Hitler turned people into soap by burning them and getting their body fat. he then took the body fat and used it to make soap.
Look out someone out there has been using dead bodies to wash themselves!
You cannot make traditional soap without a chemical agent such as lye or sodium hydroxide. This causes the saponate reaction with the fats to produce soap. It is worth noting that the traditional lye method will not produce bar soap. However there, are plant based saponates, as discussed below.
There are some plants that are actually used as soaps: soapwort (or bouncing bet), soapnuts, yucca root, pokeweed root, or buckeyes (or horse chestnut) are some of the more common in the USA. Dry the plant, pods, or roots out chop up into small pieces, then place with water in a bottle and shake. It is only a liquid soap. Soapwort is used to clean delicate old fiber in museums. You can learn more about soapnuts at the related link below (as well as recipes for soaps containing lye and many other things)
I also read.... if you have the right conditions, you can grow shampoo ginger, which is one of the saponin producing plants. You won't get the lather that we expect from soap (and you don't need lather to get clean; most soaps these days contain lathering agents because we've gotten so used to associating suds with cleaning power), but it does work. You squeeze or crush the flower head and get a slightly slippery fluid out of it. This is the "soap" or "shampoo".
There is actually a type of soap made with ash (instead of lye) that you can purchase/find online (but be picky as to where you buy it and what it looks like) it's called "African Black Soap". It has been made in different parts of Africa for centuries and each region seems to have their own variation of the same recipe. Most genuine African Black Soap's are somewhat crumbly and not particularly attractive in appearance. I've seen some that actually kind of looks like cooked meatloaf...
You could also try looking up more information on Google... maybe, "Why is lye used in homemade soap" or something along those lines...
Anyway, this is just information I have gleaned from different areas of the internet so I'm not sure how (or if) any of this works. It's very interesting though, and I'd love to know if anyone else has tried any of these methods and what type of recipe they may have followed (or made).
There are articles that can be found on Mother Earth News' website that have countless useful information. I'm a huge fan. My mother used to get Mother Earth News Magazine when I was little. It never gets old. It's timeless.
You could cut the soap into small shavings and dissolve it in water.
However, it's probably just as cheap, and much easier, to simply buy liquid soap in the first place.
Typically, soap is not acidic. It is slightly alkaline Lye or sodium laureth sulfate is the typical active ingredient in soap
you can use it instead of your water when mixing your soap. Butto be sure your lye mixes, dissolves all the way use some water to liquefy it first ,adjusting your liquid amount's it to the cocomilkslowly as not to burn it. check your lye calculator for proper amounts.
Using expired lye in cold process soap can greatly affect the process and final product.
How does one make the lye solution for lutefisk. What is the lye and dilution amounts? Also where does a person buy the lye? thank you.
physical
Tallow is used in many commercial applications; dog food and soap are the 2 most common. The recipe for lye soap has only 3 ingredients, lye, tallow and water. It's a bit dangerous to make, because when lye and water mix, it gets very hot and gives off toxic fumes. Soap makers usually mix it in an ice water bath to reduce the heat and fumes. Until electricity was harnessed to light houses, tallow was used in cheaper candles, the more expensive candles were made from wax. It was burned in rush lights, torches and lamps as well. Tallow is used to lubricate steel being rolled in steel mills, and was used to lubricate steam engines. One of it's properties is that it stays slippery when very hot, unlike many oils.
Saponification is a process that makes soap. It usually involves mixing a strong base with a triglyceride such as fat or oil. The lye soap that was used by many people in frontier areas was made by mixing ashes from burned wood with tallow; the ash provided the lye (sodium hydroxide), the tallow provided the fat.
mix lye, water, and fat in large pot. heat and stir. you will get soap.
Some soaps contain tallow (beef) and/or lard (pork) as the fats that are combined with sodium hydroxide (lye) to make soap. Higher end products use vegetable fats. The most common are olive, coconut, and palm.
Yes, lye soap is safe to use in fact that is what I use every day. When I was a child, my father used to make lye soap which we all used regularly. Except that it didn't have perfume, it was no different from 'store bought' soap. In previous centuries, many people made and used lye soap.
You cannot make soap without a chemical. You either need sodium hydroxide or lye. However, lye can be made from wood ash [but it takes a year]. There are plants in nature that have saponates in them, such as yucca, buckeye, soapnuts, soapwort, etc... Check with an herbalist in your area to see what grows locally.
lye is an alkaline ingredient in soap making that transforms oils into soap
Soap making requires following a recipe very carefully, because it is a precise chemical process. Basically, you take your oils, combine them with tallow, lye and water, and mix and mix and mix. Pour it into molds, let it set, and you have soap. Lye is a potentially dangerous chemical, so you have to be very careful when measuring. There are a lot of different recipes out there.
Yes, but there are more preferred sources of soap-making lye.
Lye Soap is made by combining Lye (Sodium hydroxide), Oils and water together at the right temperature and ratio as to begin saponification. Ordinary soap like in the supermarket is not this type of soap. They do not contain lye at all.
You cannot make soap without lye. Even glycerin soap is not free of lye. The Lye is a naturally occurring chemical that can be produced using simple rainwater and wood or plant ash. Soap has been made with some form of lye for thousands of years and can be traced back as far as 2800 BC. Here is a website that gives a summary of the history of soap. http://www.cleaning101.com/cleaning/history/ The glycerin is the byproduct that is left over after the commercial soapmakers skim the soap off the top. What is left is then distilled and becomes what we know as glycerin, but the glycerin results from the original process to make the soap which invariably uses lye. The removal of the glycerin from the soap along with the addition of other, God knows what, chemicals added in the commercial soap is what is harmful or drying to your skin. Lye soap (there REALLY is no other kind)is not harmful to your skin IF the soap is properly made. If too much lye is used for the fat content, it may retain some of they lye's caustic properties. Some soapmakers (homemade soap, not commercial) will "super fat" their mixture to avoid any chance that the lye's caustic properties were not neutralized. If you worry about the "chemical" use of lye in your soap, don't be. Without lye, there is no soap. Water, Lye and Fat are the ingredients in any soap. The only alternative is detergent which is made with phosphates. Phosphates are carcenogenic and are known to cause cancer. Also, don't forget the potential for chemical harm attributable to glycerin either. Nitroglycerin is made from glycerin! When used and handled properly, lye is very safe. Here is another article about the soap making process. http://www.pioneerthinking.com/glycerin.html
Along with animal fat, you could make lye soap.