Soap, Candles, And Toiletries From Deer Fat

Here’s a hack with more of a survivalist flair to it. [Ligament] and some friends used the fat from butchering a deer to make soap, candles, and toiletries.

It’s hunting season and [Ligament’s] dad is processing the deer which he harvested. Wild game doesn’t have the amount of fat you’d find on a domesticated animal, but there is still a fair amount. The group cut off as much as they could before cutting up the rest of the meat. The trimmings are put in a pot with water and boiled until the fat starts to rise. It is ladled off and strained through some cheese cloth. The fat hardens overnight and can be picked up out of the container as a big disk. It is reheated and strained through a mesh coffee filter to achieve the final product. From there the fat was used as an ingredient in the recipes for candles, soap, and things like lip balm. For details on that heck out the comments for each image in the gallery linked above.

It’s a good thing to waste as little as possible. But this skill will be indispensable once the Zombie Apocalypse comes. You might also want to know how to chlorinate your own water.

[via Reddit]

36 thoughts on “Soap, Candles, And Toiletries From Deer Fat

          1. you wanted to say ‘german concentration camps which are now located in Poland since the germans lost the war’ (and then every german women aged 12-70 was gangbanged by a bunch of ugly russian soldiers but that’s a different story)

    1. I swear you read my mind:
      “As the fat renders the talice float to the surface, like in Boy Scouts. Once the talice hardens you can skim off the layer of glycerin.If you were to add nitric acid you would have nitroglycerin.If you were then to add sodium nitrate, natural sawdust, you’ve got dynamite. Yeah with enough soap, we could blow up just about anything.”

  1. The real important part about the soap and candles from fat is rendering it with lye which can be made from water filtered/poured through ashes I don’t think the fat source really matters much.
    This is the way lye soap has been made forever? well at least since the pioneer days.

  2. Goat milk and fat is usually used..

    Nice word play on demonizing hunting too. You should see what happens to the eco-balance if nobody hunts deer in north america…

    It helps to learn outside of the suburb and university..

      1. Yea, “butchering” is simply the term used to refer to the harvesting of the valuable and tasty contents. I guess it does seem like a term that could “stir the pot” of some people that view hunting to eat and supply as barbarous…

        1. yet funnily enough are probably the same people who’s lifestyle and habits directly or indirectly release thousands of man made chemicals not to mention thousands of pounds of co2 which themselves threaten the lives of many more animals including humans.

          so unless you wipe with leaves and bark walk barefooted to the store and live in a cave do us all a favor and stfu.

    1. I’m missing the word play demonizing hunting, as well. I Iived my life in a rural are,hunt,but never deer because I have no need for such a large animal The only reason hunting would be needed to maintain an eco-balance is because the activity of humans have created an eco-inbalance.

    2. I was merely stating that not deer hunting destroys the eco-balance in parts of North America.

      Seeing as the level of comprehension here is fail though, forget it..

      BTW I’m sure your lives reflect all this supposed superior intellect you’re all trying to insinuate you have over me or others.

      PS: It’s called carbon, you learn about it in the first 4 years of grade school, and has no relevance to deer over-population…

      1. ‘Lye’ is actually Sodium hydroxide(NaOH)
        While wood ashes yield a mixture of mainly (caustic) potash which is potassium hydroxide(KOH) with some sodium and other alkali hydroxides in the mix as well.
        It doesn’t matter a whole lot which you use if your only goal is soap or biodiesel as saponification( the reaction that makes soap and glycerol) will occure with just about any of them. KOH does however tend to yield softer even liquid soaps which depending on the goal may or may not be desireable.

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