Re: How to Make Lye
This is the way lye was made for hundreds of years. The chemical produced is KOH or potassium hydroxide, and not NaOH or sodium hydroxide. Both are casually referred to as lye or more accurately, caustic soda.
KOH does not make hard soap. In the old days, salt was added to harden the soap into bars (Pliny the Elder wrote about this), or else the soap gel was kept in a barrel and ladled out as needed. In the 1830s a Frenchman (sorry, I forget his name) invented a process for extracting sodium hydroxide from brine, and for the first time a real soap industry was born. By the 1850s, commercial bars were cheap enough for most homes. However, the Civil War inflicted such deep economic harm that many Southern women made their own soap well into the 1940s.
Lye is used in many industrial processes. Turns out it's also used by meth labs...I used to wonder why it was disappearing off store shelves. I found out when I bought 12 pounds one day. Now I introduce myself and even bring soap samples if they don't know me.
|