This is a bar of glycerin soap. It'll moisturize and soften your skin, and it even smells like
cinnamon. Who would have guessed it's actually made out of bacon. In this project we're making
this natural bar of shower soap, from a pack of bacon, and some household drain cleaner.
For this project we're gonna need a 1lb pack of "American Style" bacon, and some crystal
drain cleaner. I'm using this one because it's 100% lye, which in this case is pure
Sodium Hydroxide. Now let's go ahead and get the frozen bacon out of the package and begin
chopping it into strips. The thinner you make your strips, the better this is gonna work,
and by the time you're done cutting, the meaty slab should look something like this. American
style bacon has a lot of fat, and to get it out, we'll need a good sized cooking pot,
with a lid. Let's go ahead and transfer this, into the pot, making sure the bits of bacon,
are getting separated. That's just gonna help it cook a lot better. Now we can go ahead
and move this onto the stove, and add the lid, to help trap the heat. We're gonna
render the fat, out of this bacon, and the temperature needs to be set very low. My gauge
settled right around 95ºC, and that seemed to work great. After about 8 hours of simmering
you'll have a pot full of cooked bacon. Now believe it or not, this smells so good, your
mouth will be watering. But don't eat it yet, because we've got work to do. The sizzling
liquid in the pot, is rendered pork fat, and if we use the lid as a strainer, we should
be able to get most of it out. Now chances are that some small impurities will get through
as well, so the easiest way to purify the fat, is to mix it with some water. You can
see that it instantly separates into two layers, where the impurities sink to the bottom,
and the clarified fat, floats to the top.
I put this batch in a separate bowl, and let i firm up in the fridge overnight, so the fat could be skimmed off the top.
The end result is a beautiful, food-grade, ball of lard, and some people actually use this for baking.
Now it looks like we got about 70 grams, so our soap recipe will be based off that.
To make this into soap, we'll need to re-melt the lard on low heat, and while that's warming
up, we can measure out the next two ingredients. Let's weigh out 26 grams of distilled water,
followed by 9 grams of sodium hydroxide. This will need to be mixed thoroughly, and before
you try this yourself, make sure you're fully aware of the hazards, listed on your bottle
of lye . When the solution is crystal clear again, it's ready to be added to the melted
fat, so carefully pour it in, and start mixing it together. Now, I chose to mix this by hand,
and the method that works well for me, is to stir constantly for the first 5 minutes,
then come back every 5 minutes after that, and stir for another 2. We're looking for
the mixture to thicken up, and after about 25 minutes, it's got the consistency of a
thick gravy. After 35 minutes it looks like vanilla pudding. When the mix is tracing like
this, we can and add some color, and some fragrance. Now I like the smell of this, essential
oil. It's called "Cassia", and 7 drops into the mix, will make it smell like cinnamon.
Let's follow that with 7 drops of red food coloring, and you can see when it all gets
mixed together, everything turns a bright pink. Now to make this look like a real bar
of soap, I fashioned a little soap mold out of silicone, and you can see the soap mix
is just runny enough to fill it up. The last step is to let our bar of soap, saponify.
Let's go ahead and turn the oven light on, and place the mold inside, with the oven door
closed, for about 24 hours. Just the heat from the oven light, is enough to help cure
the soap, and hardens it to the point where we can release it from the mold. And there
you have it. A fresh bar of homemade soap. Now you could use this right now, but it's
still pretty soft, and might need to cure a little bit longer. If you let your soap
age for a few weeks, it'll be noticeably firmer, and will last a lot longer in the shower.
Just for fun lets use some litness paper to test the PH.
According to this the PH value is somewhere between 7 and 8 making this bar slightly alcholine.
In any case, you'll be able to tell if its done by giving the bar a little lick.
If it tastes like soap, it is!
On the other hand, if it feels like you're getting zapped by a 9 volt battery, it needs a little
more time to cure.
If we use the soap to wash our hands, you
can see it suds up the way you'd expect it should. And because we didn't take the glycerin
out, its got a smooth, creamy lather, that helps moisturize and soften your skin.
Well now you know how to make a beautiful bar of soap, from household
drain cleaner, and a pack of bacon.
By the way, rather than throwing away your bacon meat,
try spreading it out on paper towels to make a batch of homemade bacon bits.
We used these ones for dinner, on our baked potatoes. Well that's it for now. If you liked this
project perhaps you'll like some of my others. Check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com