# Just how long should dilution take?



## lenarenee (Feb 28, 2016)

I made gls paste yesterday. For 3 hours it's been in a jar in a large stock pot with the jar about 2/3 submerge. The water is warm enough to produce light steam and a few tiny bubbles on the bottom. I used 11 ounces oil in this recipe.

I diluted at .5 per lb of paste. But the stuff isn't making much progress at all. I just sb'd it and I have a somewhat softer and more uniform paste, and the volume has condensed about an inch. There are no layers forming - its still whitish paste.

Am I on the right track? I think this is going to take a bit more water. Can it take more heat (the paste is not that warm, I could leave my finger stuck in it all day, but cannot comfortable leave my hand on the jar)

I'd like to have this done before bedtime. Can I carefully microwave it? Throw it in the crockpot? Can I stop heating it for today, and re-start tomorrow?


----------



## DeeAnna (Feb 28, 2016)

I don't have a lot of words of wisdom for you, Lenarenee, but I can tell you that you definitely can leave the soap alone until tomorrow. Just turn off the heat, leave the jar in the warm water, and forget about it. I often add warmish water to the paste, chunk the paste up a little bit with a spoon or my fingers, and let the mess just sit on the counter without heating at all. If I think about it, I'll give the paste a smoosh and stir every few hours.


----------



## lenarenee (Feb 29, 2016)

Back at it this morning. Add water/sodium lactate, stuck it in the microwave. Its softening and turning more golden.


----------



## BrewerGeorge (Feb 29, 2016)

I am FAR from someone to give you advice, having only done the one dilution myself thus far.  However, I can say that during that single attempt that didn't want to dilute, additions of water as small as a teaspoon into a quart of soap made a BIG difference.

If it goes another day, you might try adding a tiny big more water and see if that helps.


----------



## Susie (Feb 29, 2016)

I would not microwave it.  Give it time and very small additions of water.  If you are impatient, put it back into the pot or crockpot.


----------



## lenarenee (Feb 29, 2016)

Thanks Susie - to be more detailed, I only nuked it for 20 seconds at a time, waited a couple minutes, nuked again....just while waiting for the pot of water to heat up.

I'd already diluted at 50% of paste (unless I really screwed up my math yesterday, which is always possible)

Add more water today. This stuff is not sb-able, it's too thick, looks a lot like Vaseline. Been heating in water for 3 hours now.

So this is supposed to take hours and hours?


----------



## TeresaT (Feb 29, 2016)

So sorry.  I misread that as "_dilation_" and thought, "well, every woman is different and so is every birth..."


----------



## IrishLass (Feb 29, 2016)

Lenarenee- when I heat mine in my canning jars, the water in my pot is a lot hotter that what you described in your opening post, and it takes mine about 1 hour to dilute. Basically, the entire body of water in my pot is actively boiling the whole time, but it's at a gentle rolling boil instead of an insanely rapid rolling boil, if that makes sense. And I make sure the boiling water comes up to at least 1" over the contents of my jar at all times.

Before I cover my jar and add it to the pot of boiling water, I heat my dilution water and sodium lactate (and edta solution) together in a small pot until just boiling, then I pour the mixture over my paste in the jar before covering it with the lid and placing it in my pot. 

I would try bringing your pot of water to a boil and see what happens. How much SL did you add? I add 3% as per the weight of my paste. If there's not much change after 1 hour of your jar being in boiling water, I would say that your paste needs more dilution water.


IrishLass


----------



## lenarenee (Feb 29, 2016)

Okay, Irish Lass trying a gentle boil now. (I know it's a Mason jar, but still makes me nervous to boil a glass jar!)  My pot isn't tall enough to cover the jar though, only about 3/4.

Paste work nicely though...already washing hands with it!


----------



## Susie (Feb 29, 2016)

Be sure to put either a dish cloth or a jar ring under that jar to keep it from bouncing against the bottom.  I had one break doing this.


----------



## lenarenee (Feb 29, 2016)

:evil::evil::evil:  When is liquid soap supposed to get fun???????

Yes, Susie - I got something under the jar. 

I'm at .75 water to paste weight.

It's improved a teeny tiny bit.  Still not sb able. I want to throw it into a regular pot and melt it!!  It's been in hot water 8 hours today!


----------



## KristaY (Feb 29, 2016)

I'm TOTALLY on your wavelength, lenarenee! I don't know if it's impatience, frustration or gremlins but LS is always a buggar for me. I keep detailed notes, take pics to refer back and every single time things are completely different. Even using the same soap paste! It always works out in the end but it takes me days to get there. I'm sure the LS process is at the root (hehe) of my gray hair and not my kids, hubby, pets, work, life......:twisted:


----------



## ngian (Feb 29, 2016)

Well I used once the stick blender at dilution phase and it helped a lot in the time needed to make the liquid soap. It also created a lot of bubbles that disappeared the next day but the paste was dissolved a lot faster than without the use of SB.


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 1, 2016)

KristaY said:


> I'm TOTALLY on your wavelength, lenarenee! I don't know if it's impatience, frustration or gremlins but LS is always a buggar for me. I keep detailed notes, take pics to refer back and every single time things are completely different. Even using the same soap paste! It always works out in the end but it takes me days to get there. I'm sure the LS process is at the root (hehe) of my gray hair and not my kids, hubby, pets, work, life......:twisted:


 
We're in the same club?  The "liquid soap is evil" club? I think we've been had; Irish Lass and Susie are secretly drinking some perfectly steeped tea, eating scones and red velvet cake with ermine frosting and gloatfully snorting over our desperate posts while we poor virginal gls makers SUFFER!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I just made gloatfully an honest to goodness real word!!!!!!

Tomorrow, the nasty stuff gets tossed into a pot and given the wicked witch treatment...boil boil toil and trouble....cackle cackle cackle. :twisted::twisted:


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 1, 2016)

ngian said:


> Well I used once the stick blender at dilution phase and it helped a lot in the time needed to make the liquid soap. It also created a lot of bubbles that disappeared the next day but the paste was dissolved a lot faster than without the use of SB.


 
Thanks ngian, I'll try that when the paste is thinner. My sb is powerful, but can't  handle the paste yet.


----------



## Susie (Mar 1, 2016)

Have you tried adding a bit more water?  I never, ever SB my soap during dilution.  I use my crock pot and add water until I get down to the next to last lump.  Then I turn it off and let it cool over night.  I have never had dilution take over 3 hours, either.


----------



## IrishLass (Mar 1, 2016)

lenarenee said:


> I think we've been had; Irish Lass and Susie are secretly drinking some perfectly steeped tea, eating scones and red velvet cake with ermine frosting and gloatfully snorting over our desperate posts while we poor virginal gls makers SUFFER!!!!!!!!!!


 
 lol Well...the scones and tea part are correct .....at least for me anyway. I'm not sure what Susie is eating right now, but I just downed a scone with clotted cream and jam, and washed it down with some Irish breakfast tea. Yum! No gloatful snorting, though.....at least not on my part.  

Re: using the stick-blender during dilution: I use mine only once during dilution- when the paste is as soft as jam/jelly. I actually don't really need to stick-blend during dilution, but I just choose to do so to hurry things along. 

To judge whether my globules of paste are soft enough for successful stick-blending, I give the contents of my jar a stir with a knife or spatula. If the knife or spatula cannot slice through the blobs as easily as passing through a blob of fresh grape jelly (i.e., if they feel more firm and rubbery), I place the covered jar back into the boiling water and check again in about 10 minutes or so. Once they are soft enough, I only need to use the stick-blender once, and for no more than about 5 seconds at that.

From that point on, I place my jar back into the water, but with my pot turned off from there on out, and leave things alone to come up to room temp. I take the jar out of the pot once the water is room temp, and leave it to sit on my counter (usually overnight).

Liquid soap will clarify from the bottom up, and mine normally ends up looking like a glass of beer- i.e., clear amber on the bottom with a (temporary) foamy head of about an inch or so in depth on top.

If my calculations were correct and I had added enough dilution water to my jar at the start, the foamy head will gradually dissipate over the next hours into just mere cob-webby wisps floating on top, which to me means that my dilution is 100% complete/successful/done. 

But if I didn't add enough dilution water at the start, the foam will seem to take forever to shrink, and if I poke at it, I'll feel that it's really not foam at all, but a blob of paste that has re-formed. That's my cue that I screwed up and it needs more dilution water, which has actually not happened to me in a long time, i.e., ever since I figured out my dilution rates. The remedy is to add more water a little bit at a time. I always added about 1/2 mL at a time. This water adjusting part can really be a tedious hassle, but if you take meticulous notes while making these adjustments, you'll only ever need to do this once....at least for this particular formula, anyway. lol

If you are boiling your jar of paste/dilution water/SL (not just barely simmering, but a real, true boil), and your paste is still too rubbery/not softening up after an hour, that's a good sign to me that it needs more water. I'd start with 1/2 mL at a time.


IrishLass


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 1, 2016)

Susie said:


> Have you tried adding a bit more water? I never, ever SB my soap during dilution. I use my crock pot and add water until I get down to the next to last lump. Then I turn it off and let it cool over night. I have never had dilution take over 3 hours, either.


 

I tried the crock pot today, added more water - about 5 ounces by volume and the paste just soaks it up like a sponge. The soap actually hardened up back into paste again! Added 2 more ounces by volume, stirred, and turned crock off. 

What am I missing here?  Is it the quantity of paste? I'm trying to dilute almost the entire recipe made of 11 ounces of oil.  The dilution formula was .5 water to 1 of paste, right? 

Is it the heat, or the water that melts the soap?


----------



## Susie (Mar 2, 2016)

lenarenee said:


> I tried the crock pot today, added more water - about 5 ounces by volume and the paste just soaks it up like a sponge. The soap actually hardened up back into paste again! Added 2 more ounces by volume, stirred, and turned crock off.
> 
> What am I missing here?  Is it the quantity of paste? I'm trying to dilute almost the entire recipe made of 11 ounces of oil.  The dilution formula was .5 water to 1 of paste, right?
> 
> Is it the heat, or the water that melts the soap?



Half the paste weight in water is where you START.  Not where you FINISH.  You keep adding water until all the paste melts into liquid.  Hence the need to keep meticulous notes.  It is the water that melts the paste.  The heat just speeds it up.


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 2, 2016)

Susie said:


> Half the paste weight in water is where you START. Not where you FINISH. You keep adding water until all the paste melts into liquid. Hence the need to keep meticulous notes. It is the water that melts the paste. The heat just speeds it up.


 
Okay, thought I read where some people also stopped at .5 and .75.  I'm currently at 2 parts water to 1 part paste. However, it's been heated for hours and despite being covered, it must have lost moisture. 

But the comments that say that 1/2 or 1 milliliter can make a difference - they must be a lot further along in dilution? Because I last added 30 grams of water and it made no difference.


----------



## IrishLass (Mar 2, 2016)

Lenarenee- can you post the recipe and the exact amounts of oil/glycerin and Koh that you used in order to make the paste, and also how you proceeded to make it? Something just seems very off to me.


IrishLass


----------



## Susie (Mar 2, 2016)

I am going to second the request for the entire recipe in weights.  Just to be sure, mind you.


----------



## The Efficacious Gentleman (Mar 2, 2016)

Or if the recipe isn't available, I'll take some scones while I wait.


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 2, 2016)

Total 11 ounces oils, soapcalc with koh at 100% purity, used 97% koh, 1% sf

70% oo  
20    co
10    castor  

part = 62.49
Dissolved 1 part lye and 1 part water, added 2 parts glycerin, lye rounded down, water and glycerin rounded up

added to measured oils, sb'ed until obvious saponification, let it sit and visited with a whisk occasionally until taffy stage. No zap, we both went to bed.

Morning: nice stiff paste, began dilution using mason jar water bath method, and .5 water to 1 paste.

3 hours in - added .25 water to 1 paste with 3% sl added. Turned off heat to water bath. 

End of day 1

Is that enough information?


----------



## IrishLass (Mar 2, 2016)

Thanks, Lenarenee!  That helped!

You have 5% more olive oil in your recipe than I normally use in mine. Generally speaking, the more olive oil in a liquid soap recipe, the more dilution water it will need. The recipe I use contains 65% OO, 25% CO and 10% castor oil, and it dilutes to a beautifully viscous honey-like consistency with 1 part paste to .75 parts water. 

If I understood correctly, you are now up to .75 parts water to 1 part paste, and the paste is stubbornly hanging on. Knowing that and all of the above, the answer now is clear and simple...the higher % of OO in your recipe is is making your paste thirsty for more water, and that's simply and precisely all you need to do- just add more water since .75 parts water to 1 part paste has shown itself to not be enough. You may need to go 1 part water/1 part paste, or even higher, but start slow just in case it's not much higher.


IrishLass


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 2, 2016)

IrishLass said:


> Thanks, Lenarenee!  That helped!
> 
> You have 5% more olive oil in your recipe than I normally use in mine. Generally speaking, the more olive oil in a liquid soap recipe, the more dilution water it will need. The recipe I use contains 65% OO, 25% CO and 10% castor oil, and it dilutes to a beautifully viscous honey-like consistency with 1 part paste to .75 parts water.
> 
> ...



Thanks Irish lass.  This is day 3 of dilution and I am way beyond .75 dilution. My best estimate is 4 parts water to 1 part paste. Since the paste had spent so much time heated it certainly lost a lot of moisture despite being covered.

I ditched all caution and soaping procedure and just went with my instinct. I added an addition 1% sl and repeatedly tossed in unmeausured water and stirred.  When I thought it looked "right", I turned on the crock pot and left for 90 minutes.

When I came back, I had liquid soap!!!!!!  I'm working now so can't do anything more with it.


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 2, 2016)

The foamy head on the soap actually got thicker in the last few hours. I poured off a lot of the liquid soap, added more water to the foam and turned off the crock pot. Is the foam supposed completely dissolve?


----------



## IrishLass (Mar 3, 2016)

If there's enough dilution water present, it will dissolve either completely, or at least near enough to complete (just mere wisps). You can help to knock some of it down with a spritz or 2 of alcohol from a spray bottle, but don't go overboard or it will thin the soap out. Once the foam dissipates to about 1/4" - 1/8", some people just scoop it off and call it done. I like to wait until I just have mere wisps myself, and then knock them out with a spritz of alcohol.


IrishLass


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 3, 2016)

IrishLass said:


> If there's enough dilution water present, it will dissolve either completely, or at least near enough to complete (just mere wisps). You can help to knock some of it down with a spritz or 2 of alcohol from a spray bottle, but don't go overboard or it will thin the soap out. Once the foam dissipates to about 1/4" - 1/8", some people just scoop it off and call it done. I like to wait until I just have mere wisps myself, and then knock them out with a spritz of alcohol.
> 
> 
> IrishLass


 

By your above comment, I must have still been very deficient in dilution water. I poured off about 6 volume ounces of liquid soap, and still had a lot of foamy head. Added 3 volume ounces of water over the course of a couple hours and let it warm in the crock pot.

The ls I poured this morning is too thick to bottle - it's almost like a gel. Can I simply add water to this cooled soap to thin it? Or does it need to be heat to "accept" the water?

I'm also wondering if pouring off the liquid soap from the foam head is a good idea? Does it leave a disproportionate mix of superfat components? Does that cause the thicker gel type soap? (The first bottle of soap I bottled is thick and rich, but dispensable. No gel)

Also, this batch of soap has been subject to heat for about 15 hours...does that affect the end product?


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 4, 2016)

I finally got every last bit diluted last night!!

I've washed hands with it several times and I love it!  Why didn't I try this sooner?? Huh? Why didn't you all tell me about the wonders of liquid soap? It's better than my tallow/shea soap for all the dozens of times I wash my hands in a day.

Dare it say it?  It's...._moisturizing_. I swear!

Dilution still stumps me, so I'm going to have to make some more! (gonna need more bottles...hello Amazon)


----------



## Susie (Mar 4, 2016)

It is a good idea to divide your paste up into separate containers. (Ziploc bags work fine if the paste is cool.)  Then you don't have to have so many bottles.  Once you figure out your dilution ratio, you can write that on each bag.


----------



## lenarenee (Mar 7, 2016)

Susie said:


> It is a good idea to divide your paste up into separate containers. (Ziploc bags work fine if the paste is cool.) Then you don't have to have so many bottles. Once you figure out your dilution ratio, you can write that on each bag.


 
Thanks Susie - and thank you so much for your previous comments which I never got around to acknowledging!  I'm going to do that next time I make gls AND the...what did you call it....soap to go?  I had a bad reaction to some public bathroom soap that took 2 months to fully heal because anything synthetic would irritate it including my scented bars and homemade lotion. Good thing I had unscented soaps and body butter.

But your idea of having a tube to carry around is going to be a godsend to me!  I may have to call it "SusieSoap!"!


----------

