Soap — What It Is, and How to Use It

These comments and instructions apply to a handcrafted bar of PURE Tallow soap, but translate well to any homemade bar soap.

Pure Tallow soap is as unique as it is expensive and hard-to-find. Tallow soap is made with only beef fat and lye, so it is a bit different that the bar soaps that you are used to using. It is not "_c_r_u_e_l_t_y-f_r_e_e_" from an "animal rights" point of view. However, such criticisms loose their valiadity when the primary focus is self-sufficiency and survival, since the animal isn't being killed or abused in order to make the soap.

"Soap" has a "standard of identity" with respect to Federal Government guidelines. This means that the "formula" for "soap" is consistent and defined. The result is that, in order to be called "soap", the substance must be a combination of a strong alkaline solution ("caustic soda", whose common name is "lye", or caustic potash which renders a soft or liquid soap) and some kind of fat or oil. The chemical process is called "saponification" and creates a fatty-acid salt. Commercial bar soaps are NOT all "soap" within this definition and standard. Some are referred to as "beauty bars", "deodorant bars", etc. because those products aren't fatty-acid salts created from a process of saponification - they are "detergent bars", not "soap". Read the label, and you will see.

Any homemade vegetable oil soap can be more easily made "from scratch", and nearly all of the craft soaps ARE vegetable oil-based. However, unless you have access to a food oil refinery, processing any vegetable oil except olive oil will not be within your means.

Even with simple, natural or readily-available ingredients, both olive oil and lye cannot be found everywhere. Lye, in particular, is falling out of favor and can often only be found in neighborhood hardware stores. The most readily-available soap ingredients are wood ashes and animal fat (beef or pork). Neither of these last two ingredients require commercial processing. In fact, this is how "soap" was discovered, having leaked from a wood-fired cooking kettle onto the ground! Using the caustic potash from wood ashes as the alkaline base for soap won't yield a hard bar of soap, however. Potassium alkali makes a softer soap, with a consistency more like cold cream or thick mud.

How To Use Soap

1. First, and foremost, NEVER place the soap in direct contact with water! The soap should never become dripping wet. This is true of any bar soap, and is also true of tallow soap. Please, don't waste the soap!

   NOTE: Natural, hand-made soap has a higher moisture content that commercially-produced bar soaps. For this reason, natural soaps will LAST LONGER than commercial bar soaps. Paradoxically, the lower moisture level of commercial soaps (and detergent bars) causes these "soaps" to grab onto water faster than craft soaps. Therefore, dropping a bar of soap into water or placing the soap bar under running water, will cause the soap to leave a "slime" on the bottom, when left in a soap dish. As a result, tallow soap will not disintegrate as quickly as fully-wetted commercial bar soaps tend to.

2. Turn on the water at the faucet, and adjust the temperature to suit yourself.
3. Fully wet ONE hand, and pick up the soap bar with the other, dry hand.
4. Rub, and rotate the soap bar in BOTH hands until your hands feel slick. Pure tallow soaps do not "lather" as other soaps do. The lather bubbles are so tiny that they can't be seen. Thus, the soap will feel a bit like hand lotion, and no suds will be visible. This is normal – don't waste the soap looking for lather!
5. Put the soap back in the soap dish. Continue to massage the soap on your hands into your skin until all areas that you wish to clean are covered by the soap film.

NOTE: If you haven't washed your hands for awhile, or have been working hard, your skin will have a higher acid content (lower pH). This means that the first application of (any) true "soap" (not commercial detergent bars or liquids) will not seem to work as well in cleansing the hands. If this is the case, and you can't seem to get the feel of the soap, put the soap down, rinse your hands and begin again. This phenomena is similar to cleaning a very greasy pan - it takes more cleanser to do the job. The difference, here, is that rinsing ane re-applying works better than simply using more soap or massaging the bar longer.

6. Rinse the soap residue from your hands, and gently rub, or blot dry, with a clean towel or other suitable drying material.

The first thing that you should notice is that your skin isn't nearly as "dry" as it feels after using other bar soaps. This is because homemade craft soaps still have the natural glycerine in them which is produced during the soap-making (saponification) process. In commercial soaps, most or all of the glycerine is removed during the manufacturing process and sold as a by-product. Thus, tallow soaps are naturally moisturizing all by themselves.

The second thing that you should notice, is that a natural soap - particularly a tallow soap - is not likely to cause irritation to your skin. People who have used natural soaps often report that their skin doesn't "break out" anymore. This is because the pH of natural soap is lower (more towards a neutral pH), than commercial soaps.

© Copyright 2009, Patrick Béart and "Love Is Water". All rights reserved.