Making soap from deer fat

[southerngurl]

I have some deer fat that I wanted to try to make some soap out of. It is a VERY dry crumbly fat. What should I add to it? I have alot of olive oil. Would olive oil be a good fat to add to the deer fat? Has anyone ever made deer soap? :haha: I have about 3 cups of it.

I rendered the fat, then boiled it will water to clean it twice. It is a nice creamy white color. I am going by the directions in the "Encyclopedia of Country Living", and some off the internet. My grandpa used to make lye soap (at lease his mom did), so I'll likely be asking him some questions too. Some places say to add salt to the fat, but my book never mentions it.

Generally, I don't know what I'm doing. :haha: I wanted to make my own lye, but I think I will buy some for my first attempt.

[januaries]

I have an excel file that will calculate the amount of lye and water you need per ounce of whatever kind of fat you use. (It has a venison tallow listed.) You can put in various amounts of various oils and fats, and it will total up the amount of lye and water you need. I can email the file to you if you'll send me a pm with your email address.

[januaries]

I looked up some soap recipes that use tallow. It seems that most of them suggest combining tallow with olive oil and/or coconut oil. Several recipes had all three ingredients listed in equal proportions. You might want to run a google search on it yourself. If not, I'd probably go with equal parts tallow, olive oil, and coconut oil. Or, if not coconut oil, then equal parts tallow and olive oil. They say that an inferior-grade olive oil is best for soap making. On the excel file, put in the amount of olive oil you want to use, then the amount of venison tallow, then check the bottom line to see the totals of lye and water. Good luck!

[Soap]

Originally Posted by southerngurl

I rendered the fat, then boiled it will water to clean it twice. It is a nice creamy white color. I am going by the directions in the "Encyclopedia of Country Living", and some off the internet. My grandpa used to make lye soap (at lease his mom did), so I'll likely be asking him some questions too. Some places say to add salt to the fat, but my book never mentions it.

Generally, I don't know what I'm doing. :haha: I wanted to make my own lye, but I think I will buy some for my first attempt.

You don't need to add salt when making soap.

Making lye from scratch is hard because the strength of the lye solution is hard to judge. Plus you need to have clean white ashes from a hot fire to get white soap (not gray soap).

Try looking at this site for instructions.

http://www.teachsoap.com/

Heed all the safety tips!
Making soap is dangerous because when you add lye to water it gives off a lot of heat (200*+) & the lye solution can badly burn you heatwise & chemical wise.
Always add small amounts of lye to your water... Don'tt pour or drop water into lye because it can explode.

Wear long sleeves & pants and safety googles. You only have one pair of eyes and you want to keep them.

--soap

[southerngurl]

That will work out with the olive oil. We use the real mild stuff. I hate the taste of virgin olive oil. I pmed you, januaries.

I'll be careful with the lye, I do use my eyes alot.

[big rockpile]

Yes be very careful with the Lye !!! I burnt all the Skin and some Meat,off all my Fingers with Woodash Lye.Took forever to heal :waa:

big rockpile

[Fla Gal]

If you make lye soap make sure you have a spray bottle of vinegar on hand so you can spray yourself where lye may land on you and start eating away at your skin. Vinegar is acid and neuteralizes the effect of lye.

Been there, done that... Lye eats away at your skin and the resulting eaten away places takes a good long while to heal. If you catch it quick enough with vinegar it isn't so caustic and the affected skin shouldn't take so long to heal.

[Maura]

Any soap you buy began with lye, or something equally caustic, including commercial soaps. I've burned myself with the lye solution, and also from the soap solution. Just be near a sink so you can rinse it off, then lather up and wash the affected area and go back to soap making. As long as you wash off the solution, you will be fine. When pouring the lye solution into the oils, pour slowly as you stir. If you dump it in too fast, the solution will splatter and you will be washing your arms instead of stirring.

If you are using 18 ounces of lye, do not use a blender stick as this will mix the oils too fast. When determining your fats, remember that pomace olive oil sopanifies much more quickly than table olive oil.

Please let us know how the soap turns out

[BCR]

I have never used deer fat, though I have used other domesticated animal fat.
It smells bad and I do not like the soap it makes at all. Yeck. Have you ever made soap withlard or other fat?