work so anyway guys till next time talk to you later

Channel: Cooking with Dr. Chill

Views: 1,179,644

Rating: 4.5576324 out of 5

Keywords: how to be a man, manly, how to, how to make soap, how to make lye, lye from wood ash, wood ash, tallow, fat, lard, diy soap, how to make potash, potash, potassium hydroxide, lye water, survival, survival soap, prepper, shtf, how to make lye water, soap recipe, soap, recipe, how to make lye from wood ash, how to make soap from ash

Id: YHzAjgGYtDI

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2017