1870’s Soap Making
as told by Tom Glenn, P&G retired employee, in 1934
“At that time, we only had 7 kettles all together and they were just a little bit more than 10’ high. The bottoms were slightly cone-shaped, and the upper sheets were clamped to the lower one during the boiling process. After the soap had cooled in the kettle, this sheet was taken off so that the soap could be more easily removed.
“It might be very interesting to tell you how soap was removed from these kettles. When the boiling was finished and the upper sheet removed, a trough was placed over the edge of the kettle. Then Jake Koehler would take a large sheet iron ladle with a wooden handle about 18’ long, dip it into the soap, and empty it into the trough. There was a cross-bar on the end of the handle with which the ladle could be turned when it was lifted above the trough. A rope was attached to the bowl of the ladle. This rope was run over several simple pulleys and with the combined pull of 5 or 6 men, the ladle was lifted above the trough. You see, when the ladle was full, it carried several hundred pounds of soap. At the lower end of the trough, a half-barrel with a pole handle was placed to receive the soap. This barrel was carried by two men who grasped the handle at either side. As soon as the half-barrel was filled, another was put into its place beneath the lower end of the trough.
“From this half-barrel, the soap was emptied into a soap frame which did not differ materially from the frames used today except that it was not on wheels. At that time, we used to get from 38-40 frames of soap from each kettle. Just compare this the 200-260 taken from the present kettles at Ivorydale!
“In those days, there were no crutching machines. All the crutching had to be done by hand. The process was not unlike to churning butter. Two men, each with a hickory stick with a wooden block on one end, churned the soap around a bit by pushing these sticks up and down in the frame for several minutes. That was all there was to crutching. The wheel or bowl crutcher came with Ivory Soap in 1879. The Dopp crutcher, which is about the same as that used today for crutching laundry soap, came into use about 1880. The Hersey soap pump for removing soap from the kettles was also introduced in 1880.
“In the early days, all the slabbing was done by hand by means of a wire which had a wooden handle on either end. The process was, of course, so much slower and less accurate than the modern slabbing machines but the men became very skillful and could cut a frame into slabs to uniform thickness with surprising speed. After the first slabs were obtained, they were placed on a cutting table and pushed forward past 4 wires the length of the cakes of soap and then pushed sideways against wires which cut these strips into cakes.
“The soap was then dried on the racks until it was hard enough to wrap. No stamping machines were in use, the name of the soap being marked only on the wrapper. Mottled German soap and Olein were not wrapped at all. These bars were stamped with a hand stamp on the upper side before being put into a box The wrapping was, of course, done by hand, since machine wrapping is a recent developing dating from about 1905.”
the history of soap the history of soap making