What kind of lye

Instead, they remove most of it to sell to fertilizer and explosive companies. But other natural soap companies provide glycerin soap that contains all of the moisturizing benefits that you would expect. I set out to find the answer to this question because I was thinking about making my own soap. Not when I can purchase natural soaps at great prices — without all the risks of working with lye.

What about you? And will you try to make your own soap, or will you buy from someone who is experienced enough to work with the chemical without risk? Featured Image: Provided by Pexels. Use this popup to embed a mailing list sign up form. Offer incentives to customers to join and build your mailing list.

Your Cart. Add a note for the seller…. Facebook icon Instagram icon YouTube icon Pinterest icon. Let me show you what I found. What Is Lye? The History of Lye Before you could buy lye in a bottle, people used to make it from raw materials. Why Do People Use Lye? But hang on, because my research led me to some conclusions that may surprise you.

What precautions do people take when using lye? However, increased cost and consumer concerns over dipping tomatoes in chemicals have made it a less common practice. Lye is a stronger alkaline than baking soda or sodium bicarbonate, with a pH reading ranging from around 13 to The empirical formula for lye is NaOH.

Download our latest paper. Application The most popular culinary uses today are for dipping pretzels or curing green olives. References Das, D. Feiden, P. Cheng, J. Leygnier, Ph. Be aware, when purchasing caustic soda or lye, you may need to sign a statement that you're not using it for illegal activities.

Or, you may not need to sign anything, since a credit card pretty much provides all the details needed to find you if the authorities think you're a rising drug lord.

Depending on the purpose, you may be able to substitute a chemically similar strong base, potassium hydroxide KOH. This is a chemical you can, if you are extremely dedicated, make yourself by soaking wood ashes in water. To do this, soak a large quantity of ashes in a small amount of water.

Allow about a week for the water to extract the lye. Drain the liquid, which contains potassium hydroxide, filter it, and boil it to concentrate the alkali. Be careful and use gloves when handling the liquid.

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Use whatever video you like, but know that if you are using soap, it was made with a reaction of oils to lye. It is impossible to make soap without lye. Lye is very caustic because it is very alkaline. It is not poisonous. That said, you are never using lye on your skin. You are using the lye to react with the oils to make soap in a process called saponification.

It is impossible to make soap without lye, so if you want to avoid using anything that has ever had lye in it, even though no lye is left over, avoid all soap. You should only use surfactants, but know that many of them are harsh to the skin. You should probably also avoid most olives, soft pretzels, and some bagels as many olives are cured in lye, and many soft pretzels and bagels have been given a lye bath to give them their characteristic outside texture.

If you want to actually make soap yourself, though, you need to use lye. Melt and pour soaps have already been reacted with the lye, so, yes, you can avoid working with it by buying already made soap. I prefer to make my own soap, though. Lye does have a lot of great uses like curing olives and giving the characteristic crust of some pretzels and bagels. They appear to be surfactant blends, so they are really more of a detergent bar than a soap. I also hope you are ready to jump in and try making your own homemade soap!

Tracy Ariza, B. She loves making things herself in order to keep control of what goes in them. While far from perfect, she strives each day to live a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. It creates duplicate content which is bad for both of us. I made some lavender infused oil using grapeseed oil and dried lavender from my garden.

It has a mild lavender scent. Will the aroma come out? Or should I used the infused oil another way? My grandmother used to make soap using Lye and used leftover cooking oil and it was not very pretty with no aroma but lathered beautifully, gentle on the skin and great for spot cleaning clothes.

Hi Sofia, Yes, you can use infused oils in soap. Some melt-and-pour soaps are true soaps with other additives to allow them to melt well lots of glycerin or propylene glycol or some other solvent.

Others will be detergent-based bars. Hi, nice post…I have a question, how do you make a mild soap that is not irritating the eye? I mean for making a tear-free soap. I find out that lye is the problem. Most of the oil is not irritating to eye, but when you add lye, even if it is a very small amount of lye, it will irritating the eye. I did a lot of experiment in skincare product…and it would be fun if we can share thoughts.

I believe there must be something we can both learn from each other. Hi Agie, I removed your contact information for your privacy. I talk more about tear-free shampoos in my baby wash and shampoo recipe. Thank you for the information! My question is whether or not it makes sense to use nice oils that will be good for the hair or skin to mix with the lye if the final product has completely different chemical properties from the initial ingredients.

Would using expensive oil like castor, argan, etc. I have seen soap making videos where they use expensive oils and I am wondering if its just a waste since the oils are completely different once they have reacted with the lye. I hope my question makes sense, thank you in advance!

Hi Sarah, Yes, of course that makes sense. The interesting thing with soap is that the properties of the oils change completely in soap. So, some people add their expensive oils at the end, in the hopes that those will be the unreacted ones.