Does anyone make their own lye water from wood ashes ?

I'm having trouble sourcing lye over 55% NaOH where I am. I can get a 99% NaOH product from soap making suppliers, but these days it's a pick up only arrangement where I would have to produce photo ID in the form of a passport or drivers license. I'm not overly enthusiastic about that idea. Commercial lye water is also on federal watch lists or so I'm lead to believe.

I'm not concerned about the PH conversion rate of the 55% product as I believe the PH difference in the final solution will be trivial when compared to a 99% concentration used for the same purpose. My main concern is what constitutes the other 45 % of the mix.

MSDS sheets are hard to come by, or non existent as many of the products are re-badged Chinese imports.

Also would a homemade lye concentrate be suitable for a normal A/B extraction ?

Can you get calcium hydroxide instead? Sometimes called 'pickling lime'

55% NaOH comes in a solution, it's simply water saturated with lye

Yes, it is very likely that it is 55% NaOH and 45% water, especially considering the very high solubility of NaOH in water (110g / 100ml according to wikipedia). I'd guess that 55% aqueous NaOH solution is as much as you can go, i.e. saturated as ymer said.

Hyeronymous, what you could do, but just be extra careful would be to take 10ml of this NaOH solution and let it evaporate on a pyrex plate? If that in the end leaves you with ~5.5g of NaOH, then this solution is just NaOH and water.

I got 100% NaOH at Lowe's surprisingly... Don't know if they have Lowe's outside the states, but try hardware shops, large or small, in their plumping section. It would be labelled as a drain opener. I got Roebic, right on the label "100% LYE". I still checked the MSDS however, since companies will say whatever they like

http://www.roebic.com/pdf/hdcryMSDS.pdf

Thanks for the replies.

The only products I can find locally are a solid in the form of prilled balls. Many of the brands are a pure white product that really didn't concern me too much, but a few brands are a mix of white and blue balls.

I don't know for sure that product is actually prilled it just appears that way from a visual inspection.

I don't know what the blue stuff is, maybe some sort of surfactant or detergent but there was no way I was going to use that.

Hieronymous. The stuff that i get is in little white balls. You just want to get the 100% lye drain cleaner. Good luck finding it.

I found a brand today that didn't specify a percentage of NaOH. I found an MSDS online dated August 2012.

The MSDS states
Commercially pure. May include small quantities of materials due to manufacturing or reaction processes.
This is a commercial product whose exact ratio of components may vary slightly. Minor quantities of other non hazardous ingredients are also possible.

Happy days !

The brand is Mechanix.