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Comment by ImprovedSilence | Hacker News Reader

Probably not as good, but still somewhat effective. There seems to be an entire niche of artisanal soap makers out there at every farmers market/craft fare hawking their olive/palm/whatever soaps that smell of tobacco and cedarwood sea foam.... from what I’ve used of them, they work, just not as well/completely.

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Generally, I think artisanal soapmakers buy lye flakes rather than making it from ash. Fundamentally, you need lye, water, and fat (or oil). Usually I think vegetable oils are used, rather than animal fat.

You can get beef suet quite cheaply at a butcher; I think I paid $2/lb or less. This is easily rendered into beautiful white tallow, which in turn makes a lovely soap. You can mix in some olive or coconut oil if you like, but there's no technical reason you can't use pure animal fat to make soap.

It may reduce your potential customers a bit, especially at a particularly crunchy farmer's market, but the soap will be fine :)

Proctor & Gamble was founded in Cincinnati near the slaughterhouses where tallow was readily available. William Proctor made candles and James Gamble made soap. https://news.pg.com/blog/procter-meets-gamble

Procter

Most soaps use tallow (beef fat) as it's the cheapest and most plentiful fat, due to the beef industry making a lot of it. But vegetable oil-based is the more "attractive" soap; it's generally modified to be softer on the skin and causes less harsh reactions than tallow, and of course there's vegan soap.

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