Adventures in soap

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When making my Shop stool #2 I wanted to experiment with using soap flakes as a finish like in a lot of mid-century classics made from light wood, mainly beach, white oak, ash, birch and pine/fir.

The finish has some nice qualities:
- It is natural and can easily be removed
- It is the closest you can got to untreated wood and has a nice matte feel and shine
- It is easy to repair in case of damage and it can be done at home
- It does not darken/color the wood much loke oils and warnish does
- It dryes fast and can be handled in 30 minutes and used in a few hours

Despite being linked to scandinavian furniture and used quite commonly here in DK it is difficult to find knowledge about it. You can buy readymade products in the stores, like this one:

Like so many other aspects in our lives common knowledge have been lost and you now go to the store and buy a brand instead of the actual product you need. This happened to wood soap as well. I wanted to learn from this project and to know what i was doing so I had to get the real thing.

So spent an whole evening reading and searching on the topic. Turns out that the original soap used was not liquid but dry flakes made from lye and animal fat. This can still be bought from speciality dealers like this one (in danish): http://www.tibberuphoekeren.dk/preview2.asp?idn=Rengoring

In the stores flakes made from vegetable oil is still available and this is what i settled for:

The soap really is flakes and look like that expensive, english sea salt:

The flakes is mixed whith boiling water about 1 part soap to 2 parts water. Dont mix large quantityes as it goes a long way. At first it was watery and i almost poured it out to make another batch but after a while it turned stiff like frozen ice cream:

This was way too stiff so i thinned it again to about whiped cream consistency:

I wanted to make a test before using this treatment on something I have invested time in. Found a pieze of the most open and porous wood i had that i knew would be prone to attracting dirt and marks, in this case low grade construction timber (probably fir). Planed it and sanded to get as open a surface as possible. Here you see the untreatd wood beside the pieze that had 3 coats of soap with about 2 hours inbeween. There is a slight darkening of the wood but not much coloring:

I then lined up all the stuff i could quickly find that i knew would leave stains:

Placed a dot of each on the wood, rubbed it in a bit and left it there for about 20 minites. In order from left it is:
0: Permanent marker (small dot)
1: Red wine
2: Aceto Balsamico winegar
3: Black spray paint
4: Carpenters glue
5: Ketchup
6: Food color, green
7: Food color, blue
8: Engine oil
9: Jam from raspberries
10: Grass rubbed in

A closer look:

After a quick wipe off with a cloth, nothing more, the two piezes looked like this:

I did not expect the paint to be removable but the result impressed me. From a treatment that is so discreete I find this to be really great. Only the paint and food coloring left considerable marks. Here the paint closer up:

After a quick sanding with grit 220 after the wood was dry it all came of and a new layer of soap recreated the finish perfectly. (forgot to take pictures)

Will certainly be experimenting more with this and hope it was a usefull read.
Let me know what you think!

Source: LumberJocks.com

Adventures in soap