Help Please. Soap recipe for deer tallow

[Monikieman]

Hi folks.

I've been playing with the idea of making soap using deer tallow (I get it for free) so why not.

I've done a wee bit googling but just wondered if anyone has any practical experience or good recipes that they have tried.

Most of the ingredients are at hand and the kitchen has a strange 'he's up to something again' odour!

Thanks in advance.

Brian

 

[British Red]

Deer fat saponifies almost exactly as lard, 0.1379. So use a basic lardy cake recipe, add your essential oils at trace, job done. Check out my soap making tutorial for the basics if you haven't made soap before.

Red

 

[Monikieman]

Cheers BR.

I'll have a look for the link. Thansk again.

 

[British Red]

No problem, if you can't find a lard based recipe you fancy, I'll post one up for you, it will work exactly the same as the one in the tutorial, but the proportions may vary.

Here is the tutorial

http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25733

I really envy you the deer fat. I would love to try to render and filter enough deer fat for a batch!

 

[Monikieman]

Thats perfect BR. Thanks. I'll give things a go and report back. Cheers

 

[British Red]

Be sure to adjust the recipe to reflect the deer fat mate. You need to change the amount of caustic for each fat.

 

[Monikieman]

BR cheers. I've saved soapcalc and will try things out there first before blowing up the house

 

[British Red]

Good man. !

 

[Monikieman]

BR. The deed is done. No burns or trips to A&E thankfully but I did get 2 right hand gloves in the packet which was interesting.

Trace in 1hr 10 and when I poured it really thickened up. I never thought it would go that fast.

Anyway, thanks for the help. Pics to follow.

 

[British Red]

Good for you. Next time use a stick blender to mix and it will trace in a few minutes. Looking forward to the piccs!

 

[Monikieman]

Well it seems to have gone well (for now anyway).



12 bars of soap. They appear to be like soap, smell less tallowy than before and in 4 weeks time, I'll let you all know if it works like soap.

Not as hard as it looked but a bit scarry with the lye.

 

[Monikieman]

The wrong picture is paracord jigs for bracelets. My mistake, sorry.

 

[British Red]

Soap looks great. Do wrap it up well whilst it cures.

 

[Monikieman]

Keep is wrapped up BR? I thought on a rack to air!

 

[British Red]

Nope, must be wrapped in something like an old towel, blanket or even newspaper, otherwise the surface oxidises to a powdery white. No real harm in that but it looks bad.

 

[Monikieman]

got you, an powdery film !!!!! Will do. Many thanks indeed.

Brian