Making Ivory Flakes

[bingwsguy]

I remember my Mom using Ivory Flakes for all baby laundry & delicates and the smell/feel of everything afterward was great. Ivory snow, while nice, just doesn't have the same effect. I just read another thread about the aluminum tub Maytag Wringers and discoloration because of certain detergents so.... I am thinking to put some bars of Ivory through the food porcessor and making my own Ivory Flakes to use in the wringer. Is this all that the original Flakes were?

 

[sudsmaster]

A food processor probably spins too fast to make good flakes, but you could try it.

I use a veggie grating attachment on my KA stand mixer to make ersatz Ivory Soap flake from regular Ivory bar soap. It works pretty well.

 

[bingwsguy]

Thanks Rich

I was going to try to use the shredder attachment(the one I use for cheese)and see if that worked. I wondered if that was all that Ivory Flakes was...just flaked bar soap?

 

[launderess]

Yes

That is all Lux, Ivory and all and sundry soap flakes are, flaked soap. This is as opposed to soap powder which was obviously powdered soap.

You can either use a food processor/mixer attachement, or a manual cheese grater. Inhaling soap dust is not very good, so either wear a breathing mask, and or do your grating in a well aired area.

L.

 

[neptunebob]

Speaking of homemade detergents, has anyone here tried to make the Duggars homemade soap? They use fels naptha soap, but say you could use Ivory soap too.

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www.frugalvillage.com

 

[sudsmaster]

The problem with the food processor may be that it will spin too fast, melting the soap and producing a goo, or maybe just a fine dust, depending on the moisture content of the soap bar. OTOH, I haven't tried using my Cuisinart with one of the grater attachments, so it might be ok. If you don't have a mixer grater, you could even just use a hand held grating tool, like one of those box like contraptions, or a flat grater. The goal is just to get the soap into small enough particles so it dissolves as fast as possible in the warm to hot wash water.

I've found that even the much slower mixer grater attachment will produce a fine soap dust that can be irritating tone's nose. So I tend to prefer grating fresher soap bars that still have some moisture so that they produce less dust and more "flakes".

Of course, the flakes are never as thin and light as I recall the original Ivory Snow flakes were. But as long as they dissolve in the wash water, it doesn't make much difference.

 

[classiccaprice]

How many bars worth of soap flakes would you use to do a load in a wringer or automatic?

 

[sudsmaster]

How many bars worth of soap flakes?

Enough to form a thin layer of suds on the surface, of course.

With soap, when the suds disappear, the scum starts forming.

Which is why it's a very good idea when washing with natural soap to add some good water softener, like STPP, to cut down on the formation of soap scum by tying up the hard water minerals first.

Washing soda will do, but not as well, as it forms its own sediment that can solidfy like cement inside the washer and also deposit on fabrics.

 

[launderess]

Pure soaps, unlike "detergents", will soften water on their own, however this calls for using quite allot of soap depending upon water and soil conditions. As previous poster stated, forth is a good indication of a good balance between water softening, soil suspension and cleaning activity.

Many vintage laundry manuals would chide housewives about using too much soap for laundry as being wasteful, and would give various methods for testing how hard local water supplies were, and determining how much soap to use per load.

Also as previously stated, it is better to soften water using chemicals or even a whole home water system, than to rely purely on soap. It is also much cheaper than buying all that soap.

If you are using Ivory, or any other "floating" soap, remember a good part of those bars is air, which is why they float in the first place. Thus you may not get as much pure soap bang for your buck per bar, say versus using a harder bar of Fels or some other brand.

Again, if you are going to go this soap/homemade detergent route, your first rinse must be hot or at least warm water, and it is a good idea to add STPP, but not washing soda,or some such to the first rinse water.

 

[brettsomers]

Has anyone tried ZOTE soap? believe its enriched with washing soda and brighteners, since its designed for laundry.

 

[sudsmaster]

I've used grated Zote and it works about the same as grated Ivory. I don't think it contains any washing soda, though. The ingredients of Zote are listed on the label, and my bar lists:

Soditum talloate [soap from beef fat!], sodium cocoate [soap from coconut oil!], fragrance [perfume, not much], optical brightener [fluorescent dye], and dye [mine is pink]. No washing soda listed.

I always add some STPP to the wash water before adding the grated soap.

 

[tolivac]

Making soap flakes and shavings-save your food processors and mixers for--FOOD.Go to a used tool store --RETOOL-and buy a used Stanley Sureform Planer-rasp tool.This works well in shredding soap bars and blocks for flakes for washer use.I learnewd the hard way-be sure to rinse off the Sureform after using it on the soap-or otherwise it will rust to nothing.The sharp edges on the Sureform make nice soap flakes.The used ones only cost a couple of dollars-new Sureform tools are more expensive.And you can get blades for them.The tools are in the form of a plane or a rasp.

 

[sudsmaster]

Um, there's really no problem using a mixer with a grater attachment on soap.

After all, the clean-up is easy, because you don't have to add any ... soap!!!

The water does need to be hot, though.

 

[tolivac]

The used Sureform tool was cheap-and it doesn't generate fine soap dust the way machines can.And if it didn't work out or get damaged--one did-was not out a lot of money.I didn't want to damage my mixer or food processor-I guess you could relegate a yard sale food processor to soap flake duty.

 

[bingwsguy]

Laundress

Just a little side-step... you mentioned doing the first rinse with hot or warm water. Older automatics seemed to do a hot & warm wash with a warm rinse. As time went on and soaps transitioned into detergents, the warm rinse went away. I had always figured it was just an energy savings thing, but was this related to soap usage as well?

 

[sudsmaster]

Most automatics still allow one to do a warm wash with a warm rinse, but they insist upon following a hot wash with a cold rinse.

The exception is the Neptune 7500 front loader. If you select the "stain cycle" option, the first rinse automatically is at the same temperature as the wash. Thus when I wash towels with real soap, I use a hot wash with the stain cycle, and the first rinse is also hot. Works very well.

Other modern toploaders might have similar options, but finding out what the first rinse temp could be would require some sleuthing into the manuals, etc.

 

[launderess]

Much as one loves laundering with pure soaps, and not withstanding my previous posts on the matter, one must remember soaps have one large drawback; it never totally rinses clean of fabrics. Sooner or later one is going to end up with a build up that has to be removed, if possible.

Wash your hands with soap and depending upon the type, there will be more or less a feeling of some sort of slimy feeling, well that is also true of fabrics.

Of course if one is going to do many rinses and add some sort of mild acid, and then rinse some more, this build-up can be minimised, but that is work, and uses lots of water.

As for wash and rinse temperatures on washing machines, yes, they had to offer "Hot/Hot" or even "Hot/Warm" when soaps were the main means of washing laundry, and even after "detergents came upon the scene some housewives continued to insist on at least warm rinses. However, IIRC the energy problem of the 1970's in the USA caused a shift to eliminate hot/warm, if not warm/warm. Though as Sudsmaster states, you probably can find top loading washers in the US that still offer "Warm/Warm", but have not seen "Hot/Warm" in ages.

 

[sudsmaster]

This thread inspired me to start laundering my bath towels in Ivory soapgrates again.

Ah, the nice pulch of soap washed terry.

 

[bingwsguy]

Thanks

Thank you for the answers and input....always much appreciated.