How to Make Lye? Lye is an alkaline solution that’s often used for washing, making soaps, and curing certain foods. Lye is sometimes called caustic soda because it has a pH of about 13, which means it’s extremely alkaline and can burn and corrode skin, organic tissue, certain plastics, and other materials. You can make your own potassium hydroxide lye by soaking wood ash in rain water, and this type of lye is ideal for making liquid soaps. Working with lye is dangerous, and requires a number of safety precautions. Collect wood ashes. To make potassium hydroxide lye, you need the white ashes from hardwood fires. When hardwood trees are growing, they draw potassium from the ground. This potassium doesn’t burn in the fire, and is still present in the ashes after the fire. You can then leach the potassium from the ashes with water. After every hardwood fire you have, allow the ashes to cool for a few days. Then collect the white ashes and store them in metal containers. The best hardwoods for lye water include ash, hickory, beech, sugar maple, and buckeye. To make lye using this method, you'll need enough ash to nearly fill a wooden barrel. Don’t use ashes from softwood trees, as these don’t contain enough potassium.
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00:30 Collect wood ashes
01:10 Collect rainwater
01:42 Drill holes in your wooden barrel
02:02 Add a layer of stones and straw
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