The good news is, after pouring a 4th gallon of water into the bucket I came downstairs the next morning and found a beautiful half gallon of brown water had accumulated in the jug under the spigot. According to the instructions I found on the web this is "lye water" and can be boiled down to get a strong base usable in soaps etc.



There's only one problem. This stuff appears to be totally incompatible with my pH test kit. I tested some and the pH test powder just kept precipitating out and sinking to the bottom no matter how many times I shook it:



Note the gray layer at the bottom.



The liquid did not change color at all either, but stayed brown. So I guess I will not make any more "lye water" (if it even is) until I obtain a better method of testing the pH. Either that or, I could use the old fashion method of trying to float an egg on it after it's been boiled down for a while. Uhhh no thanks.

So at this point the wood rack is about half-empty, not counting the wood that was too big to burn without splitting it further first.



The back row has a lot of very small wood because we had a bunch of small trees cleared off the back lot line last spring and this is the wood left over from that. It remains to be seen if it's dry enough to be burned yet or if it needs to be cured a 2nd year. I think it probably is.



I have gotten pretty good at sorting out the leavings of the wood stove for processing. First I scoop out the ashes and sift it through a slotted cat litter scoop (not shown) into the plastic bucket. This produces a nice white or light gray ash that has few charcoal lumps in it. The lumps go into the small bucket on left.  Once finished those go back to get burned again. Meanwhile I have been pouring a gallon of water into the plastic bucket each time I add ashes. This should theoretically cause lye water to come out the spigot at the bottom.

Unfortunately the ashes seem to be very absorbant because no water has come out of the spigot yet and 3 gallons have now been poured in. At some point I will have to just keep adding water until it finally coughs some up.. or overflows. LOL

Definitions of potash on the Web:

• Any compound containing potassium.
  www.zulumoon.com/glossary/p-glossary.htm
• Potassium carbonate. It is an alternative to soda as a source of alkali in the manufacture of glass. Potash glass was particularly suited to cutting and engraving.
  www.steincollege.com/glassdef.htm
• Prepared by evaporating the lixivium of wood ashes in iron pots
  www.ifdn.com/teacher/glossary.htm
• This term generally refers to potassim oxide (K 2 O). Wood ashes are also a source of potassium.
  edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HS123
• Potash is used primarily as an agricultural fertilizer (plant nutrient) because it is a source of soluble potassium, one of the three primary ...
  www.energyweb.net/mining/jargon/default.asp
• Commonly used for the chemical potassium carbonate (K2C03), a component of oil emulsions.
  coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ERIC/gdaglos.html
• A form of potassium carbonate, also known as potash or in its more refined versions, salts of tartar or pearlash. It was the precursor to baking powder. Developed in 1742, potassium carbonate is a white salt that forms a strong alkaline solution when combined with water. ...
  www.eddybles.com/culictionary/2007/1/5/a-dictionary-devoted-to-culinary-words-phrases.html
• Potassium compounds mined for fertilizer and for use in the chemical industry.
  www.intierrainvestor.com/glossaryp.asp
• Usually made from wood ashes. One of the three main minerals in fertilizer. A term used to denote potassium.
  discoverorganicgardening.com/glossary.html
• a potassium compound often used in agriculture and industry
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Potash (or carbonate of potash) is an impure form of potassium carbonate (K2CO3).
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash
• the water-soluble part of the ash formed by burning plant material; used for making soap, glass and as a fertilizer; an impure form of potassium carbonate (K2CO3) mixed with other potassium salts; (archaic) in the names of compounds of the form "... ...
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/potash

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Greetings!

The wood boiler produces a lot of ash. Not as much as I'd have expected, because it's fairly efficient at burning stuff, but every 2-3 days a small bucket is partially filled. After some consideration (about a year's worth), I have decided upon a plan to get some more use out of our wood ashes, which are currently treated a bit like hazmat. What we do now is put them in a sealed metal bucket to cool down, then after 2-3 days (when the bucket is needed for the next batch) they are dumped into a much larger sealed metal garbage can in the garage. Last year I accumulated one and a half garbage cans of ashes; I believe a full winter of burning would produce about 3 garbage cans full in total.

Well, it turns out that potassium from wood ashes (Potash) are useful for a number of interesting self-sufficiency related substances, including garden fertilizer, homemade soap, and caustic potash (which is very similar to lye). With precision craftmanship one could even use these to go on and produce say for example, homemade biodiesel. Potash production used to be a really big deal. Millions of acres of New York state used to be covered in hardwood forests, but it was cut down in the late 1700's to burn just to make potash! Now cheaper chemicals are used instead in most industries.

My original intention was to place the dead ashes in either the compost heap or on the lawn using a lawn spreader, during the summer. However I hesitated this last summer because I had read there could be problems with the large amount of salts still contained within, tending to accumulate. My original thought was to perhaps run the lawn spreader with the ashes right before a heavy rain, so that the salts would all be dissipated. So might the potassium, but at least the ashes would be gone ;-) The actual scheduling of this proved awkward however. I define awkward as, it never seemed to happen for a host of different reasons, and by the end of the summer I still had all the ashes in the garbage cans as well as no room in the compost heap anymore. D'oh!

The New Plan:
I had read extensively on the web for instructions regarding lye and potash and it is apparent that the commercial means of producing such stuff is better and cheaper. The instructions available on the web were mostly along the lines of "well I never bothered to try this, but here they are... let me know if it works". I took each one with a grain of salt as a result, and designed my system based on the broadest possible interpretation that included all caveats and instructions read on the most reliable seeming sources. Believe me, I would not do this at all if it had seemed to be a very dangerous reaction but the main thing appears to be the handling of the the more caustic versions safely afterward. Not getting it in eyes or on skin for example. Luckily the liquid seems to be much easier to handle safely than dry potash would be.

I am taking this easy, one step at a time. I am hoping to find someone who would like to buy (or hopefully, trade) my Potash off me before I have actually suceeded in making something, so there's no need to rush.

The first step is to soak the ashes and obtain the relevant liquid. I am going for the $13 solution: $10 for a bucket and $3 for a plastic spigot. The potash will attack metals, so they cannot be used. Ideally wood would be the material but I thought I'd better prove the concept and find someone to trade something fun or useful with before investing in an oak barrel!

NOTE: Until this succeeds (or doesn't) I can't recommend anybody else try it. Know what I mean? Play it safe OK.



Here are some plastic spigot parts of the standard garden hose variety, as well as a double washer. My plan was to place this at the bottom of a bucket in which the soaking would occur. The shut off valve would allow releasing the water into a container or not, as needed. The nipple would allow attaching a small hose to the output if needed to guide the liquid down into the waiting receptacle. I may just screw an elbow on there instead though.



I cut off the end of the piece that was going inside the bucket, because I will not be attaching a hose inside there so it's just extra bulk. I wanted the flow of water out to be as unimpeded as possible. After sawing the end off with a hacksaw I used a matte knife to trim away the loose plastic bits.



Here's what it looks like installed in the bucket. This is a new clean bucket purchased for the purpose.



Here's a closeup of the rubber ring I used. It's got a groove down the rim to accept the edge of the plastic bucket. This seemed to work great and I tested it afterward by filling the bucket with water and watching for leaks. All looks good!




This paper is the moral equivalent to the rocks or marbles in the bottom of a flowerpot: it is intended to prevent too much of the ashes from escaping out the spigot. Straw was the recommended substance for this purpose so if the paper does not work I'll go buy a bale to keep in the garage. 



Here's the first batch of ashes inside. I did a very coarse sift to get the charcoal bits out so I could throw those back in the boiler. I will probably wait about a week (2 more stove cleanings) so that the bucket is filled before I pour water in, for the sake of getting repeatable results in the future.



Once it's ready to go I will pour a gallon of water in the top and close it again, then place the jug underneath the spigot to catch the seepage as it comes out. The first soaking will produce the strongest base and each subsequent one will be weaker with a point at which it's not worth it to soak it any more times. The potassium carbonate water would then be stored in sealed containers until it is time to boil it to adjust the pH.

I am keeping an eye out for the appropriate lab equipment to reduce the water content more safely than just an open boiling-pot. However that stuff is really expensive so that part will take some patience!