i've been wanting to start something new on my channel for a while now and i'm only just getting
to it now but i'm glad to be here i get lots and lots of really fantastic questions from all of you
on email well not all of you but a lot of you send me really good questions on email and i do my best
to reply to them all some of the questions are so good that i think they're worthwhile sharing
for everybody's benefit i don't have all the answers to every soap making question but
every time i get a question and i don't know the answer i'll do some more research and i'll
definitely try my best to share my thoughts and and what knowledge i do have with people
so i've been saving these questions and i'm going to start when i can recording these videos q a
videos and i'll i'll share them so the first one is a really good question and i get this kind of
question a fair bit and this one comes from beck and it was on an email bec says hi ellie
i'm really enjoying your videos and i'm looking forward to my soap and sourdough making experience
i have one question about lie is it a natural good for you skin product i just worried with all the
ppe the personal protective equipment and the highly corrosive nature of lye is there anything
else you can use to make soap without lie or what did the original babylonian people use to make
their soap bars so my response to that question is has a few parts to it the first part is that
at a very basic level you need some kind of lie to saponify with oils to make soap if we're talking
about a traditional soap then some kind of lie is always involved and through history that's how
soap has always been made today in modern times we have sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide
and those are the most commonly used lye types or hydroxides that are used to saponify the oils
and fats in soap making there are other lye types that would have been used throughout history and
some are used today as well an example i can think of is african black soap which i've never
made but i'd love to try a version of it someday but it's made with usually from what i can gather
mind potash actually mined from underground the other common lie type is ashes from hardwood
there are a few videos on youtube about how to make soap from wood ashes you can check those
out that would have been a traditional lye type that would have been used so i don't know exactly
what lye type ancient soap makers would have used probably most likely that it started with
wood ashes of some sort i i think that's probably how it started now the next part of this response
is really about what is natural this is really tricky because the word natural doesn't have any
regulations around its use and people use the term natural to apply to all sorts of products that
you know really whether or not they are natural is a matter of opinion and if you want to look
at modern hydroxides that are used to saponify oils to make soap you know the sodium hydroxide
and potassium hydroxide that i use in my soap making they are commercially made ingredients
they are not naturally mined or harvested ingredients i don't actually know how they're made
but i don't know whether i would call those natural ingredients like they're used in
commercial cleaning type applications they're used for all sorts of things we all know that caustic
soda is it's a very harsh cleanser on its own but it can be used to make soap with so whether or not
i call my soaps that are made with commercially made sodium hydroxyl or potassium hydroxide
whether or not i call those natural is really up to me and whether or not they are natural or not
is up to your opinion obviously when the oils and the fats in your soap bars are fully saponified
many people consider them safe to use and a fairly natural product and human beings have been using
saponified fats and soap in various forms for millennia whether or not that's actually
safe for our skin i don't know lots of dermatologists as some of you well know
would actually say to you don't use soap on your skin it's too drying the ph is too high uh
you know it's not the best it's better off to use a synthetic detergent product that has a lower ph
so you know it's up for grabs really what you want to do with it and where you decide to sit in terms
of your decision making about whether or not you want to use soap on your body and whether or not
you consider it a natural product my thinking is that it has been used in human civilization for
such a long time uh i think the invention of soap making has probably helped humanity more
than it has hindered it in terms of introducing ways to improve hygiene and reduce disease and
things like that so i think from that perspective it's a good thing also one of the big reasons why
i make my own soap is for environmental reasons i hate using products from the supermarket that
comes in these you know plastic bottles and pump packs that just get thrown away whereas if my i
make my soap i can buy my olive oil and a tin that at least i can recycle when it's used up
all of the packaging i can try and minimize that as much as possible so that's my take
on it it's not a straight answer unfortunately it's pretty much a pretty complicated answer that
that really everybody has to make their own decision about i i guess my main point is that
you know this idea that we're using natural products on our skin
lots of really dangerous substances are considered natural so don't let this term
natural be something that decides whether or not something is good for you or not so i hope that
was useful to some of you and thanks again to beck for asking such a great question i've got a whole
lot of other questions lined up i'm just going to keep kind of answering whenever i get a chance i'm
really keen to share more recipe videos this year i've got a few favorites that have kind of been
on my list for a long time that i i'd like to do and i want to do more hot process and liquid soap
recipes this year so that'll be fun anyway take care everybody i'll see you in the next video
you