peace-love-and-suds
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Hi guys. I decided to change up a recipe for liquid soap and experiment with superfatting at 15% with the following:
60% hemp seed
25% coconut
15% Castor
This was probably a mistake, although an interesting experience. Take a look at the pics for more details, but it seems like the soap kept separating into a fatty layer on the top (I'm assuming the free floating fatty acids?). I tried scooping most of it out and it seems to have made some relatively good soap with some transparency (although transparency wasn't my goal here per say). I do usually superfat with castor, but this time wanted to see what would happen with other oils. I've also noticed that mica's don't seem to mix very well with liquid soap. It keeps separating out and floating to the top while a portion of uncolored soap goes to the bottom. I noticed that when coloring, the free fatty acids color with one shade while the rest color a different shade. Might make an interesting experimental project to try to swirl these colors together and keep them from separating in two opposing directions (top/bottom). Perhaps an emulsifier of some sort would do the trick? Anyway, not my intent, just an interesting observation if anyone else wanted to experiment with it. My question is this: what happened to this batch? Are mica's not supposed to work well with liquid soap? why is it separating and what is the separation? When I scooped it all off the top and put it all in another pot, it made something else entirely. And it colored differently than the others. Perhaps this "harvest" of free fatty acids is desirable in some way? Maybe it would make a good conditioner?
luckily I only colored a small portion of the main batch in case it didn't work out well. You can see the separation on the uncolored pic at the top. It is foamy looking, but alcohol does not get rid of it. It is thick, stubborn like the paste, but not paste. This layer I scooped off the top was that which I was referring to as conditioner. I forgot to mention that I used borax and a very small amount of salt. I also used 8 oz of glycerin. The paste was 5 pounds and the water ratio was about 2:1, although I boiled it down to a thicker ratio.
I'm thinking water based colorant like food coloring is the only way to go.
60% hemp seed
25% coconut
15% Castor
This was probably a mistake, although an interesting experience. Take a look at the pics for more details, but it seems like the soap kept separating into a fatty layer on the top (I'm assuming the free floating fatty acids?). I tried scooping most of it out and it seems to have made some relatively good soap with some transparency (although transparency wasn't my goal here per say). I do usually superfat with castor, but this time wanted to see what would happen with other oils. I've also noticed that mica's don't seem to mix very well with liquid soap. It keeps separating out and floating to the top while a portion of uncolored soap goes to the bottom. I noticed that when coloring, the free fatty acids color with one shade while the rest color a different shade. Might make an interesting experimental project to try to swirl these colors together and keep them from separating in two opposing directions (top/bottom). Perhaps an emulsifier of some sort would do the trick? Anyway, not my intent, just an interesting observation if anyone else wanted to experiment with it. My question is this: what happened to this batch? Are mica's not supposed to work well with liquid soap? why is it separating and what is the separation? When I scooped it all off the top and put it all in another pot, it made something else entirely. And it colored differently than the others. Perhaps this "harvest" of free fatty acids is desirable in some way? Maybe it would make a good conditioner?
luckily I only colored a small portion of the main batch in case it didn't work out well. You can see the separation on the uncolored pic at the top. It is foamy looking, but alcohol does not get rid of it. It is thick, stubborn like the paste, but not paste. This layer I scooped off the top was that which I was referring to as conditioner. I forgot to mention that I used borax and a very small amount of salt. I also used 8 oz of glycerin. The paste was 5 pounds and the water ratio was about 2:1, although I boiled it down to a thicker ratio.
I'm thinking water based colorant like food coloring is the only way to go.
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