Homemade lye from wood ash?

[BrewedSoap]

I’m very interested in learning how to make lye from scratch. Has anyone used rain water and hardwood ash to make a lye solution? If so, what was the outcome? Did it make soap when added to oil? Thanks in advance!! Also, I’m interested in any stories about homemade potash, what ingredients were used, and what type of soap it creates.

 

[lakelodge]

How funny you write this, I was just stoking the wood stove (we use to heat the entire house all winter long, arg lol) and thought 'gee, with all this ash, I could make my own lye and TONS of it! LOL....I'm interested to see if anyone has done this.

 

[BrewedSoap]

How funny you write this, I was just stoking the wood stove (we use to heat the entire house all winter long, arg lol) and thought 'gee, with all this ash, I could make my own lye and TONS of it! LOL....I'm interested to see if anyone has done this.

I tried to do exactly that!! But I think the wood I used was not entirely “hard” wood? Or perhaps I added too much rain water since it’s a little more difficult without a way to measure. I figured I’d throw out the net and hope that maybe someone, (a homesteader?) has had success and would be willing to share this knowledge. Hopefully someone chimes in with some advice/experience. [emoji1317]

 

[Lin19687]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how...uD0PjeAhWDY98KHSHZCpoQpwUIJA&biw=1600&bih=766

 

[DeeAnna]

Have you folks done any searches of this site? This topic comes up quite often, and there is a fair bit of info readily available for y'all to study.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/making-potash.58327/
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/wood-ash-lye-and-soaping.56235/
https://www.google.com/search?q=ash+lye+site:soapmakingforum.com

 

[BrewedSoap]

Have you folks done any searches of this site? This topic comes up quite often, and there is a fair bit of info readily available for y'all to study.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/making-potash.58327/
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/wood-ash-lye-and-soaping.56235/
https://www.google.com/search?q=ash+lye+site:soapmakingforum.com

I joined less than 24 hrs ago. I’m just throwing out some questions that I’ve had. I’m sure everything has been done before [emoji6] I’m still trying to figure out how to use this sight.

Have you folks done any searches of this site? This topic comes up quite often, and there is a fair bit of info readily available for y'all to study.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/making-potash.58327/
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/wood-ash-lye-and-soaping.56235/
https://www.google.com/search?q=ash+lye+site:soapmakingforum.com

I had first put in “how to make lye from ashes” in the search bar, and for some reason nothing came up. I didn’t think my idea was innovative, and I’ve seen a few things on the internet from bloggers. I figured I’d post the question in a “soapers forum” and see if anyone has personally experienced this. But thank you for the links, I will be sure to research them in the morning.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how...uD0PjeAhWDY98KHSHZCpoQpwUIJA&biw=1600&bih=766

Thank you! I visit this blog often, I’m surprised I missed this.

 

[Relle]

Welcome BrewedSoap, as you are new, would you like to go to the Introduction forum and tell us a bit about yourself.

 

[DeeAnna]

The SMF search engine works best if you use key words that specifically relate to your question. In other words, you'll get better results by searching for "wood ash" rather than typing a sentence. You'll also get better results by not using common soap making words (lye, for example) in your search. Lye is used a LOT here in many different contexts.

Here are the results for a search with "wood ash" as the key words: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/search/914298/?q=wood+ash&o=relevance I think you'll see there are tons of threads about your topic.

Here are other tips for searching SMF: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/how-to-search-on-soapmakingforum-like-a-pro.34889/

There are useful "stickied" threads in each forum. It's worth it to check them out. Here are three to check out. They will get you to a good start here --
Beginners: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/forums/beginners-soap-making-forum.47/
Lye-based soap: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/forums/lye-based-soap-forum.11/
Announcements and rules: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/forums/smf-announcements-comments-help-rules.21/

 

[Lin19687]

I listed the Results from Google for how to make Lye from wood ash

There are 10 pages on there.. 4th one down on the 1st page is from this site