This is part 4 of the Waste Not Wood Ash workshop series where the Living Web Farms biochar crew takes a deep dive into understanding applications for one of our most common everyday waste products. As we deal with ashes from the last wood stove season and prepare for the next, discover practical everyday uses for wood ashes you can use year-round. We’ll also explore the science of how and why wood ashes work in the garden, as an ingredient for natural soap making, or even as an ingredient in natural building materials. In part 4, Dan shares his experiences of making soap with wood ash.
If you have more clever ideas about how you use wood ashes around the farm and homestead, please share them in the comments below.
Dan also wrote a detailed post about wood ash in the Living Web Farms blog you can read here.
https://livingwebfarms.org/waste-not-wood-ashes/
You can also find the handout for the workshop on our website here.
http://livingwebfarms.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Wood-Ashes-handout.pdf
Fellow soapmaker here too. I have heard the most emmolient soap is made with the fat of bear kidneys! If you can find some kidneys, please let me know❤
Fascinating!
Another variable to the strength of your ash water / lye is what kind of wood did you source the ash from. Hardwoods have much more potasium than softwoods. Also, the material itself can have variability, things like the wood, bark, leaves etc all have their own potasium ratios. Let the backyard chemistry fun begin!
Chemistry bachelor here! I'd say that this a more of a craft. Practice makes perfect. If you're going to go with a sciencetific approach one alternative to eliminate the uncertainty of the caustic element might be to allow the lye-water evaporate so that you're left with a solid. Ofcource a very inefficient method of doing which might not be viable, especially if you're planning to sell the product.
Relying on the density is probably a pretty good aproximation. For futher repeatability one should idealy use the same kind of wood ash