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Classic
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page 468
six pounds of clean fat. Boil it until it begins to harden about two hours,
stirring most of the time. While boiling, thin it with two gallons of cold
water, which you have previously poured on the alkaline mixture, after draining
off the four gallons. This must be settled clear before it is drawn off. Add it
when there is danger of boiling over. Try the thickness by cooling a little on a
plate. Put in a handful of salt just before taking from the fire. Wet a tub to
prevent sticking; turn in the soap, and let it stand until solid. Cut into bars,
put on a board and let it dry. This makes about forty pounds of soap. It can be
flavored just as you turn it out.
SOAP FOR WASHING WITHOUT RUBBING.
A soap to clean clothes without rubbing: Take two pounds of sal soda, two pounds
of common bar soap, and ten quarts of water. Cut the soap in thin slices, and
boil together two hours; strain, and it will be fit for use. Put the clothes in
soak the night before you wash, and to every pailful of water in which you boil
them add a pound of soap. They will need no rubbing, but merely rinsing.
TO MAKE SOFT SOAP WITHOUT COOKING.
Pour two pailfuls of boiling water upon twenty pounds of potash, and let it
stand two hours. Have ready thirty pounds of clean grease, upon which pour one
pailful of the lye, adding another pail of water to the potash; let it stand
three or four hours, stir it well; then pour a gallon of the lye upon the
grease, stir it well; and in half an hour another gallon of the lye, stir it
thoroughly; in half an hour repeat the process, and thus proceed until you have
poured off all the lye; then add two pails of boiling hot water to the remainder
of the potashes, and let it stand ten hours; then stir the mixture, and if it
has become stiff, and the grease has disappeared from the surface, take out a
little, and see whether the weak lye will thicken it; if it does, add the lye;
if it does not, try water, and if that thickens it, let it stand another day,
stirring it well five or six times during the day; if the lye does not separate
from the grease you may fill up with water.
OLD-STYLE FAMILY SOFT SOAP.
To set the leach, bore several holes in the bottom of a barrel; or use one
without a bottom; prepare a board larger than the barrel, then set the barrel on
it, and cut a grove around just outside the barrel, making one grove from this
to the edge of the board, to carry off the lye as it runs off, with a groove
around it, running into one in the centre of the board. Place all two feet from
the ground and tip it so that the lye may run easily from the board into the
vessel below
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