Can I use yard clay in cp soap?

Hey everyone,

So I've moved to South Carolina, and they have such amazing red clay. I was wondering if I clean the clay like I was going to use it to make pots(clean, sift, dry), could I use this clay in my soap?

If not why?

If I can, is there anything else I would need to do to it to make it cosmetic grade?

I'm new to clay, but love the idea, and want to use all natural, local ingredients.

Thanks for your thoughts, -Kate

Kate since part of being a curious soaper demands experimentation - go for it! It may accidently provide you with a nice color, provide a nice slip to your soap.

For you to be able to claim it is "cosmetic grade" though is a little expensive. For selling purposes, labeling requirements state that you have to list your ingredients, so if you don't know exactly what's in the clay..... You would have to find a lab that can do a complete analysis to determine your ingredients. Maybe if you have an agricultural extension office in your area, they could possibly do it more cost effectively.

Maybe someone in your area is already using it and you can benefit from their education - good or bad. Please post if you do use it; curious minds always want to know.

Hi Kate! I have lived all over SC for many years now, so I know well the clay of which you speak I know very little about clays and how they are harvested, cleaned, and used for other purposes. But, if you are familiar with those processes, I'd say go for it! Keep us posted if you do!

What part of SC are you in? I am in the Rock Hill/Fort Mill area of SC near Charlotte.

You don't have to list all the ingredients of the clay in the soap, rather, the clay has to be tested and approved for cosmetic use (you list kaolin clay on a label, not the mineral components of the clay). Unfortunately unless you have a big fat wallet that is cost prohibitive for a single soaper. You could certainly play with it yourself, for your own personal use, but you could not sell it.

As a guy who was originally a geology major (what was I going to do with that?!) and worked in a soils engineering lab, I can tell you a little about clay.

I would not expect that you could effectively "wash" clay. By it's nature it is finer than silts, meaning it will pass the most fine sieve used for analysis. Generally speaking the particles are smaller than 2 μm. If you tried to clean it you would end up with opaque water that would have to be evaporated somehow to get the clay back. You would not be able to separate it from the silt without processing it as a liquid and using say a 5 μm filter to remove sand and silt.

Commercially, clay is not processed in any meaningful way except to harvest it. If you are intent on trying this, dig till you find an undisturbed layer and take from the middle of that layer, leaving the bounding layers untouched so you do not harvest any sand or grit.

Nothing I've said will stop a determined (stubborn?) person so if you try it let us know how it goes.

This is just my opinion and nothing more ....

Before you harvest your clay, take a little time and explore the location and surrounding areas of land and land use. Example, if it is from a stream bed are there any major manufacturers up stream from the location that might have dumped chemicals in the creek or river over the years? Is the clay bed directly off and down hill from a livestock pasture or close proximity to a barn where animal wastes might have drained into the creek. Is the clay bed near an old road bed where the road may have been treated with dioxins or oil spray?

If its in your yard, and you are rural with a septic tank and drain system, where does the clay bed lie in relationship to that drain field? How about your local roadway where winter de-icers may have been used and later melted to drain across the clay bed?

Hopefully, none of this applies! Hopefully you have a clean, untouched source. But I sure would do a little checking before I chose to include it in a soap batch. Do a google map search.

For me, if I found a clay deposit in my backyard I would not hesitate to use it ... my backyard is the highest ridge in the area with no houses behind me. So there is no way any chemicals could have leached into the ground. If I found a deposit in my front yard I would never use it. My front yard lies about 5' below the road surface and gets all of the rain, road tire, and winter chemical treatment run-off. Plus that front yard at one time was crop land so I know it was chemically treated and manure treated for decades before I purchased it. Add it this that my next door neighbor in the front hires a lawn service that chemically treats his grass (green desert) every few weeks ... all those chemicals run off his yard into my yard ... I use to have honey bees but since the summer he moved in I have not seen one!

So ... just my opinion.

WyvernWench said:

Add it this that my next door neighbor in the front hires a lawn service that chemically treats his grass (green desert) every few weeks ... all those chemicals run off his yard into my yard ... I use to have honey bees but since the summer he moved in I have not seen one!

So ... just my opinion.

Click to expand...

All of what you wrote are great things to consider, but this last - breaks my heart. Sorry for the divergence, back to clay in soap.....

My concern is contamination of the clay. How can you be sure that the clay from your yard or the area around is not contaminated?

lsg said:

My concern is contamination of the clay. How can you be sure that the clay from your yard or the area around is not contaminated?

Click to expand...

Clay, by nature, is impermeable. It is used for instance to plug wells in order to prevent contamination of aquifers by groundwater, to fill dams, and to create barriers in landfills. Anything on the surface should be scraped off and discarded, but anything not exposed should be fine.

Exposed clay can dry out as well, allowing cracks to form. Digging to expose "fresh" clay avoids this.

Wow, that is good to know. Thanks for the info.

As well as chemical contamination you have to consider the natural composition of the clay. It could have lead, heavy metals etc.
there is documented evidence that potters have become very sick using clay contaminated with dioxins.

I wouldn't use anything but cosmetic grade clay in soap for myself and definitely not to sell.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385894716312670

Justforbfp said:

...So I've moved to South Carolina, and they have such amazing red clay. I was wondering if I clean the clay like I was going to use it to make pots(clean, sift, dry), could I use this clay in my soap?

Click to expand...

Omigosh! I've done this! Before landscaping the back yard (20 years ago) we had bentonite clay all over the place. It was easy to dig, clean, sift, and dry for use in my shaving soap. Bentionite clay slurry is used to coat pneumatic drills to make them slickery. It provides this benefit to shaving soap for smooth shaving without clogging the razor. From first-hand experience, it's also good for a pore-reducing facial mask.

I'll have to search my files for what we did (another soaper was involved), but as I recall, it's similar to panning for gold, but with larger equipment. Here's the way we did it:

Put some clay soil in a 5-gallon bucket.
Cover with twice as much water (or more).
Swish it around in the bucket to get all the debris out.
The clay sinks to the bottom of the bucket. Pour the water out.
Add more water, and clean it 3 times or more until just the clay remains.
Let sit overnight.
Pour it through a window screen (or some such device -- highly technical, I know :mrgreen to remove any tiny pebbles.
Spread it out on a plastic table cloth or something similar to dry in the sun.

To sanitize it, I s'pose you could heat it to 159°F in the oven for 20 minutes or so.

I found this process that looks as if it might work for the small amount you'd need:

http://www.practicalprimitive.com/skillofthemonth/processingclay.html

It still seems horribly labor intensive but people do stranger things for less.

LBussy said:

It still seems horribly labor intensive but people do stranger things for less.

Click to expand...

YIKES! "labor intensive" indeed! LOL Thanks for posting that, Lee. I searched around too. I checked YouTube and there seems to be several ways to wash clay. This YouTube video comes closest to the way I processed clay from dirt around here.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHPNAiVq9No[/ame]

Then I slogged through my files and found this from 2004:

ETA: This was the second time I washed clay for soaping. It was after a good rain and I noticed that clay had settled into pockets where they were grading around a construction site. It called to me... :mrgreen:

PROCESSING BENTONITE CLAY: A couple of weeks ago I went to a construction site nearby and dug up enough dirt to fill two 5-gal. buckets. I then washed all the surface crud and the big stuff out of it and now it’s down to just clay and a bit of silty sandy stuff that needs to be strained out. A couple more washings should do it.

Basically all you have to do is dump the clay into a five gallon bucket (or whatever). Add three times (or more) water. Get your hands in there and mix it up really good until you have muddy water, NOT mud. Pour this through a strainer (I used a fine mesh screen taken right off the dining room window!). Let it settle for several hours or overnight. Pour the clear water with floaties off. And, if so inclined, do it again.

Once the muddy water has settled, you can pour the top portion off and let it set some more until you have most of the water poured off. Then you just scoop the clean clay off the top and bake it -- either in the sun or in the oven -- until it’s completely dry and hard as a rock. Bust it up with a mallet and throw it in the blender to grind to a fine powder. Voila! Clay!

Click to expand...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To learn more about the benefits of bentonite clay:
http://www.calantilles.com/Products/prod18.html