) is the consistency of ash infused with water. The lye is used for bathing and washing. Unlike various detergents sold in stores, this is a completely natural substance!
Previously, birch lye was used instead of soap: they washed their hair, washed themselves. It is useful for oral administration in various diseases, such as flatulence, colic in the stomach, increased acidity of gastric juice, and especially in poisoning with berries and bacterial toxins, and also contributes to the accelerated elimination of radioactive isotopes from the body.
Lye is a solution of wood ash in water. It mainly consists of potassium and sodium carbonates. Possesses strongly alkaline reactions. Therefore, it used to be used for washing and washing instead of soap, for leather dressing. From this word came the name of the class of alkali chemical compounds. Until now, some alkalis are called alkalis, for example, potassium hydroxide is potassium lye, and sodium hydroxide is soda lye. This word is now out of use.
By boiling the lye, they get a shadrik, which is cleaned and heated to potash.
Lye - decoction of ash, infusion of boiling water on the ashes, potash, ash extract. This is any solution of alkali or caustic salts in water. Sayings: Linen floats in lye. Skins, when cured, are wetted in lye. Dirty floors are washed with lye.
Preparation of lye in a cold way:
Pour ashes (pure wood) 2/3 of a bucket, pour water almost to the top, mix, remove large pieces of debris, leave to stand for 3 days (do not stir again). After 3 days, there will be a clear liquid in the upper half of the bucket, this is the lye, it is soapy to the touch. Then suck out the lye with a pear and pour it into a container. The lye will be highly concentrated. It will be necessary to adapt to dilute it with water (about 1/10). If you wash with a highly concentrated lye, then the clothes will wear out quickly. Properly diluted lye can wash your head (hair, body). - taken from the site: http://www.treeland.ru
Now practice.
We got lye, though it hasn't gotten to the point of washing yet. We offer a small photo essay.
Let's start with birch ash. It is advisable to sift it through a medium-sized sieve before this. We didn't and were inconvenienced. So, we took a plastic bucket and filled it with about 2/3 of a bucket of birch ash:
Mixed it up and it looks like this:
They put this bucket in a quiet place for three days (72 hours). It is recommended not to touch it, but I stirred it once a day, but no later than 12 hours before draining. By the end of the third day, the solution stratified: ash precipitated, coals that we had not sifted and other debris surfaced, and between all this a layer of transparent liquid formed. This is what interests us. We took a piece of spunbond as a filter (it is used as a covering material in gardening, as well as in construction). I must say that due to the fact that we did not sift the ashes, we had to filter for a long time and in 2 stages:
We also came to the conclusion that for the infusion of lye it is better to use not a flat, wide, but a narrow and tall dish - it is more convenient to drain, because the turbidity does not rise from the bottom.
There was a lot of turbidity and debris, so we used a second sump tank:
Somewhere after 2 days of complete rest, we got ~ 1.5 liters of a yellowish liquid, odorless, slightly cloudy. Transillumination with an LED flashlight reveals a suspension of small particles that do not settle to the bottom. The liquid is soapy to the touch.
At this stage, the experiment has been suspended for the time being. It was originally planned to use this solution for washing in a modern automatic machine, but a deeper study of the issue revealed that it was not entirely suitable, because. contains the remains of the border and a suspension of salts that are insoluble in water (turbidity), which will happily settle on the heating elements of the machine. Perhaps we will try to find a way to settle the suspension (centrifuge or additional filtration). Perhaps we will try to cook our own soap and stop there.
Washing with your hands, feet or a stick in a vat, or even in a washing machine without heating elements, is quite possible, given that they used to wash it this way. It remains only to choose the appropriate concentration of the solution (for washing 1:10 is recommended). I am glad that the solution does not have any smell - allergy sufferers will be pleased, and I, to be honest, do not really like all these fragrances.
Today, in our most practical article, we will talk about such a natural detergent as lye, the source of which is ordinary wood ash. Of course, in the conditions of the city, it is unlikely that anyone will make lye, but in the countryside, in the country, on a hike, this may well come in handy. Even if you do not often wash and wash dishes with alkaline water, it will still be interesting to do at least once in order to understand what our ancestors used.
Preparing lye in the cold way is quite simple. To do this, you need ordinary wood ash and water.
Of course, without impurities of plastic and other garbage, which is often burned in bonfires.
We pour about two-thirds of the ash into a bucket and fill it with water (preferably hot, but cold can also be used). Mix, remove large particles and debris from above and leave for 3 days (now you don’t need to mix). After a three-day period, a clear liquid will collect in the upper half of the bucket, soapy to the touch. This is lye. It must be carefully drained (for this it is best to use a rubber bulb) and then used.
This amount of lye is enough for a long time, because. for washing dishes or laundry, it should be diluted 1 to 10. If washed with a more concentrated solution of lye, clothes will wear out quickly.
By the way, lye can be washed not only by hand, but also pour it into an automatic washing machine.
In order to wash your head and body - dilute even more, because. concentrated lye leads to dry skin. That is why it is better to wash and wash dishes with gloves or wash your hands immediately, without leaving alkaline water for a long time on the skin.
The hot method of preparing lye is somewhat more troublesome, but also faster. We dilute the ash with water in the same proportions and put it on fire. Bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for at least 3 hours. Then let it stand and cool down. After that, the mass can be filtered and drained into a container for storage. They say that lye made in this way is more soapy, or something ...
Alkaline soap
In order to wash greasy dishes - you do not need to make liquid lye. Just wood ash is enough. Mixing with fat, it forms such a crude soap.
If there is little fat on the dishes - you can add - any - vegetable, butter, margarine - a few drops will be enough.
Pour a few glasses of ash into a greasy pan, pour in enough water to make a paste-like mass. Now the pan needs to be heated.
Hot water promotes the formation of potassium salt from wood ash. Mixing with fats and oils, it will form the same unrefined soap, which will remove dirt from your dishes.
When the contents of the pan have cooled, spread the ash paste on its walls. The reaction taking place in this process will turn the ash into soap.
It remains to rinse the pan with clean water.
At first glance, the description is long and complicated. In fact, everything turns out quickly and naturally. Besides, it's interesting.
By the way, it is believed that it is better to use hardwood for soap rather than softwood.
These skills will be very useful on a hike, because. you do not have to take soap and detergents with you, which means that the weight of your equipment, albeit a little, will be less. In addition, this is how you make the most of natural resources, and without waste: they made a fire, prepared food, then collected the ashes and washed the dishes :)
Ash soap perfectly and instantly washes the skin and head, it is a pleasure to wash it - a feeling of extraordinary cleanliness and freshness.
Ash soap
Ash soap perfectly and instantly washes the skin and head. It is a pleasure to wash them - a feeling of extraordinary cleanliness and freshness. sti.
Ash soap is made like this: typed from the stove ash floor pans. Top up with water almost to the top and boil for 30 minutes. The broth is filtered, the remains of the ash are put into the garden.
The resulting almost transparent gel is the ash soap - it has cooled down and is ready for use.
To make the soap completely natural, the lye obtained industrially and bought in the store can be replaced with lye made by oneself.
Lye is a solution of ash in water. To make everything right, it is recommended to use wood ash. And only deciduous trees. Conifers contain resins in their composition and are not suitable for making soap.
Lye is washed and washed. It would be more accurate to say that our great-great-grandmothers and great-great-grandfathers did all this. Now only people who run away from civilization and organize ecovillages are engaged in such miracles.
In principle, it is not so difficult to prepare lye, or rather, it is not at all difficult to say.
There are two ways to obtain this substance: cold and hot. The most hassle-free, of course, the cold way. But lye is obtained faster if it is mined in a hot way.
How to make lye from ashes?
To do this, the ashes should be sieved to rid it of dirt, large pieces of debris and excess impurities. The proportion will be 2/3 of ash + 1/3 of water.
Pour the ashes into a bucket and fill with water. This mixture should not be touched (interfered) for 3 days. During this time, the mixture will delaminate and lye will appear on top, and the ash will settle to the bottom.
With the hot method, a mixture of water and ash is boiled for 2-3 hours, and then defended and also filtered. But safer!!! still cold way
Lye is poured into another container, while simultaneously filtering if necessary. To the touch, this liquid will be soapy and very concentrated. It is recommended to dilute lye 1/10 if you plan to wash it.
Lye soap recipe.
Often many people ask the question: can you make soap without using lye? You can if you use lye.
This will require 2 liters of lye per 1 kg of pork fat (other fat can be used). All this is mixed and boiled for at least 8 hours, stirring constantly. First, liquid soap will appear - "potash". And to get our usual solid soap, you should add salt, a good handful. All the dirt will float to the surface, and the soap will separate. Get the so-called sound soap. It must be caught and put into shape. After hardening - cut into pieces - and laundry soap is ready.
If you add useful ingredients: caring oils, glycerin, esters, etc. Toilet soap is also available.
It is clear why our ancestors did not have problems with hair until old age, and there is not a single mention of dandruff in the annals.
It is necessary to break out of the ambush of scientific absurdity forward into the will of an almost forgotten natural clean and healthy life, created so wisely that it can only be improved to spoil.
Step by step, breakthrough by breakthrough, correction by correction.published
Ash soap based on lye is the safest and most famous detergent from ancient times. Natural ingredients added to this soap soften its properties and make it suitable for both household use and personal hygiene. Let's find out how to make ash soap at home.
The basis of ash soap is an aqueous infusion of ash, called lye. This infusion is strongly alkaline and contains sodium and potassium carbonates. In ancient times, this infusion was used instead of the usual soap for washing and washing.
How to make lye
There are 2 ways: hot and cold.
hot way: put 12 tablespoons in a 5 liter container. (about 4 handfuls) of ash and pour 2.5 liters of water. Boil over low heat, stirring. The water will gradually evaporate. Let it brew for 8-10 hours. The ashes will settle to the bottom, and the fat-free liquid lye will remain at the top. Drain it carefully. The result should be about 1.5 liters of lye.
cold way: in a glass jar for 3/4 of the volume, put the ashes and add 1/4 of the water. Stir regularly during the first day. On the second and third days, do not touch. After that, carefully pour into a clean jar through a filter.
How to use lye
- for washing hair and personal hygiene you can use lye prepared in a simpler way. To do this, skip the water through one portion of the ash. This lye has a slight concentration and does not dry the skin.
- for dish washing you can use the recipe above, but with increased concentration. To do this, skip one part of the water through several new portions of ash. Get a strong and thick lye.
- for washing and cleaning lye prepared according to the cold method is suitable.
When washing and cleaning, concentrated lye is used, so it can dry out the skin. If desired, you can use gloves or other means to protect the skin.
Interesting: the concentration of lye also depends on the ash of which plant it was prepared from. For example, sunflower ash contains the most potassium carbonates - 30-35%, birch ash - 12%, buckwheat straw - 35%.
How to store prepared lye?
It is best to store lye in a glass container. It corrodes plastic cans, which will begin to leak over time.
Ash soap - natural detergent
A more convenient way to use lye is soap based on it. The technology of making ash soap has survived to this day. To make soap from ash, you will need a pot-type container. An important condition: it should not be aluminum!
Ash Soap Ingredients:
- 2 parts concentrated lye (prepared using the hot method, see above);
- 1 part melted pork fat;
- table salt (the exact amount depends on many factors, including the concentration of lye).
Ash soap preparation
1. Add pork fat to the lye and slowly heat over a fire. When the saponification process begins, the liquid will first acquire a milky color, then the solution will brighten. Gradually, the fat from the surface will turn into an emulsion, and the mass will thicken.
2. To continue the saponification process, add lye in parts of 100 g. Gradually, the mass will become transparent. The mass must be stirred regularly. The foam that forms is best removed.
3. When the mass begins to thicken, the so-called. soapy glue, similar in consistency to thick jelly. Such a mass will flow from the spatula not in drops, like an emulsion, but in a trickle.
4. When the soap glue is ready, you need to make a peeling. Slightly reduce the heat and scatter the first portion of salt over the surface and mix without touching the bottom. Gradually continue to add salt until the mass becomes like cottage cheese and floats.
5. Remove from heat, leave the container overnight to exfoliate the brine.
6. Carefully separate the soap and brine, then add a new portion of lye from a 1: 1 ratio. And repeat the process. The second brew will be faster.
7. This time continue to salt until the soap floats. In this case, there will be no curdled mass, instead it will turn out just a thick mass. For its upholding, 1.5-2 hours are enough. Using a colander covered with a cloth, filter the mass. Soap and brine will separate.
8. Leave the mass for 1.5-2 hours, and then decompose into molds for a day, then remove and dry.
The more boiling-salting processes the soap has passed, the better it is. To improve the properties of soap, you can melt it and add your favorite base or essential oils: for example, olive and lavender.
See for laundry, cleaning and hygiene
With such an abundance of various liquid detergents in stores, the preparation of lye in urban conditions for domestic use and for personal hygiene is hardly advisable.At the same time, the skills of preparing lye will be very useful and in demand in a multi-day trip. Without much effort, you can independently make for yourself any amount of a detergent that is quite appropriate in the field, effective and affordable, which will help you a lot, for example, when organizing laundry during rest days (days) on the route.
Plus, you don’t have to take with you, in such a case, additional supplies of ordinary soap, washing powder or other detergents, which, although not by much, will still reduce the overall weight of your wearable equipment.
Getting lye from wood ash.
To prepare the lye, you will need ordinary clean wood ash from a fire, without impurities of plastic and other debris, and water. Ashes are preferred from hardwoods rather than softwoods due to the resins they contain. The ash of oak, birch, pine, and aspen has the highest alkalinity.
It is better to take narrow and high dishes for preparing lye; it will be much more convenient to drain it at the end of the process than from flat and wide ones. The material of the dishes does not really matter, but it is better to give preference to something metal, which then it will not be a pity to throw away.
It is not necessary to strive for very large volumes; for household use, the resulting concentrated lye is usually diluted with water in a ratio of 1:10, or even more, so 0.5-0.7 liters of pure liquor per person will be enough.
Obtaining lye from ash in a cold way.
In the prepared dishes, 2/3 of its volume, pour wood ash and pour warm water almost to the top. How to pre-clean or filter the ash does not make sense, only an extra waste of time and effort. We mix the solution well, wait until large wood debris floats to the surface and remove it.
Then we put the container with the solution in the sun or put it closer to the burning fire. It is desirable to mix the solution periodically, at least once an hour. 1.5-2 hours before the readiness time you have determined, all mixing must be stopped so that the ash has time to settle to the bottom of the dish.
Various sources recommend infusing the solution in this way for up to three days, but according to experience, to obtain a suitable concentration, it is enough to mix the solution in the evening, put it closer to the fire, and put it in the sun in the morning, then it will be ready closer to dinner.
After the ash has completely settled to the bottom of the container, a transparent, yellowish, slightly soapy liquid to the touch will remain in its upper half - this is lye. If the color of the liquid is simply transparent, without obvious yellowness, and it does not feel soapy to the touch, then the lye is not yet ready and the infusion process must be continued. The resulting concentrated lye is carefully poured into another container and used for domestic needs.
Obtaining lye from ash in a hot way.
It differs from cold preparation in that the diluted solution is not infused for a long time, but put on fire, brought to a boil and simmered for at least two hours, stirring occasionally. This method is undoubtedly faster, but at the same time more tedious and costly in terms of effort.
At the same time, this method is excellent for obtaining lye of very high concentration. To do this, you need to take two containers that are twice as large as the planned output of lye, and boil them together over low heat.
As the liquid in the first container evaporates, replenish it not with clean water, but with a hot solution from the second container, until it completely decreases. At the output, we get a strong concentrate in the first container and an empty second, where we drain the pure alkali.
Use of prepared lye.
Washing and washing clothes with concentrated, undiluted lye is not recommended, this can at least lead to dryness and irritation of the skin, and clothing fabric and threads can lose their original strength from exposure to caustic active substances that are part of the lye. For washing the head and body, the lye is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:15, for washing clothes - 1:10.
In addition, in urban conditions, any concentration of lye is not recommended for washing in modern automatic washing machines, since the particles of organic matter and salts that are insoluble in water, which are in its composition, will most likely settle on the heating elements of the washing machine, which can lead to to damage or breakage.
Storage of finished lye.
It is better not to store ready-made concentrated lye, but to use it immediately. If such a need nevertheless arose, then a metal or glass container is preferable for its storage. Any plastic, with a high degree of probability, concentrated alkali will corrode over time.
Washing greasy dishes with wood ash.
In order to wash dirty and greasy dishes in the field, it is not at all necessary to waste time and extract lye from wood ash. In this case, it itself is a good detergent, since when mixed with fat it forms the same thing, only unrefined soap, which will remove dirt and grease from the walls of the dishes.
The only condition is that the dishes must really be greasy. If there is very little fat in it, then you need to add a little, just a few drops. Any fat will do, including edible oil or margarine.
Two or three handfuls of ash are added to a greasy dish, then a little boiling water is poured into it and the resulting mass is mixed to a paste-like state. Then the mixture is rubbed on the walls of the dishes from the inside and out, allowed to stand and cool for a while, and then washed as usual, rinsing with clean water at the end.
From the lye obtained from wood ash, ordinary soap can also be made if desired. However, this process is time-consuming and it does not make much sense to carry it out in cramped field conditions.
To make soap, in addition to lye, you will also need any animal fat, such as lard, or fish oil, or vegetable oil. Fat is mixed with lye in a ratio of 1:2 and boiled over low heat, with constant stirring, until all the liquid has boiled away, but not less than 4-6 hours.
As it evaporates, the lye will need to be added. Then let the mixture cool down. The resulting liquid, potash, soap will cleanse the skin, but will not be an antiseptic. You can give antiseptic properties to soap if you add pine resin to the solution during cooking.
I would like to note that such a soap may not work the first time and you will have to experiment to find the most appropriate ratio of the available ingredients.
You should start with a small increase in the amount of fat or oil, not lye, as a large concentration of it will dry and irritate the skin, which will only do more harm.
To obtain solid soap, salt must be added to the resulting liquid soap, the approximate amount is three tablespoons per initial liter of solution. As a result of the reaction, the potash soap will decompose into a liquid and a soap core.
It then must be separated from the solution and poured into a suitable form. After complete hardening and drying, we get almost ordinary laundry soap, well, as far as it is generally possible in the field.