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Household bars

Tallow soap by Hawes's cold process

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The oils

Oil As the source prints it Share
Edible Tallow (beef/mutton dripping) Tallow · 100 lb 100.0 %

How it is made

Process Cold process
Alkali about 20 gallons of ley of 17° B. · 20 imp gal · 17° Bé
Superfat Not stated
Water as the source states it
Iodine value 47
INS 150

What the numbers say

Hardness 52 29–54
Cleansing 4 below 12–22
Conditioning 43 below 44–69
Bubbly lather 4 below 14–46
Creamy lather 48 16–48

Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.

The source

The patent that made cold process a commercial method. Hawes keeps the glycerine that boiling throws away with the spent lye, which is the whole argument for the process and is still the argument today.

Alexander Watt, The Art of Soap-Making: A Practical Handbook of the Manufacture of Hard and Soft Soaps, Toilet Soaps, Etc., Crosby Lockwood and Co., London, 1884, p.80. The Art of Soap-Making: A Practical Handbook of the Manufacture of Hard and Soft Soaps, Toilet Soaps, Etc. · read 2026-09-22

Read from the Internet Archive OCR of the Cornell University Library copy. Page numbers are taken from OCR'd running headers and may be one out where the header digits were damaged.

Read from a scan rather than a proofread transcription, so the figures are checked against the book’s own printed total where it prints one.

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