I saw this and got wowed. I had no idea making "lye"was even possible, not to mention cheap and easy.

It used to be a common household practice in rural areas to make your own soap, using lye from wood ash and fat from the pig you slaughtered...

A former neighbor had a 30 gallon wooden barrel he put the ashes from his wood stove into when he cleaned it. It had a hole drilled in it near the bottom and would pour water into it about a gallon at a time then catch it as it ran out. This along with the fat he had after butchering a hog was what his wife made soap from.