51a - Making lye with ashes

By Steve Sparkes

Commercially made soap may have unwanted chemicals in it.

Making your own soap can be a rewarding experience that allows you to experiment with different ingredients for scent and texture. You control the process, so you can ensure that the only additives in your soap are ones you want. 

  

Making homemade soap involves using the same methods that have been used for generations. The two basic substances used are lye and tallow. Lye can be bought commercially, but for truly homemade soap, make your own from wood ashes. Commercial soap is sodium hydroxide while homemade lye is potassium hydroxide. 

 

The homemade lye is actually less harsh than the commercial alternative, making the resulting soap kinder on your skin. 

Things You'll Need

• Wood ash from hard wood
• Rain water
• Two plastic buckets

Instructions

  

Making the Lye

• Burn some wood to create the ashes you need to make lye. You need to use a hard wood like ash, beech or hickory. When the wood is burnt, collect the light, white-colored ashes. Disregard any blackened, charcoal remains.
• Drill an 1/8 inch hole in the bottom of the plastic bucket (green) about an inch off-center.
• Stop up the hole in the bottom of the bucket with an 1/8-inch nail.
• Elevate the bucket (green) above ground with, for example, two breeze blocks. Place the bucket so that there is space under the center for you to put the other plastic bucket (red) to collect the lye.
  
  
  

• Scoop spadefuls of cold ashes into the bucket (green), compacting the ash down after each spadeful. Fill the bucket to about a third of its capacity.
• Boil approximately half a bucket of water (rainwater preferably) and add some carefully to the ashes. There will be some hissing and popping at this stage so be sure to wear your protective clothes, gloves and goggles from now on.
• You are in the process of making a caustic substance, which can be dangerous. 
• Initially the water will not appear to be mixing with the ashes and will just sit on top. Leave it and come back later when you can add more water.
• Take the nail out from the bottom of the bucket and come back to check it every few hours. It could take hours or days for nearly a bowlful of lye to accumulate.
• When it has done, take it to the kitchen and boil it very carefully.
• Pour the boiled bowl of lye back into the top of the bucket. 
• This is how you strengthen your lye and repeat the process later on, if necessary.
• To check the strength of your lye put a chicken's egg into it. 

• Too weak - if it sinks,
• Too strong - if it floats too high,and you should add some pure water. 
• Just right - the egg will float with about the size of a modern dime showing above the surface of the lye.

• Leave your lye in the sun in a shallow container until it dries into crystals.

Read more: How to Make Soap From Ashes & Tallow | eHow.com  

http://www.ehow.com/how_7685308_make-soap-ashes-tallow.html#ixzz221iBOcQA

63a – Value chains – another example, soap

Let us explore another value chain related to the manufacture of soap. The theme sounds a bit simplistic but I think it can be of value to our rural communities. 

  

Soap is made out of one or more oils or fats mixed with an alkaline chemical such as lye, also known as caustic soda. These oils and fats can be of animal or vegetable origin. And lye can be obtained from hardwood ashes when properly treated with rainwater.

 

All these ingredients can be obtained in our rural communities and the resulting soap can be sold in all sorts of market places. Homemade soap is highly valued by many people. 

 

An example of a value chain related to the manufacture of homemade soap could be like this:

• someone raises cattle, produces and sells animal waste to farmers
• this person sells cattle to the local slaughterhouse
• the butcher buys carcasses and sells meat
• the butcher has a lot of excess animal fat that people do not want
• a local person collects this animal fat to make tallow
• the local baker uses firewood to bake bread
• someone collects the ashes from the baker and other places
• these ashes are used in the community latrines
• with rainwater and ashes this person also makes lye
• someone uses tallow and lye to make homemade soap
• this person sells soap in the community and at the city market

Here we have a value chain, a sequence of activities that make use of existing resources, such as rainwater, ashes and tallow, to develop a new product, homemade soap, which in turn provides work for one or more people. This new product for this community, soap, has value. It has value to be bartered for other products and has value to generate monetary income when it is sold to other communities or at the nearby city market. 

 

In addition, certain local resources had no value or very limited value in the community, such as the case of ashes and unwanted animal fat, but now gained value for the local soap maker. Homemade soap is very valued by many people because it does not contain unwanted additives as is often the case with industrially manufactured soap.

 

Some of these activities may be performed by the same person in one community and by different people in another community. Each individual and each community will pick and choose what will make sense. Each one will choose what activities will be performed by one or more people. In some cases some experimentation will be necessary to find out what makes sense.  

 

It is very important to know what a community needs and consumes because that is what will sell. In some situations we may feel inclined to make what we know how to make, but that may not be what the community, the marketplace, needs or wants. Soap is always needed although there is already soap in the marketplace. But if this homemade soap is better, if it smells better, if it does not irritate the skin or if it will make the skin softer, this homemade soap will sell better than the commercially available soap. 

 

The price of the homemade soap is very important so it can compete with the commercially available soap. The price has to cover the cost of the raw materials, the manufacturing costs, and the distribution costs in order to generate profit. These costs will vary from community to community and from situation to situation. But with such low raw materials costs there is a lot of opportunity for doing business at a profit. 

 

A value chain is the sequence of various activities for the benefit of various participants.

 

In this series of blogs we will explore various manufacturing processes for lye, for tallow and for the manufacture of homemade soap. We are going to explore various recipes for making soap not only with animal fats but also vegetable oils such as peanuts, avocado, cashew, coconut and other plants that grow in our climate.

62 - Value chains from scratch

In general value chains do not exist in small communities, in the agricultural communities in remote areas of our country. And if a value chain exists it is most likely small, not very strong, and does not support the whole community.

There may be a small store where the farmer can buy seeds and fertilizer. And this store is probably the same one where the farmer sells its product. This store may provide some services but not all or not enough.

In small communities this creates a situation of dependency which is not good in the long run and is very vulnerable to price fluctuations.

If only a small community could produce more of the things that it needs then its dependency in the small store will be reduced and the community will be stronger because of that.

Let us look at an example. A farmer may sell beans to the store and buy seeds and fertilizer from the store and maybe this will be fine. But where will the community buy clothes, or cooking oil, or soap, or meat, or vegetables? Most likely from the same store which will only increase its dependency and its vulnerability to changes in prices and availability of any of the products.

 

But if someone plants peanuts and starts making cooking oil from these peanuts then the community will be less dependent on the store and someone will now have a new activity where money can be made. 

And if someone gets some of the cooking oil uses ash from the cooking fires and makes soap then that person now has another new money making activity and the community will become less dependent on the local store. That person can actually sell some of the soap to the store.

In this small example where someone plants peanuts for food but also for cooking oil which will be used for cooking but some will also be used to make soap. Three people now created a value chain to which we can add someone who will go once a week to the city market and sell some of the peanuts, the cooking oil and the soap that the community does not need for itself.   

There are many value chains in an agricultural community. Some we already use but some can be developed. The result will be beneficial to all in that hard working community.

Let us look at some more value chains in the upcoming blogs.