Uses for rancid lard?

Couldn't find the best place for this.  I've got a bunch of lard that went bad on me.  So far the best idea we've come up with is chainsaw grease.  Maybe inoculate it with mushroom spores so it greases the forest with spores!  

But what other uses can folks see for bad lard?  Or other oils?  Right now I probably have 2 gallons of it.  I'm sure it'll happen again someday, too...

Soak absorbent things in it and use it as firestarting thingies.

I say this but have about 5 gallons of old palm oil lying around (that I was given) no idea what to do with it myself as I have no fires that need lighting.

Pond sealant
Cast iron coating
Anywhere you would use wd40
Fat for chicken / duck feed

If it were mine, I’d make soap. Probably using the hot method, which would yield a soap that’s not necessarily the best for showers, but very good for washing clothes and other stuff like that.

All good ideas!  The chickens love cracklin's.  I wasn't sure if the rancid oil would be very good for their system though.  I know they probably wouldn't care!  And I usually feed them ALL kinds of things, but the rancidity is an unknown to me there.  And with soap; I worried that the smell would carry through?  Have you tried this?

As far as cast iron, we always cook in cast iron with lard, so they're VERY happy pans ;)  

Tell me more about a pond sealant!  This is fascinating!  :D

Used in conjunction with clay, fat helps reduce water conductivity through a soil column.

Link below is about vegetable oil
https://www.seepagecontrol.com/howitworks.html

My tests indicate similar results with animal fat substances

I used it, in conjunction with a few handfuls of bentonite to seal a spot where the clay wasnt thick enough. I also added leaves so the water that did seep through would pull fat, clay, and leaves (gley) into thr seeps and seal it. Worked!

Compost it and feed the hungry micro-herd.

That would season a heck of a lot of cast iron.

I'd also go with soap, like cleaning soap, not washing-body-or-hair soap. I often use rancid lard/cooking oil to make mine, but it really doesnt come through in the soap.

And of course the classic thing, metal greasing/preservation. Grease up your swords! Cast iron pans! Your wagon axles!

We've put all the rancid lard in a 5 gallon bucket and will be making a year's worth of soap from it  That seems like our most beneficial applications.  Save the good lard for eating!

It could be used as a pawpaw pollinator attractant. Road kill and manure are the more common attractants, but rancid lard would probably work well too.
https://www.petersonpawpaws.com/pollination

Just an update, we made some super badass grease-cutting soap with our rancid lard.  I vaguely sort-of followed a DIY 30-minute laundry soap recipe and this is what I did:
6lb lard
1.5lb coconut oil (we had crappy costco oil to burn, plus it's supposed to have good cleansing qualities I guess)
18 oz lye
8 cups borax
4.5 gallons water

(+20-30 drops of lavender EO cause I was paranoid it would stink.  The soap actually smells fresh and clean, possibly reminiscent of juniper!)

I heated the oil up until it was well melted, meanwhile mixed the lye into 3~ gallons of water in a 5 gallon bucket.  Since it's so diluted the water doesn't really heat up.  The original recipe didn't say to monitor temps, so I didn't.   I added the oil in after the lye was dissolved and stirred for a good while.  Then I stirred in the borax and topped the bucket off with another 1~ gallon of water.  At this point the bucket was pretty much full.  I stirred for awhile more then covered and set aside, stirring several times a day.    The first 2 days it wanted to form a soap-cake on top of liquid, but i just broke it up and kept stirring.  Day 3-4 saw it fully incorporate into a thick "full-fat-kefir" consistency.  But 7-10 days it was a thick whipped cream consistency.  We used the soap immediately on day 1, it wasn't hot enough to burn skin so it didn't need to rest for that purpose.  After I used about a gallon of soap I topped the bucket off with another gallon of water and re-mixed it into a yogurt consistency again.  Didn't affect its awesomeness at all!

This stuff destroys grease.  You can take you nastiest, greasiest, grimiest dishes, work the soap in, and simply rinse with ice cold water and the grease disappears.  We don't have hot water right now and this soap has been a lifesaver in the kitchen!  We're also using it on our laundry with happy results (we use 1/4 cup in our miniature washing machine).  I also like to wash my hands with it when they're extra covered in farm/wilderness.  Wouldja believe; the soap cuts tree resin pretty well!  Not all the way, but it takes a good bit off.  Normally we have to work a raw cooking oil into the sticky resin and repeatedly soap it, wash it, oil it, soap it, wash it, etc etc until the resin got under control.  Now we can come back from logging and soap up with my lard detergent soap and most of the resin melts away.  Woohoo!

Skandi Rogers wrote:Soak absorbent things in it and use it as firestarting thingies.

I say this but have about 5 gallons of old palm oil lying around (that I was given) no idea what to do with it myself as I have no fires that need lighting.

I’ve been thinking about doing that in the last few days. I have a small stainless steel container, complete with a strainer. It’s got oil from who knows when and I want to be able to use it again. I also tend to collect very old rags that should go in the trash and little bits of candle wax. I’ll use those the rags soak up the rancid oil. Then clean-out the barbecue turned planter with dead plants; and use my oil-soaked rags and wax to make biochar. Thanks.