MAKE YOUR OWN LYE

Lye from soap to bio fuel to Crystal meth, LYE (KOH, potassium hydroxide) Has a 1001 uses. And it is soooooo easy to make you could almost do it by accident !
Here's what you need

FIRE!
WATER!
WOOD!
3 PLASTIC  BUCKETS

Step 1: Step One: Apply Fire To Wood

   First thing you need to do is burn some wood, No pine only hardwoods, Apple  and fruit trees is the best.
   Now after burning that wood collect the ashes in a big 5 gal plastic bucket make sure the coal are not hot and melt through the bucket.
 Fill the bucket about half way should be enough.

 

Comments

[taluntain]

i thought lye was a powder

[CanfieldsFarm]

there are 2 kinds of lye, your talking about store bought Red Devil lye.
this is how they used to make lye this is also called potash.

[davide2]

hi! lately i'm interested in soapmaking, made my first batch few days ago. i looked for some info about homemade lye and apparently nobody could tell a scientific method to decide when the lye is ready. can you confirm the ph must be 14? how did you get that info?
thanks

[CanfieldsFarm]

I got a small battery operated ph meter there cheap and accurate
sorry it took so long to reply

[karonv]

David you made Lye? As far as everything I've read there isnt a lot of scientific on this because it was done many years ago when they didnt have access to Red Devil Lye lol. They say that if you float an egg in your lye it slould be level not too high or too low, but floating with about 25% of the egg above water/lye/ Hope it helps why you  using homemade lye you can buy it for 6.00? I have a great melt and poor on Etsy karonv
hope this helps

[CanfieldsFarm]

well 12-14 14 recommended,  If you need to increase the PH reduce the lye water. 

[davide2]

thanks for the answer. another thing: there is plenty of NaOH tables for soapmaking, what about KOH? anybody knows in which percentage i'm gonna use homemade lye? i'm afraid it's trial and error.

[CanfieldsFarm]

This is what i am doing making soap using LYE water, almost all the recipes i have seen have lye and water so i just combine those 2 numbers and use the straight lye water, Also pouring lye water through a coffee filter wil remove teh brow color, use 3 layers of them.

[Bill_the_Baker]

Making Lye with Wood Ash is fun to do, but if your ever in a hurry or just dont feel like making it yourself visit www.essentialdepot.com their lye is pure food grade caustic soda (another name for lye)!\

[Irwan2]

Thank you for your instructables. Helps me a lot since I can't easily find lye in my country here. Thanks again.

[redcore4]

lye is alkaline; you can't increase its acidity by making it stronger. as it is an alkali, pouring the water through the bucket will increase its alkalinity (or its strength if you'd prefer to think of it that way) not its acidity (acidity actually decreases as you make it stronger). other than this, great work!

[CanfieldsFarm]

http://www.millersoap.com/phtome.html
A web site with a lot of info about PH testing soap

[lemonie]

This isn't sodium hydroxide though, it'll be mostly potassium hydroxide.

L

[CanfieldsFarm]

(removed by author or community request)

[lemonie]

My OED defines Lye as "water that has been made alkaline by lixiviation of vegetable ashes", which is this, and secondly "any strong alkaline solution...". So it can apply to both.

L

[Tool Using Animal]

Hey I came here to say that!

Also you're increasing the alkalinity.......

[CanfieldsFarm]

your right i fix ed it