Does anyone make their own soap here?

[gadgetgary]

Grated Soap......

My grandmother used to make her own soap and grate it into her GE Filter-Flo. I always thought it was strange since she could have just bought a box of powdered laundry detergent.

Her Filter-Flo was the one with the four pushbuttons to the right of the panel(Off, Hot, Warm and Water Saver) and had a copper filter atop the activator.

 

[jamiel]

My grandfather was a member of the Kiwanis club and one year got the wild hair (he was a chemist...) to save the sausage drippings from their pancake breakfast to make soap. He did, we ended up with these nasty colored bars of soap...yecch.

He worked right after WW2 for a soap/chemical company in Cincinnati (Fischer Chemical, no, not P&G) which was experimenting with detergents. My grandmother tells a funny story about him bringing a sample (for dishwashing) home which smelled like a public toilet but worked so well.

 

[lederstiefel1]

Yes, Laundresse is right in saying so! The only way to use soap is actually the way I described it further atop!
That is the reason why soap was taken off the detergent-production.
But mixed with other surfactants (tensides) like non-ionics or amphoters it works also great IF water isn't too hard.
I can remember the day I got my Hotpoint Twin Tub... It came with a package of the old PERSIL SOAP POWDER (which is no longer available) and it did a super job! BUT you had to wash a load of whites at 80°C/very hot, colourfasts at 60°C/hot and non-colourfasts/synthetics/delicates at 40°C/warm to get them clean. Rinsing needn't to be warm or even hot with that detergent and was well done with normal tab-cold water. I loved it so much that I bought several packages during my next trip to the UK.
There are still soap-powders available in Germany (eco-products) but they are much more expensive and need normal temperatures as they work best at hot or very hot setting.
Ralf

 

[sudsmaster]

My mom also made soap at least once when I was a youngster. I think she had a major oversudsing incident with the Bendix in teh basement, too (I dimly remember it speewing lots of water/suds).

When I got to college our second assignment in organic chem lab was to make soap. At the time I was quite disinterested in unimpressed, but I did get a nice little soap tablet after following the protocol (really, more like a recipe). I think I tossed it.

 

[cleanfresh]

Well said Launderess

Fels was absolutely a revolutionary laundry product. The forerunner of modern detergents as we know them.

 

[bajaespuma]

Fels was also what we were told to wash with if we'd had a "brush" with poison ivy. I always loved the packaging.

Laundress, I love reading your stuff; you sound like a chemist or some other hard scientist. Is this true?

 

[launderess]

Pinky and The Brain

Narf!!!!!

No, am not a scientist, evil, Christian or otherwise; just like to read up on things, keeps the mind active.

L.

 

[cleanfresh]

No, I don't make my own soap

I prefer to let our American soap companies do their thing. And what a great job they do!