What do all movies dealing with medieval times, wilderness survival, and the zombie apocalypse have in common? Bad wardrobe? Close. The people are always dirty.
In the modern age we enjoy, hand sanitizer, soap, disposable diapers, vacuum cleaners, running (hot) water, and entire departments of our department stores dedicated to hygiene and cleaning supplies. With all these amenities, hygiene, sanitation, and general cleanliness are things which we can really take for granted; but would we really be doomed to filth and disease without them?
Let’s look at what it would take to make a bar of soap completely from scratch.
To make soap you need only three ingredients: wood ashes, water, and animal fat. The ashes contain potasium hydroxide, also known as lye, which is one of the key ingredients in a modern bar of soap.
Warning: do not use any aluminum containers for ashes or the completed lye solution. They will be eaten by the potassium hydroxide in a violent reaction. You probably don’t want that.
The steps are as follows:
1. Place a handful or two of dried grass at the bottom of a container to form a layer an inch or two deep.
2. Next fill the rest of the container with ashes. (If you are just making a small amount of soap, just add enough ashes to make a layer twice as tall as the straw).
3. Without shaking the container (you don’t want the ashes to fill the empty spaces in the straw) form an indentation in the top of the ashes.
4. Pour water in the indentation slowly, letting it be absorbed into the ash, until the ash layer begins to float up.
5. Wait a few minutes and scoop the ash and straw out of the container slowly with a stick or two.
6. The greyish yellow liquid at the bottom of the container is a lye solution. This is the active ingredient in the soap.
7. Let this solution sit for several hours to settle. The dust and leftover bits of ash will settle to the bottom. Carefully pour off the liquid at this point into another container. To concentrate the solution, either leave it for a few days to evaporate away some of the water, or boil it off.
8. Next you need lard. Lard is just rendered animal fat. Rendered simply means that at some point the animal fat was turned into a liquid by heat. Bacon grease or hamburger grease are both examples of rendered animal fat or lard. To make it, simply find a fatty piece of meat and cook it slowly in a pot or pan (without adding any water). Cook slowly until the meat is good and crunchy, strain the meat out, and voila, you have lard.
9. This is where you actually make the soap. Reheat the lard and add half as much lye solution as you have lard. Mix constantly for several minutes and then come back to mix it every few minutes on a low heat. When the soap reaches a thick consistency (like thick pancake batter), pour it into a mold and wait for it to harden.
10. Soap has to mature for a week or two for the alkaline lye to convert the lard into soap. You can tell when it is done when it tastes like soap.
11. This soap will make suds like regular soap and is good for bathing and cleaning dishes and the like.
In the modern age we enjoy, hand sanitizer, soap, disposable diapers, vacuum cleaners, running (hot) water, and entire departments of our department stores dedicated to hygiene and cleaning supplies. With all these amenities, hygiene, sanitation, and general cleanliness are things which we can really take for granted; but would we really be doomed to filth and disease without them?
Let’s look at what it would take to make a bar of soap completely from scratch.
To make soap you need only three ingredients: wood ashes, water, and animal fat. The ashes contain potasium hydroxide, also known as lye, which is one of the key ingredients in a modern bar of soap.
Warning: do not use any aluminum containers for ashes or the completed lye solution. They will be eaten by the potassium hydroxide in a violent reaction. You probably don’t want that.
The steps are as follows:
1. Place a handful or two of dried grass at the bottom of a container to form a layer an inch or two deep.
2. Next fill the rest of the container with ashes. (If you are just making a small amount of soap, just add enough ashes to make a layer twice as tall as the straw).
3. Without shaking the container (you don’t want the ashes to fill the empty spaces in the straw) form an indentation in the top of the ashes.
4. Pour water in the indentation slowly, letting it be absorbed into the ash, until the ash layer begins to float up.
5. Wait a few minutes and scoop the ash and straw out of the container slowly with a stick or two.
6. The greyish yellow liquid at the bottom of the container is a lye solution. This is the active ingredient in the soap.
7. Let this solution sit for several hours to settle. The dust and leftover bits of ash will settle to the bottom. Carefully pour off the liquid at this point into another container. To concentrate the solution, either leave it for a few days to evaporate away some of the water, or boil it off.
8. Next you need lard. Lard is just rendered animal fat. Rendered simply means that at some point the animal fat was turned into a liquid by heat. Bacon grease or hamburger grease are both examples of rendered animal fat or lard. To make it, simply find a fatty piece of meat and cook it slowly in a pot or pan (without adding any water). Cook slowly until the meat is good and crunchy, strain the meat out, and voila, you have lard.
9. This is where you actually make the soap. Reheat the lard and add half as much lye solution as you have lard. Mix constantly for several minutes and then come back to mix it every few minutes on a low heat. When the soap reaches a thick consistency (like thick pancake batter), pour it into a mold and wait for it to harden.
10. Soap has to mature for a week or two for the alkaline lye to convert the lard into soap. You can tell when it is done when it tastes like soap.
11. This soap will make suds like regular soap and is good for bathing and cleaning dishes and the like.