Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen

Author:Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen [Coyne, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2011-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

Part 1: Making Lye

PREPARATION: 1 hour

WAITING: 24 hours

Folks used to save all their ashes in a wooden barrel with a drain built into the bottom or in a trough-shaped ash hopper. The lye barrel or hopper was left open to the rain, and the rainwater leached through the ashes and became lye, which dripped out into a small receptacle bucket. The weak lye in that bucket was collected for general household cleaning. Clothes were washed in lye water, too, as opposed to soap and water, in a process called bucking. To make soap, people needed to make a stronger lye solution. To do this, they either passed the weak lye through ash again and again, or they boiled it down until the solution became strong enough to float an egg. Egg floating sounds bizarre, but it is a primitive test to determine, in chemistry terms, the relative density or specific gravity of the solution.

While you could make your own leaching barrel by packing a 5-gallon plastic bucket with ashes, we’re going to share a faster method with you.

YOU’LL NEED

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