thicken

Hello everyone, My apologies straight away - I'm very new to this and I fear I'll be asking questions that some may find silly. I'm your classic, "Let's have a go at this" guy that fell in love with melt and pour, got halfway ok at it and now I'm obsessed. Many soaps I do are actually not bad...

I have made a liquid soap but I want to thicken it to get to a body wash/shampoo like consistency. I have tried added guar and xanthan gums and it either doesnt thicken enough or gives it a very chunky consistency. I have also been advised to try salt and when I added salt in, the base separated...