How to Make Lye

[WiNaDeYo]

Yes!!!
My grandmother used to make make lye soap and prepare "homony" (that's what dried corn soaked in lye water is called) at the same time, usually in the winter when they would slaughter the pigs (using the pig's fat, hoofs, ears, bones, whatever) for the soap.
Homony has to be rinsed really well 3-4 times before cooking and eating it. I sure did love it! I've got how to make it written down somewhere around here...I'll have to look.
Years ago you could still buy it in cans at the grocery store (NC, USA).

Have you all never eaten corn nuts? It's fried homony!

Originally Posted by WiNaDeYo

Yes!!!
My grandmother used to make make lye soap and prepare "homony" (that's what dried corn soaked in lye water is called)

PLEASE share your grandmother's recipe with us...pleez?

[WiNaDeYo]

OK... here goes, but first of all I'd like to explain that my grandmother was born in 1897 in Rutherfordton, NC. Her grandmother was Cherokee and married a 3rd generation American of German discent. My gra'ma was raised on "the farm" but spent most of her life raising 13 children and working in the cotton textile mills. She was sooo wise and I miss her so much. She died in 1992. Such a smart lady... I have always loved her stories and dreamed of living on a farm like she did.

So.... they always made homony (or is it hominy??) when they made soap. They'd set up an iron pot on a fire next to the lye brew. They'd take out some of the lye solution and dilute it (sorry, the audio recording I have of my gra'ma telling this says that her "mama knew how much springwater to put"). While that was warming, gra'ma would go to the corn crib and choose the ears with the biggest grains on them and would shell the corn off the cobs. They'd fill the pot about half full of corn grains. They'd get the pot a'boilin' keeping the fire hot under the pot and "boil it a little while" and the grains would swell. When the skins of the grains would peel off then it was ready to be washed. They'd take the pot to the "branch" (stream) and wash it several times to get the skins off the grains and to remove the lye. After washing out the pot real good, they'd put the homony back in and cook it until it was tender. Sometimes the corn would swell up so much it'd run over and they'd have to take part out. They'd change the water several times while it was cooking by draining some off and putting fresh water in. The best type of corn, according to my gra'ma, for homony was "Hickory King" corn...big old flat grains... a white sweet corn...better than field corn."

I'd love to try this....

did she mention anything about ash water or lye water being used, and if so how was it used. This is important because the lye water
activates niacin in the corn to make it bioavailable.

This I have documented, but I have not found the specific procedure
other than mention of boiling in ash water.

[WiNaDeYo]

Yes, Gra’ma explains how they made lye soap on the tape I have…

They’d make a wooden troth using a hollow log, about 3 feet long. It had to be propped up on one end and a board had to be nailed into the bottom leaving space for the lye to flow out into a crock pot positioned underneath at the lower end. They’d fill the troth up about two thirds with green oak or hickory ashes and slowly add water. This process of adding water took all day. “Just keep a’putting water in that and let it soak down. It’d take…a day to get it good and wet…your ashes would get plum wet.” They’d keep adding water until they had accumulated about two gallons of the lye solution. This liquid was then put into a pot and they’d add grease to it (“old grease that had been saved all year in a jar for this purpose, old meat and skins, pork fat and some bones, whatever”). Then they’d build a fire around the pot to bring it to a slow boil: “not a too big a fire or it’d just roll everywhere. It’d all come out.” They would keep soap boiling for about three days. Her mama could tell when it was done, when it got thick. They’d then dip it out while it was hot and keep it in earthen jars. The “dregs” (bones, etc.) would be in the bottom but above would be just “clear soap, kinda yellow creamlike”. Leaving the “dregs”, they’d start up another pot. Pouring spring water on the ashes to make the lye. They’d make enough soap to last a year.

Gra’ma warned, though…
“..if you got too much lye in it (the soap), it’d eat your fingernails off. If you washed and put your hands in that soap, it’d just make your fingernails curl up. And so you had to be careful about that.”

I am sorry that I don’t know the amount of ingredients here…even my gra’ma didn’t know. Her mother didn’t tell her. She just used her intuition, I suppose. Throughout the audio cassette recording, Gra’ma keeps saying, “Now, that wasn’t my job, but mama knew...and she didn’t tell me…”

And, yes, the lye extracted was used to make the homony, too. Can’t tell you how much was diluted in the water though. Sorry…

[WiNaDeYo]

Googling, I found numerous sites that mention making hominy.

Here are a few with explanations similar to mine:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/13796/118399

http://www.mtnlaurel.com/Recipes/hominy.htm

http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-...7/147819.shtml

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2653103.html

[whitecrow]

Originally Posted by WiNaDeYo

Gra’ma warned, though…
“..if you got too much lye in it (the soap), it’d eat your fingernails off. If you washed and put your hands in that soap, it’d just make your fingernails curl up. And so you had to be careful about that.”

Therein lies the disadvantage of making lye the old-fashioned way. It's more art than science. The old way of knowing when your lye solution was strong enough was to float an egg in it. And this process creates potassium hydroxide, which does not make hard soap. For that you need sodium hydroxide.

In the old days, lye-makers were called ashers because of the process used. The wooden rigs used to percolate the ashes were called ashies. When the lye water was heat-dried to a powder it was called potash. And when kiln-dried into granules it was called pearlash. All that came to an end when the process for making sodium hydroxide from brine was invented. It was this invention that allowed soapmaking to make the leap from a cottage industry to a true industrial process.

Old-fashioned lye soap was often harsh because there was no way to measure the strength of the lye accurately, hence no way to know for sure what percentage of the fats and oils were saponified. Frequently they were completely saponified with lye left over, which is what made the stuff burn.

Today we can make soap with a controlled lye discount - which would have been impossible with home-made lye. On the other hand, in a survival situation it would be good to know how to make this most useful chemical.

[WiNaDeYo]

Lye is caustic acid, right? What other uses would it have in a survival situation?
(I'm lazy tonight and don't want to do my homework alone...)

[whitecrow]

Originally Posted by WiNaDeYo

Lye is caustic acid, right? What other uses would it have in a survival situation?
(I'm lazy tonight and don't want to do my homework alone...)

Lye is caustic soda. It is a strong alkali, and not an acid. It is useful for making soap, curing certain foods such as olives, and many industrial processes...including, so I'm told, making meth which is why it's getting hard to walk into a store and buy pure lye anymore.

Lowe's sells a brand called Roebic in the plumbing department. It is 100% sodium hydroxide. The main producer of lye is Dow Chemical. I'm sure Roebic buys it by the boxcar and puts it in those little jars at a huge profit. I'm currently looking into whether it is possible to buy pure sodium hydroxide from a manufacturer less into corporate rape of the planet and everyone on it.