I Finally Made Something!!!

[~gd]

I think I would at least try my manual meat grinder on that, first through the big plate, use the fine plate only if needed. I suspect you could burn out the motor on a power grinder. Of course I do have a set of microplanes that fit my 3/8" drill .....

 

[Farmfresh]

Actually if you place a damp sponge in a plastic bag overnight with your soap or some other method to humidify it, the soap will soften up and be rather easy to grate. If you can grate cheese - you can grate soap.

 

[urban dreamer]

I just grated it out of the box! It was like grating cheese.

 

[Jamsoundsgood]

I just make my kids do it. They think it's cool. They like to grate cheese to though. I make it seem like it's a big deal and I really don't want them to do it...it's a grown up job. That way when I buy the big blocks of cheese I can get them to grate a whole bunch of it into a container for me and I always have it. I get the convenience of pre-grated cheese, and I don't have to pay for it! I love slaves, oops, I mean my beautiful children.

 

[Blackbird]

 

[Farmfresh]

I LOVE child labor!

Usually I grate my soap while watching TV or some other time wasting activity. I do have to soften my soaps on occasion before grating because I use homemade lard based lye soap with no (or very little) extra fat in it for making my laundry soap. I make enough bars at one setting to last my laundry needs for a couple of YEARS at a time. Sometimes those bars get HARD if I wait too long to get them grated up.

 

[urban dreamer]

I was watching TV while grateing soap too! I thinking real hard about making lye soap.

 

[EggsForIHOP]

LIke you we started with chickens and then the first thing I made was soap...ISN'T IT THE MOST AWESOME FEELING TO MAKE SOMETHING?! You should try sneaking the powdered soap recipe past your SO just ONE TIME! My husband too HATED powdered laundry soap...until he realized with the homemade stuffs storage was minimal and effort required to make it was was even less! He told me the other day if I needed help making it he wouldn't mind because it is so much cheaper and that recipe is pretty easy! Haven't had to buy/make any in a LONG while! Plus you really can't tell it's powdered stuff once the clothes are washed.

This is self sufficient business is pretty nifty isn't it?

 

[pioneergirl]

Congrats!!! Now you're in the club, lol....actually, in my oh so humble opinion (and ask any "old timer" here) I've always said that even if you sew on your own buttons, you're SS to a degree. So you're doin great!!

And now, the addiction begins....MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

 

[~gd]

I was watching TV while grateing soap too! I thinking real hard about making lye soap.

I am a Chemist by education and I hesitate to tackle that task at home. First I would have to buy or otherwise acquire all the equipment required, including the personal protection safety equipment. Then there are the ingredients, lye itself is hard to come by, nobody wants to sell smaller amounts for fear of being sued, many of the lab supply houses that I used in my profession flatly refuse to sell unless your order is on "official" paper that they can check with Dunn & Bradstreet. Heck when I bought certain ingredients at a local hardware store the Sherriff was notified and they came to check if I was running a meth lab. I was lucky the Sherriff knew me and they knocked on my door to serve the search warrent rather than their usual procedure.
Then there are the fats or oils, they used to be easy to get cheap, Now everybody donates them to the local community college where they try to convert to Biodesel (sp?) Heck they even have ex-moonshiners over there making Ethanol for addition to gasoline! Hard to be self sufficient in the modern world even here in the semi-rural South!