# Dilution



## AF_SOAP (Dec 22, 2015)

I was reading around and saw some people dilute with all vegetable glycerin.   Has anyone tried this?


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## IrishLass (Dec 22, 2015)

Are you talking about making the initial paste with water and then diluting with glycerin? If so, I think I may have heard of some people on another forum doing that, if I remember rightly (this was a few years ago, so I could be remembering it wrong). Anyway, I myself actually do the opposite: I use all vegetable glycerin to make the initial paste, but when I dilute it, I use distilled water. 


IrishLass


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## DeeAnna (Dec 22, 2015)

I used a mixture of glycerin and water to dilute a small batch of paste. Compared with water only for dilution, the glycerin-water mix reduced the lather. 

Based on that, I'm not really quite sure why you would want to dilute with pure glycerin. What are the benefits from your reading, AF?


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## AF_SOAP (Dec 22, 2015)

Benefits of thickness.  I can't find the article now, of course. I use distilled water at the dilution and it worked fine. But I read either full glycerin or half and half for dilution.  I may try it and give it a go.  Who doesn't always need more soap!


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## DeeAnna (Dec 22, 2015)

One tip is to not take the dilution rate in a recipe as gospel truth. Sneak up on the dilution a little at a time and you'll stand a better chance of getting the thickness you want. It's easy to get impatient and overshoot.

Another is to use a high % of oleic acid in your LS recipes. You'll see a wider range of water concentration where the LS is a nice consistency. It is the nature of oleic acid to be thick over a wider range of water %.


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## Susie (Dec 23, 2015)

On of the benefits of liquid soap is that you can dilute as much or as little as you like at the time.  So, just dilute a little with glycerin to see if you like it.  I did not, but you may.


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## AF_SOAP (Dec 26, 2015)

Has anyone tried to use like 90% koh and 10% Naoh?  I just did this and will wait to see the results but was curious if anyone else tried it.


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## DeeAnna (Dec 26, 2015)

Mixed results, quite frankly. Some people swear by it, but others don't see much difference.

There's the same variation in reaction for mixed lyes in shave soaps. Some swear by a mix of KOH and NaOH; others can't see a great benefit to that vs. KOH only.


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## Susie (Dec 27, 2015)

I have made every mixture (in 10% increments) of KOH and NaOH from 90:10 to 20:80.  The only benefit I found is that NaOH is cheaper than KOH. But, what is it you are trying to accomplish?


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## AF_SOAP (Dec 27, 2015)

Well thickness.  Strange thing is when you read a body wash from the store it sometimes has both koh and Naoh.  The soap I just had was supppppper thick.  So it seems I may just be doing this from now on.  I actually used 1 part naoh to 2 parts koh.

It actually turned out great.


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## IrishLass (Dec 27, 2015)

Depending on your formula, you can get liquid soap that's as thick as honey, or even sweetened condensed milk, I daresay- with using only KOH. My cocoa-shea GLS formula with KOH-only is super-thick with the consistency of sweetened condensed milk poured straight from the can. As a matter of fact, if it were any thicker, I am quite certain it would not dispense out of my pump dispenser. lol


IrishLass


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