Experimenting with Zany's No Slime Castile

[tashiany]

Needless to say, ZNSC is one of everyone's most favorite threads, and mine as well.
In addition to the great, true and tried recipe, it is very helpful, has tons of good ideas and good advice, highly inspirational, and generally makes you (me) want to just go and make some soap, which I'm mostly convinced is a good thing

Last time I was reading it, a few months back, I could not help getting up right away and making a small experiment. Masterbatching NaOH, I made five small batches, using:
Olive (100)
olive (90) castor (10)
jojoba (90) castor (10)
jojoba 100
Almond (100)

Unfortunately, I didn't try almond-castor (I might have simply run ouat of dishes )
I made two bars of each, and cured them for five to six months., testing occasionally. Currently, the results are as follows:

Olive (100)- nice bubbles, quite stable but small, feels a bit dry-draggy on the skin (might improve with curing).
olive (90) castor (10)- more stable, bigger bubbles, very soothing to the skin
jojoba (90) castor (10)- very nice soap, great suds and feels good.
jojoba 100- feels slimy, hardly any suds
Almond (100)- same as jojoba 100, not as slimy but hardly any suds.

Since they have not been in use, I can not tell whether they are going to be slimy, but trust me, I will.
I put it here in Zany's advice, hopefully it might be helpful to someone (or to me, if I lose my notes).

 

[AliOop]

Thank you for sharing this. I had no idea that jojoba and castor would make a nice soap!

 

[tashiany]

Actually I was very surprised too, to the point where I went back to my notes to make sure I didn't mix up the numbers on the soaps.
But Indeed it's a very nice soap, although now that we're discussing, I remember it did take it several days to get to traces. Even after I though it had traced and had already poured in into the mold, it kept separating and I actually kept mixing it inside the mold.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm really surprised with the jojoba as well. The thing is that jojoba is, chemically, not a fat (triglyceride), but a wax (unusually low saponification value!). It does react with lye, giving soap (sodium salts of fatty acids) – but unlike regular oils/fats not glycerol as a side-product, but a long-chain alcohol. These are insoluble in water, and I'd have guessed they ruin lather, cleansing properties and hardness, just like excessive superfat does.

Either this is not quite as dramatic as it sounds, or the castor oil (± ZNSC tuning) really works wonders to mitigate these issues.

There are a few other sources for high-jojoba soap out there:
http://curious-soapmaker.com/big-test-100-one-oil-soaps-part-i.htmlhttps://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-...ks/single-oil-cold-process-soap-lather-tests/but they agree with the longstanding agreement that soap is not an appropriate place for jojoba oil.

Great finding in any case! Thank you I'm tempted to reproduce this now (the CP jojoba batter separation issues sound like a job for HP to shine).

 

[tashiany]

Thank you for writing your thoughts, TesolvableOwl!
I definitely intend repeating that, this is not a finding that can go by just like that. Maybe in some way or another there has been a mixup, so it's important for me to validate. I'm starting to suspect there has been some mixup, and plan to repeat it this coming weekend. So If you would like to wait until next week before you try, so to avoid wasting materials. I will come back to report my results, and make sure to include pics.

HP sounds like a great idea for that problem! might try that this time

 

[ResolvableOwl]

My impatience won, so I made some TNSJ (Tashiany's No Slime Jastile) right now!
Tbh, it was also to use up some remainders of nearly empty jojoba and castor oil bottles . The first thing I noticed was that the jojoba/castor blend is not clear, but stays slightly turbid even when stirred and left overnight, like some extra extra virgin olive oils, or RBO in the fridge. There was some sediment at the bottom of the jojoba bottle, though, maybe it was just that, idk.

Anyway, making the soap from these “troublesome” ingredients was remarkably straightforward. SBing reached medium trace in less than a minute, much quicker than I feared from recollecting all the issues everyone is reporting from pure jojoba soap. Easy to work with, with a very smooth consistency between yoghurt and peanut butter. I felt no urge to speed up things with HP. We will see if everything stays that well-behaved, or if there is a rude awakening.

Probably related, the exceptionally low SAP of jojoba means that the batter calls for mere 12.7%TOM water (pure OO: 22.9%TOM), i. e. the batter has about as much water to start with as a cured soap usually has. On top of this, jojoba isn't a proper oil (triglyceride), so the glycerol content is even lower, about a sixth of regular soap, but instead, it'll have a ton of fatty alcohols (unsaponifiables).

I split the batter into two, and added ZNSC faux sea water concentrate to one half, so that I can rate the performance of the oil blend, and the chloride/carbonate addition independently. 1:1.7 lye (37% NaOH), 0% superfat, 85 jojoba + 15 castor.

Right now for CPOPing in the oven…

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Here we are! Still quite soft, but heh, it's mere 21 hours after making. I absolutely love how these bars look. Velvety lustre, semi-translucent, and a lovely colour. Precise cast into the silicone mould, nothing got stuck in there. And look at the edges, how razor-blade thin the soap dribbles have come out.

Carving the names into the top faces, I noticed no large difference between the two recipes, if at all the TNSJ is a tiny bit further into hardening, but this might just be from more intense stirring prior to cast. We'll have to judge in a few weeks…

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I just ran into this excellent thread while looking for something else. Any updates? I wish I had time to try TNSJ myself! SO VERY INTERESTING!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Wow you're more impatient than even me! That soap has been unmoulded YESTERDAY, you should know best that it needs at least a few days more until one can say anything about it.

ETA: I just realised that you might as well have referred to @tashiany . Haven't seen her around here for a few weeks, which happens to be some decent amount of time to estimate the effect of long-term curing

 

[Zany_in_CO]

That soap has been unmoulded YESTERDAY, you should know best that it needs at least a few days more until one can say anything about it.

Um, I start using a 2 oz. sample, poured separately, the day after unmolding. My bars are actually ready for shipping at the 2-week mark. Of course, the longer cure the better. BUT. The other part of the title, "No Slime" could be "Quick Cure" but I knew better than to stick that in the title! (Referring to ZNSC, not TNSJ, of course.)

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Nope, just tested it. If it were butter, I'd call it at the optimal temperature for spreading a bread. But faaaaar away from anything you'd call a bar of soap. No noticeable difference between JojobaCastor and TNSJ. Still zappy after four days, I guess the jojoba really doesn't qualify as a base oil for the impatient

ETA: Thinking again about the zappiness, it'd might well be the case that saponification is finished, but I (or soapmakingfriend) overestimated the SAP of my batch of jojoba oil, and I'm just at slightly negative SF. One time you'd need some soda ash, there is not the faintest trace of it

 

[LynetteO]

@Zany_in_CO I don’t know if this qualifies as a ZNSC experiment but…
After completing a gorgeous batch using the ZNSC faux seaH2O w/ 80%OO, 10%CO & 5% castor; I attempted to make a blue soap scented with eucalyptus mint that my nephew requested. Using Mica, it came out looking light green.
Tried a 2nd batch with diff oils (GV short, RBO, CO, castor) but DID use the ZNSC faux seaH20. Used even more blue mica, a bit of food coloring & a splash of glycerin color. Came out looking the color of florist foam green. Did I overlook a reference to sea water distorting color? Or could the F/O be culprit even tho isn’t supposed to?

 

[AliOop]

Interesting... I haven't had that happen with my ZNSC, which was 75% OO, 20% CO, 5% castor. Used light OO and a non-discoloring FO, and the bars turned out a lovely cream color.

 

[LynetteO]

Interesting... I haven't had that happen with my ZNSC, which was 75% OO, 20% CO, 5% castor. Used light OO and a non-discoloring FO, and the bars turned out a lovely cream color.

Yes, my 1st batch, un-colored turned out a beautiful creamy color. Oh well, smells good & know it’s going to be a great just not blue apparently.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Did I overlook a reference to sea water distorting color?

I've noticed that sea water tends to fade natural colorants over time.
I don't use micas but most melted oils appear some shade of yellow or amber.
Yellow + blue = green Adding 1 teaspoon - 1 tablespoon PPO (per pound of oils) of White Kaolin Clay may lay down a foundation for truer colors.

Or could the F/O be culprit even tho isn’t supposed to?

Some FOs do tend to do that. ☹

 

[ResolvableOwl]

TNSJ Update (Age: 118 days)

Quick recap: This is 85% jojoba + 15% castor oil, regular recipe (J+C) in competition with ZNSC modifications aka added salt + sodium bicarbonate (TNSJ). Some 4 months into cure, it's time to evaluate how they're doing.

(left: TNSJ, right: J+C)

Look & Feel: Both have a semi-translucent, waxy look, are soft to the touch but not sticky. Little has changed over the months. The TNSJ is a tiny bit more yellowish and opaque. By now they are hard enough to appear ready to test (still easy to indent with a fingernail). No zap (but a weird, greasy mouth feel; but alas, neither ingredient is exactly rated safe for human consumption anyway).

Hand wash test: They behave exactly identical. They aren't much more slippery than the average bar of soap, nothing to complain about (but this is highly remarkable, see below why). Neither showed only the faintest trace of castile slime effects. Once wet, they seem to attract moisture and the surface gets covered in a soft layer of jelly-like appearance, but, as said, no comparison to olive oil soaps. This jelly is easily beaten up to a lather that is respectable, though not mindblowing. Large bubbles, modestly creamy, and easy to wash off. Immediately after washing the skin feels clean and fresh. But I've noticed that after drying up, some tightness emerges, as if I wore thin latex gloves. And the skin feels ever so slightly sticky.

Verdict: Jojoba is a viable oil for soapmaking. It does not ruin lather (at least paired with that amount of castor oil) – on the contrary, it still goes strong where other, more mainstream oils might struggle. If it is sensible to use jojoba is an utterly different question. FWIW, the weird skin condition limits its use as a base oil (the price anyway); but as a specialty ingredient (e. g. to replace cetyl alcohol) – why not?

And, to come back to the actual purpose of this thread: In this specific, very exotic setting, there is no “ZNSC effect” to speak of. It doesn't make things better, nor worse.

I'm very curious how this compares to the observations of @tashiany