Soap Making

by Ray and Jenny Jardine

A typical bar of commercial soap is expensive; strongly and synthetically scented, and loaded with chemicals that have no real benefits to the user. These chemicals have no place in the wilds. They are harmful to the natural environment, and they tend to weaken our skin's natural protective qualities, making us far more reactive to sunburn, toxic plants, and insect bites. The chemical residues left on our skin from some of the heavily scented soap residue is well known for attracting biting insects and marauding bears. Obviously, we hikers and adventurers are better off leaving these commercial soaps at home.

Another option is the backpacking-variety soaps. These are usually in liquid form, and are even more expensive than the household commercial soaps. And although they tend to be somewhat more environmentally sound, still they can contain adverse chemicals.

I suggest a more holistic approach - making your own soap.

When you make your own soap, you know what is in it, and more importantly, what is not in it.

Homemade soap is a very healthy and practical option. We can use it both on the trail and at home. It cleans the skin at least as well as the commercial varieties, while leaving fewer harmful residues. It suds well, and we can even use it as a shampoo. It is economical and surprisingly easy to make. And it calls for only a few, readily available ingredients.

Soap making is a simple process of combining a caustic alkali with a fat or oil.

I remember trying to make soap as a kid in Boy Scouts, by combining campfire ash and bacon drippings. It didn't work. Later I learned that the white parts of the ashes needed to be leached to create potash, the fat needed to be rendered to make tallow, and the mixture of the two needed to sit for several months to chemically combine. I also learned, to my chagrin, that the white ash from a campfire is a caustic alkali that when mixed with water can burn the skin. It is little wonder that our Boy Scout Handbook omitted the process.

Recommended ingredients

Using the proper ingredients, soap making today is still a process best left to adults, which is only to say that it requires a basic degree of care. Rather than campfire ash, the correct method calls for sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye. In the grocery store you would look for the drain cleaner called Red Devil Lye. This is sodium hydroxide (lye) in flake form.

Also essential in the soap making process is the oil or rendered fat. For this you would use vegetable shortening, or just about any of the cooking or salad oils. Each will produce its own, unique kind of soap. For your initial experiments I recommend a mixture of vegetable shortening (such as Crisco) and olive oil.

When we heat the fat/oil and the lye, and mix them together, and when we allow this mixture to sit for several weeks, something marvelous happens. The two combine molecularly in a process known as "saponification." When this process is complete, your soap will contain no trace of the lye.

So let's get started

Here is what you will need:

? 19 ounces of vegetable shortening, and 12 ounces of olive oil (as weighed on your kitchen scales).

? 6 ounces of lye (again, measured by weight, not volume).

Also you will need a few kitchen implements:

? A kitchen scales to insure correct proportion of ingredients.

? A kitchen thermometer that reads up to a minimum of 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

? A wooden or rubber spatula with a long handle for stirring.

? A cookpot (not aluminum) with at least a 12-cup capacity, for heating the oil on your kitchen stove, and mixing that oil with the lye.

? A clean GLASS jar that will hold well over 16 ounces of water. Used to mix the lye and water, at which time it will begin heating by itself, no stove necessary.

? And lastly, some kind of shallow container to hold the mixture while it sets up. (Here again, do not use aluminum.) Plastic containers work well; they are inexpensive and un-reactive with the lye. One could use empty yogurt cups, for example. Jenny uses plastic "drawer organizer" trays, available at the department stores for a few dollars each. They measure 15 inches by 6 inches by 2 inches deep, and one of these containers is sufficient for the recipe in this chapter.

The process

To begin the soap making process, measure 16 ounces of cold water, by weight, into the glass container. Set the glass container into your empty kitchen sink, and carefully add the 6 ounces of sodium hydroxide flakes (lye), stirring slowly with the spatula until all the flakes have dissolved. Leave the jar in the sink, undisturbed. Soon it will begin heating naturally, growing very hot and also very caustic.

Remember to take the usual precautions with the lye. Don't spill or splash it onto you, and try not to breathe its fumes. Avoid pouring the lye into any kind of aluminum container, or using any aluminum utensils. Lye reacts violently with aluminum and creates noxious smoke, to say nothing of ruining your container. Also you might consider wearing rubber gloves and protective eyeglasses.

Next, place the 19 ounces of vegetable shortening into your cookpot, and set this on your kitchen stove over a medium heat. Once the shortening has melted, turn off the heat and stir in the 12 ounces of olive oil. For this you can use the same spatula, after rinsing it of the lye solution.

You now have two containers, one of oil/fat and the other of lye. Both are probably very hot, and must be cooled to 98 degrees prior to mixing together. You can cool the lye in its glass container by partially filling the sink with cold water. And if needed you can cool the pot of oil/fat in the same sink. Use the thermometer, and keep checking the temperatures.

When both are at 98 degrees, pour the lye carefully into the pot of fat/oil, and stir gently. To insure a complete mix, scrape the edge of the pot with the spatula every now and again, as you continue stirring for several minutes. This eliminates any pockets of lye that could burn the skin, even in well-aged soap.

Fragrances

As the mixture begins to gel, stir in any aromatic or therapeutic additives, then pour the mixture into your plastic molds or containers.

Your choices of natural fragrance additives are virtually unlimited. They can be as simple as a bag of mint tea, or you can skip the additives and still produce a clean, fresh smelling bar of soap. While hiking you can look for naturally occurring aromatics such as jasmine, pine, crushed and dried juniper berries, sage, sweet fern, sweetgrass, or whatever is indigenous to the area. Just be careful to avoid anything toxic; if you cannot positively identify it then refrain from using it in your soap. You can add plant extracts, herbs, or other vegetable compounds to enrich your soap; for example, oil of sandalwood, lemon, rosemary, or mint; aloe vera, clay, or seaweed; cornmeal, wheat germ or oatmeal; dry lavender blossoms, natural vanilla, cinnamon, and the list goes on. Use only small amounts, and once again, avoid the use of store-bought chemical fragrances because they can harm your body and attract the attention of insects and bears.

Curing the mixture

Once you have added the fragrances and poured your mixture into the molds, let the mixture sit, covered and undisturbed, for 24 to 48 hours. After this time the soap will have become firm enough to allow removal from the plastic molds or containers. At this point the soap is not yet ready for use. If you must handle it, do so by wearing rubber gloves to protect your hands from the lye. Depending on the size and shape of your molds, you may need to cut the soap into bars, using a knife, and shape them to suit. Either way, place the bars on several layers of paper grocery sacks, and allow them to cure for three months, or so. During this time, the process of saponification will combine the oil/fat and the lye molecularly, to produce your finished soap.

As you can see, soap making is a relatively simple craft, and its benefits are many. For more information refer to the many books and articles on the subject. A few are listed at the end of this page.

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Natives have been making and using soap since antiquity, using ingredients that were - and still are - readily abundant in nature, in the form of saponin-rich plants. In the western states these would include ceanothus (the flowers), yucca root, flox, and lamb's quarters (the roots). Cut the plant, mash, and rub vigorously in water. This doesn't make soap, per se, but it does produce a sudsy scrub.

Another excellent option, and one that Jenny and I have used on several outings, is the tannin wash. One method is to extract tannic acid from acorns. Place the acorns in a container, such as a plastic bag, add water, cover the acorns with water and set in the sun. The water will turn a rich, dark brown. This solution will not make suds, but it will impart a wonderfully cleaning effect for both the skin and hair.

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"Making Soap The Old Fashioned Way," by Christopher Nyerges. This excellent article appeared in the April 1998 issue of American Survival Guide.

Soap Recipes - Seventy Tried-and-True Ways to Make Modern Soap, by Elaine C. White. Valley Hills Press:1995.

The Natural Soap Book by Susan Miller Cavitch. Storey Books: 1995.