Soap

[SekoETC]

It can be simplified, stone pots will do for the vessel, machine is small fire pit, fat can be added as a hunting product, other resources needed are soda, limestone and salt in unprocessed forms. Not very realistic but there. Other chance is to add hemp and cotton seeds to locations that already have hemp and cotton, and make it possible to get oil from them. Personally I'd like both animal and plant fats. They could be the same thing in the database, only with different names.

[Solfius]

having done a little research, with my annotations in italics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#The_history_and_process_of_soap_making


Some historic recipies:

"The Arabs made the soap from vegetable oil as olive oil or some aromatic oils such as thyme oil. Sodium Lye (Al-Soda Al-Kawia) NaOH was used for the first time and the formula hasn't changed from the current soap sold in the market"

"A formula for soap consisting of water, alkali and cassia oil was written on a Babylonian clay tablet around 2200 BC."

"ancient Egyptians bathed regularly and combined animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to create a soap-like substance"

"Historically, soap was made by mixing animal fats with lye" (lye can be * sodium hydroxide (soda lye) or
* potassium hydroxide (potash lye).

"Castile soap, made from olive oil, was produced in Europe as early as the 16th century."(soap made exclusively from vegetable oil, as opposed to animal fat. Examples of oils used in castile soaps include olive, coconut, almond, hemp, and jojoba. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castile_soap )



Potash Lye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash
"To create potash, take an open-bottomed barrel, and place it on a stone base with a groove cut into it, which will direct the resulting liquid into another container. Then place a layer of straw at the bottom, covered by a layer of sticks. This filter layer will prevent the ashes from contaminating the solution. Then fill the barrel with wood-ashes and pour water over it. The water will leach out the potash into the receptacle. This product will be of variable quality. Historically, it was measured by seeing how high an egg would float in the solution. The liquid may be boiled away to give a black, impure potash".(This would be sufficient for Cantr Soap)

"If desired, the potash could be further refined by baking in a kiln to produce a less impure form of potassium carbonate, known as pearlash for its pearly white color. This step was commonly performed at a nearby ashery."(A possible optional step to produce higher quality soap)

Soda Lye (also known as caustic soda or sodium hydroxide) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide
(The only method of production suited to Cantr seems to be the Le Blanc Method, but there are no details of the actual process. Raw soda could easily be used)


--------

So, based on that I believe that soap should be combined with some kind of animal or vegetable fat and a form of lye (either potash or soda). That can be done in a stone pot as suggested and easily produce soap.

The production of potash would require a new machine, and some new projects to produce ash from wood using fires, kilns, and ovens.

There would need to be some projects to gather fat, perhaps a draining fat project for raw meats which results in a smaller amount of raw meat and animal fat. I'm not sure how you extract vegetable fat, but that can be researched.

Potash was apparently an important chemical in history, so I wonder what else it could be used for in Cantr.

[Seeker]

I think anyone that has seen "Fight Club" knows the best way to make soap ...although I don't quite know how we could implement liposuction clinics in cantr.

[Valsum]

LOL good one

[wichita]

RD has had recipes for soap planned for a while. Problem is, people keep complaining about us making the game more complicated. Soap really won't make anything simpler.

I like the idea of puttin gthe dirtyness meter to use, though.

[Solfius]

I don't mind new features, objects, or resources, but I think the processes ought to be true to life and in the most primitive or simple form.

If soap is going to be used for dirtiness, then it needs to be simple to make because it becomes an important, and perhaps depending on dirtiness a crucial, resource and if it requires high level technology to create we have an imbalance as many people who need it can't get it.

Perhaps the most primitive societies couldn't make soap, for example thoe with only bone tools, but stone level tools should be sufficient to produce soap, because common sense says it's not that hard to produce.

[wichita]

Agreed.

[sem]

Concerning caustic soda

The only method of production suited to Cantr seems to be the Le Blanc Method, but there are no details of the actual process. Raw soda could easily be used)

Not sure you'd want the LeBlanc method - it requires sulphuric acid.

An older method involves baking limestone to produce quicklime, adding the quicklime to water to produce slaked lime, then mixing the slaked lime with soda to produce caustic soda. That's probably why Seko included limestone in the list of ingredients.

[AngelSpice]

That would make it too complicated. As it is, unless there's a repercussion for not bathing once dirtiness is implemented, I don't think many will bother.......... Maybe make you not be able to whisper to someone when your dirtiness gets to 80% or higher cause they won't let you near them

[Sho]

I don't know where this comes from, but I seem to recall that leaching water through wood ashes produces soda, or at any rate something that could be used to make soap (potassium hydroxide?).

[wichita]

It would probably involve soda + some random animal product in a curing tub. soda + sinew, soda + meat

soda + milk -> soap might work.

[Solfius]

I don't know where this comes from, but I seem to recall that leaching water through wood ashes produces soda, or at any rate something that could be used to make soap (potassium hydroxide?).

That's called potash, I did include it in that research