Making Lye with an Ash Hopper

If your goal, like mine, is to be able to live completely cut off from all necessities, then all my articles are a good fit.  However one day as I was making soap I realized I needed to buy more ingredients.  But what if I was completely cut off?  Where would I get the ingredients? So the next logical step was to find a way to make the items I would normally buy.

With that in mind here is a lesson rather than a recipe on how to make the lye you would normally buy at a hobby store or online.  

First a very strong word of warning.  Lye is dangerous.  It is a chemical reaction which should never be taken lightly.  Lye water mixture can cause a terrible burn on your skin, eye or anywhere it splashes.  So no matter what, do not splash the lye mixture.  If you do get it on your skin rinse with running water.  Keep rinsing even if you think it is all gone.  The next warning is as a chemical reaction it will release dangerous fumes.  Do not breathe the fumes.  It can cause serious damage.  It will not be comfortable and you most likely will need to go to the emergency room so never ever breath in the fumes.

Ok, now that we got that out of the way and you all realize the dangers of making lye then turning it into soap, lets begin.  

Lye is simple. It is made from two ingredients.  Hardwood ash and water.  That’s it folks.  The trick is how to mix it and gather it.  For this we need to look at the folk lore.  Here we can find an amazing wealth of information.  I found these directions in the Firefox Book.  I love these books because they are compiled rather than written.  It is a compilation of stories from Appalachian mountain elders, gathered and transcribed by highschool students in the region, published in a quarterly magazine then printed in a series of books.  I refer to them often. This is where true off grid knowledge lives.  

Let’s talk about the water first.  No matter how clean and drinkable our mountain water is right out of the tap it still has some degree of chemicals added to it.  Remember we are creating a chemical reaction, so extra chemicals are not ideal. You can buy distilled water from Johnnie’s or even the gas station but then we are right back where we began, buying stuff from the store.  So the best option is actually the most fun.  Gather and use the rainwater.  This is the softest water you can get and it will make the reaction pure.  So set out a barrel and start collecting that precious rain falling from the sky.

Next is the ash.  It has to be ash from hardwood.  Seems simple enough except for some of us here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, we mix our woods.  We use Douglas Fir or another softer wood to get the fire going in the wood burning stove, then we add the madrone or oak to keep the fire going.  The problem then is the ashes are mixed.  I use the ash from my stove right in my compost pile.  That doesn’t matter if it is mixed.  So here are my suggestions.  Clean out your stove.  Add all the ashes to the compost.  Start a fresh fire with just hardwood.  Do this once a week.  Once the fire is out and the pile of ash is on the bottom, scoop it out and save it in a special place.  The perfect place is the device I will talk about next.