Meet Wayne Prine - Old-fashioned Lye Soap Maker, American Veteran, and AllAround Nice Guy

Guest writer: Valiant Vetter

 One of Winnsboro Farmers' Market's longest-participating vendors is Wayne Prine. Wayne has been making real lye soap for 60 years.  He learned from his parents when he was young; watching them make it in a wash tub.

Wayne is a real Texan, growing up south of Dallas, he is also a veteran and has lived in East Texas (where his mother’s family comes from) since 1964.  He currently lives in Winnsboro.  Like many farmers this year, his garden did not do well so he was unable to have the potatoes, onions, and strawberries that he normally would.  However he does have his lye soap.

You really can't get any more "made from scratch" than Wayne's soap. Unlike most soap makers, Wayne even makes his own lye the REALLY old-fashioned way. He starts with hardwood ashes (Wayne says oak makes the best lye) and steeps them in water to extract the natural lye that they contain. The chemical name for lye is "Potassium Hydroxide" - a very powerful alkaline or base chemical. Through a process of boiling and filtering, he concentrates this lye solution until a fresh egg will float in it. Then he knows his lye is ready to make soap. Wayne also uses six pound blocks of beef suet and renders them into tallow (rendered beef fat) and combines the tallow and the lye in the "saponification" process that transforms lye and fat into soap. Though it's a simple process, extreme caution is required as lye is very caustic and it its pure form can burn skin and cause severe eye damage. You can also make soap from Sodium Hydroxide - which is basically drain cleaner – but lye made from wood ashes makes a softer soap. From there it’s all a matter of heating, stirring, and allowing the soap to harden.  After the initial process of heating and stirring, Wayne pours the liquid into molds and places the soap molds in a curing room.  Wayne prefers to make a "French Milled" soap which is actually soap that has been processed twice; melted again and molded to make it longer lasting.  He uses molds to make individual decorative bars (he even makes a soap-on-a-rope) and also makes laundry detergent for those hard to clean clothes.  The whole process takes a couple of weeks.  Stop by and he’ll discuss the whole process with you and he might just give you a sample.  His product is inexpensive and each bar is priced at only $1.00.

It's not just Wayne's soap that is special. Wayne is one of the most enthusiastic hard working guys you could ever hope to meet. He always offers to help in any way he can and has more energy than many younger people we know.  He always shows up early, before the market and is typically the first vendor to set up every Saturday morning. "We're gonna have a great market today!" or a similar positive and upbeat statement is Wayne's prediction for every market day.

We hope you will stop by and say hello and take home some of his good old fashion pure lye soap.