Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
Came across this in FM 21-76 "Survival"
To Make Soap
Extract grease from animal fat by cutting the fat into small pieces and cooking them in a pot. Add enough water to the pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks. Cook the fat slowly, stirring frequently. After the fat is rendered, pou the grease into a container to harden.
Plase wood ashes in a container with a spout near the bottom. Pour water over the ashes, and in a separate container collect the liquid that drips out of the spout. This liquid is the potash or lye. Another method for obtaining the lye is to pour the slurry (the mixture of ashes and water) through a straining cloth.
In a cooking pot, mix two parts grease to one part potash. Place this mixture over a fire and boil it untils it thickens.
After the mixture (the soap) cools, you can use it in the semiliquid state directly from the pot, or you can pour it into a pan, alow it to harden and then cut it into bars for later use.
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As someone foolish and brave enough to try to make lye soap and tallow candles (yuck!) from the basics (except for the lye--it was commercial), the best tip I got was from a butcher where we bought the 2nd batch of beef fat--he ground it all up like hamburger, so that when we rendered it, it was much easier to separate the fat from the connective tissue. This saves a lot of time in the rendering process, as you don't have particles of any size that would take longer to melt.