Soapmaking from Scratch: Woodash Lye

hello I'm Sally pointer now I might be looking even scruffier than I usually do in this video and that's because the project I'm working on today is really quite a messy one uh a lot of you will know this I'm currently doing a master of science and experimental archeology over at Texas University and as part of that I'm taking the opportunity to explore one of my favorite research interests which is the history and Archeology of soap so I've got some big experiments to do for that but so I'm going to take it as the opportunity to start putting together a sequence of videos for you on how soap is made from scratch and buy from scratch I mean starting with the ashes and starting with the raw fats so today I'm setting up a lie Hopper to make lye from wood ashes which we'll use as The Alkali sauce in soap making historically ly Hoppers have been made out of things like hollowed out tree trunks or slats of wood or potentially large pots I've got a small plastic Dustbin here brand new one nothing murky in there and that's going to make a really nice safe lie Hopper now what I need to do is drill a hole around about here that's large enough to take a bun and that will let me stack this full of Ashes pour water through it and get the LIE out safely afterwards so first things first take this into the workshop drill some holes in it and find a bun so I've marked the bucket a few inches above the bottom I want room for a little bit of a filter in the bottom section and I'm planning on putting in one of these rubber bungs the salt that you'd use for a Homebrew damage on now drill bits um I'm a little bit Limited in options so I found this slightly Rusty one I'm not convinced it's absolutely the right bit for the job but we're going to try it and see well that works will it take the thumb that's actually a little bit small that's all right I'm going to try again with a slightly bigger one and um by putting the phone down as well we'll see if we can get this to fit in a second well the other drill bits aren't the right size either so I'm going to use a half round um rasp and I'm just going to file that away until it fits this may take some time success so I've aimed for quite a tight fit but with plenty that I can pull out later when I'm ready to tap lie off let's get this out in the garden and get it set up so out in the garden in the corner where I keep my Tea Plantation not looking very great at the moment but they'll pick up and the spare bits of corn Stones I have got a little corner where I can set this up safely and nobody's going to knock it over I'm setting the light Hopper up on top of the support so I'll be able to put pan underneath it when it's time to tap it off and if we have a look at it from the inside up to about this level I want to put in a layer of Twigs that will act as a filter that's going to help stop the ashes clogging the hole up so that means that I need to nip over to my lovely Neighbors woods and collect some sticks we have historical records that talk about pushing with these in the bottom of the hopper when you're producing lye so I've come out to this lovely stand of coppice and I'm going to take out some little twigs for various purposes but lining my new lye Hopper is high on my list of priorities today uh and it took a few seconds let's see how far that little armful goes and always come back over the road for more now because I'm here multitasking I actually want some of these long bits to make new sprang frames so I'm going to pick out the good bits and all the trimmings are going to go into the bottom of the LIE Hopper so that's another four sprang frames made those are for weaving on and nothing to do with soap making but hey why not make two things at once and the bottom of my lie Hopper now has quite a thick mesh of Twigs in it and you can just see the stopper down there now ideally I want to stop the ashes clogging that so I think I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I've got some wood shavings to hand and I'm going to put a layer of nice curly shavings over the top straw would work just as well I haven't got any to hand so this is standing in the straw and that's about an inch of I think it's wood wool is what you'd call this it's standing in for straw so straw would be the ideal I don't want to stop the liquid dripping through but I do want to stop things clogging up too badly now we need to put in the ashes when we moved here several years ago he actually brought an entire bin of Ashes with us now they've been outside for that entire time but because they've been covered they should be absolutely fine they're what we're going to use today when I've experimented with making wood ashly before what we found is that you do need to use quite a lot to get a decent result just doing a a oh I don't know uh scoop full or two like this really isn't enough you need to use a really good volume of Ashes so I'm Gonna Fill Up This Hopper as high as it will go do watch that you're not breathing in too much Ash as you transfer it I don't even just see what the quality of this is like as as I mentioned these ashes traveled with us and they're certainly well aged there's no reason why they shouldn't be good they've been protected I think the ones nearest the bottom of the barrel probably going to be the best ones still these just came out of a domestic wood burner and they would have been burning a mixture of Oak Ash Beach Birch that would have been odds and ends perhaps of conifers but mostly the British Hardwoods that's what was being burnt in that particular wood burner the quantity is about right pretty much going to use up my stash of Ashes which is brilliant so I'm going to take those right up to the top and I'm going to make just a little well in the middle and then we'll start adding some water that's the point at which we find out whether that bun really is going to hold or not we're going to need lots and lots of water and I've got a really big rain batch here so we're using rain water for this particular experiment although I'm not planning on tapping off the light till tomorrow it's a really good idea to put a container underneath from the wood go in case it leaks and make sure that nothing that you are using is based on aluminum because lye is a strong Alkali it's going to dissolve aluminum there are my ashes I've made a well in the middle start I'm gonna need several watering cans full so we'll take our time we're going to let it percolate through nice and slowly and I'm going to keep topping it up until it won't take any more water at all as that water settles in there's lots of burping and glooping and things rising to the top little bubbles of wood tar and things just dissolving into that Alkali solution as long as you don't disturb the filter layer you give it a hook around make sure the water's settling in and just keep chopping it up until the water doesn't soak in anymore two watering cans full so far I think I think it's time for another one it's got real witches cauldron properties this has lovely bubbles this is just the air Pockets releasing as the water soaks through the ashes there's actually nothing really dramatic going on although the liquid is becoming more and more alkali as the ashes leech that's got three and a half watering cans so three and a half gallons of water in there at the moment I think it's probably gonna take a bit more but I'm going to go away and have some lunch and just let it settle that'll also give me a chance to check whether it's leaking by those days I really hope not the odd drip no problem lots and then we will decide whether it's ready to be left overnight or not lid on just to make sure nobody sticks their fingers in it although there should be nobody around but me Mom and the cats today and uh yes time for some lunch half an hour later and there's no doubt that that is still settling now I'm curious as to whether after just half an hour or so there's much chemical activity going on in there so I've got some Universal indicator papers I'm just going to test the rain water to make sure that that's neutral fat is that's not really doing anything whilst I'm not expecting a lot of alkalinity yet I'm hoping this is going to read yes look at that that's reading it's nice and alkaline so if I can rearrange this so that you can see the pH indications come on so that is already really lovely and strongly Alkali that's only going to get better overnight we hope I'm going to top up the water I'm going to put the lid on King and tomorrow morning we're gonna see what it's turned into it's the first thing the next morning and I came out with some nervousness but look at that just the tiniest little bit of Dripping so I'm really pleased with that every single batch of lye that you make will tend to come out differently and in this case I was thinking about later thought actually that rasp I use to enlarge the bunghole will have made for a less than perfect seal so I was awake in the middle of the night fretting about this seems to have worked all right though I am going to leave it for a few more hours it was vaguely lunchtime but I set this up yesterday so I will wait till after lunch before tapping it off so it's had a full 24 hours and what we're home full is for all those ashes that are inside to have leached the potassium oxides and hydroxides into the water that's going to give us something that's very very similar to potassium hydroxide Koh in chemical terms which should be a good base life soap making so 24 hours has gone past now and it's time to look at tapping off this lie now I'm often a little bit lacks with health and safety when it's just me I try and be quite careful if I'm teaching for me not so much but I am going to be taking some precautions today I've got an apron on can you hear that more interesting things too than housework always I've got specs on if I didn't wear specs already I'd probably use goggles I've got my shoes on and I'm gonna put some gloves on because lie is really nasty stuff if you get on the wrong side of it now I'm attempting to use a tripod today and it keeps collapsing on me so if this suddenly goes out of focus we'll treat it as a comedy moment okay pull this thump all right and that is a really good example of why we have to be careful with this oh dear there's a lot more of a head of pressure there than I was expecting okay that's settled down to a steady trickle already I'm going to just let it keep dripping for as long as it wants to hopefully without running all over the place I'm gonna go wash my hands I did Splash lie up my arms when I did that and when I come back I think we'll be able to do an initial test and see how strong this lie is coming out I have no idea what to expect as I said before this is very old Ash that I've used for this particular batch but it's looking right so far I've seen about the comedy moment where it splashed everywhere all right moment of truth let's see what we've actually got here so I can use Universal indicator paper like I did earlier on in this experiment but all that really tells us is whether something is strongly Alkali or not it's actually very very hard to judge accurately whether a wood ash lie is strong enough to make soap with or not so there are traditional methods of estimating the relative strength and one of those is by floating an egg in it so this is our wood ash lie I've just tap that off it's very murky stuff needs to settle this is a batch of wood ashly with a little slaked lime in it well it was quickly I went in select this wood ash and lime strong enough to float an egg this is something you see over and over again in traditional soap making granules is the LIE strong enough to float an egg this is plain water as our control and here are our eggs so if I put an egg into water it will sink as long as it's a fresh egg that's a very well-known way of checking with your eggs are still good a lot of us will float eggs quite regularly if we can't remember how long we've had them before take that same egg put it into the lie that was made with a little lime can you can you see that is floating really really nicely with a little section sticking out on top it's often described as a bit about the size of a coin although coins vary hugely in size I I tried hours yet I don't know what it's going to be like so I'm just going to I'm just going to rinse that off in the fresh water so that we're not confusing things what do you reckon is it going to be strong enough is it going to be really really weak I genuinely don't know oh sinking a little bit is it going to float back up oh oh he's thinking about it let me see if I can move this so you can see what's going on inside try moving the tripod around no that has pretty much sunk I was hoping it was going to be a little more than that it's not quite sitting right on the bottom it's got a little bit more oomph to it than that I don't know if you can see that egg was moving around quite slowly but that's not quite that soap making strength yet however it is definitely stronger than the plain water that's absolutely fine that's going to give me something to work with when I start trying to estimate what's going on can you see that against the light you can see that that egg's not quite sitting on the bottom so that's actually a really really good sign it's going to rescue the egg other things I can do to estimate how this is feeling are a little riskier I do not recommend you do this at home unless you are quite confident in handling light so the first thing is I've got no gloves on I'm just going to see what it feels like strong life feels soapy in the fingers because it's degreasing your fingers pretty much straight away that feels yep that feels slightly soapy the next thing I can do paste it and you've got to be very very careful when you do this now I'm always very cautious when I do a taste test on Raw lie that I have got no idea what the strength is I felt very foul of this once quite a few years ago I made a batch of lie just like we have now it came through without all the spilling everywhere it was looking really promising but I was convinced it was going to be weak so I picked up a drop of my finger and I put it on my tongue and my tongue nearly fell off so I've learned the hard way that we do this very very cautiously so what I'm going to do oh sorry about the funny angle I am going to get a drop of light on my finger I am going to Pat it around so that it's it's just a Trace and then I'm just going to tip it to the very very end of my tongue yep that's got bite um I can tell that's quite strongly Alkali it really makes your tongue screw up on itself and your tongue is very very sensitive to acids and alkaliers it's quite a good way of testing but again yeah that's strong but it's not quite a soap making strength this is excellent for the purposes I want for the experiments I want to be running for my Master's Degree but also for the ongoing soap making videos that I want to make for you lovely people this is perfect so I wanted some slightly less strong lie to start with what I'm going to be doing from here is I'm going to finish letting this lie drip through then I'm going to decant it into dimmer Johns so it can settle there's lots of little floating particles in there at the moment so I want those to settle out and light often does get better if you can keep it for a while you end up much cleaner soap and much better quality product and then I'm going to put some by for the experiments that I need to do which I will tell you more about in another video but for the moment let's just talk about making lye and then when we come to actually make soap with this I'm going to reduce it by boiling by evaporation so that the lye concentrates and will keep going until it's strong enough to float an egg but I think you're probably going to be seeing a bit more of more in another video this has gone it's got a moment but to recap making lie you want a good size Hopper of Ashes just a few spoonfuls doesn't really work good quality ashes from Hardwood bases are perfect there are other ashes you can use in soap making again I will talk more about those in another video but generally salty ashes some Seashore plants are a different kettlefish all together tops up with water give it a good 24 hours drain it off being careful learn from my mistake I shouldn't really have had that big gush of lie earlier and then test it initially at least by seeing whether it's strong enough to float an egg there is going to be a whole sequence of videos on working with lye working with fats making soap of various types based on historical things there's also going to be at least one video based on my Master's level research on what we think is happening when South is first discovered because there's a lot of theories out there most of them we can prove don't work in practice it's a lot of fun lots of potions so I'll sign off for the moment and I will be back hopefully in the next few weeks with the next installment of this bye for now

Channel: Sally Pointer

Views: 209,440

Keywords: woodash lye, lye soap, soapmaking, Sally Pointer, pioneer soap, medieval soap, primitive soap, real soap, bucking, alkali, soap history, archaeology, potassium hydroxide, soap making, how to make soap

Id: B5KLWPSMot8

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 04 2023