Black Drawing Salve

[Soapy Gurl]

Has anyone made this? If not, what EOs, herbs, would you recommend for drawing. It mainly is a balm that contains activated charcoal.

 

[lsg]

Here is a recipe that I have used:

2 Tablespoons Bee's Wax
3 Tablespoons Cocoa Butter
3 Tablespoons Shea Butter
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Tablespoon Vitamin E
1 Tablespoon Honey Powder or Honey
2 Tablespoons Activated Charcoal Powder
3 Tablespoons Kaolin Clay
Optional: Herbal Extracts, Essential Oils - depending on what you're using the salve for
2 two-ounce jars

First Step:
Put Bees wax, cocoa butter and shea butter in a small pot and heat. You want to keep it at 180 degrees for at least 15 minutes. Turn off the burner and let it sit. It should still be over 180 in 15 minutes.
Second Step:
Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until well blended.
Some grocery stores and health food stores sell honey powder. If you can't find it, you can substitute honey or just leave it out of the recipe.
Third Step:
Add any relevant herbal extracts to the formula just before you spoon it in. You want to make sure it is very cooled off before adding any extracts, essential oils, or fragrance.
Fourth Step:
Once it is smooth, spoon into 2 ounce jars.

A drawing salve sold over the counter contains the homeopathic ingredient acidum carbolicum along with herbs such as calendula and Echinacea. Other ingredients include ichthammol, sulphur and silicea.

 

[Soapy Gurl]

lsg, thank you for the recipe, it looks great! What would you recommend for EOs? It is for ingrown hairs in the bikini area. I could also do an infusion, I would need some fresher herbs. My calendula is old!

 

[judymoody]

I'm curious about this as I've only read about salves thus far. I have a few comments/questions.

It's not clear to me why you would have to heat and hold your wax and oils for that long, especially if they're refined. Wouldn't that shorten the shelf life of your salve?

Perhaps I'm missing something?

I'm also not sure about adding honey to the mix. It contains water so that potentially would provide a medium for bacterial growth and would then need a preservative. It's not readily soluble in oils. The honey powder doesn't have water but at best it would remain suspended (this might be a naive question as I haven't worked with it). Finally, if your herbal extracts are water-based, a preservative would be recommended although some extracts already contain one. I also don't know if the any water-based ingredients might seep out in the absence of an emulsifier. Maybe the charcoal and kaolin would absorb them?

So if I were doing this recipe, I'd omit the honey and extracts and use only oils and wax and keep it anhydrous.

 

[lsg]

This is a recipe I got from the Internet. I used honey powder in my salve and didn't have any trouble mixing it as I recall. I don't think I used any extracts or water in my salve. You can use essential oils such as lavender, rosemary or tea tree. Or you could infuse oil with herbs such as comfrey or calendula. Comfrey is a healing herb.

As long as you made a very small batch of salve and use it in a few days, regular honey should be fine. Honey is reputed to have antiseptic and antibacterial properties.

I think the rationale behind holding the butters at a certain temp. is probably to keep the shea butter from making the salve grainy. I probably just heated the mixture to 180* and then turned off the heat and let it set for 15 minutes. I believe that was suggested in the first post.

I am sure you can find several recipes by googling "black drawing salve and recipe." Choose one you like and amend it by adding or excluding ingredients.

You might try this method for ingrown hair:

http://www.livestrong.com/article/27536 ... rown-hair/

 

[Fragola]

Honey isn't water based, but sugar based

But wondering about the kaolin/charcoal. Doesn't it make for a clumpy application ?

Thing is I added recently a little clay to a sort of butter and it gets really clumpy on the skin (not the mixture per se, since it's properly homogenized).

 

[lsg]

If you mix the clay and charcoal in the oil before adding it to rest of the mixture, it will mix in better. I don't remember it clumping.

 

[MychelleC]

Honey is water-soluble, not oil-soluble. Therefore it will leech out of an anhydrous mixture over time. I wonder if the charcoal and clays are what is absorbing the water to keep it suspended? Interesting. It does provide a medium for bacteria, so a preservative could possibly be a contribution to a very cool salve recipe!

 

[Fragola]

Honey can be an excellent preservative

 

[Hazel]

Honey can be an excellent preservative

I wouldn't recommend trusting the honey. If someone makes the salve and gives it away for people to try, there isn't any control over how the salve will be treated. Will someone leave it open in a warm, moist environment? Will someone's hand be moist (and possibly dirty) when scooping some salve from the container? How long will container be stored and in what kind of conditions might the salve be exposed?

I can understand not using preservative if you're just making a sample batch. I've made sample batches of anhyrous products and never included preservative. But they were very small batches for experimentation (about 4 oz or so) and I kept them in a frig.