Hi, Iam talking about making a gel from KOH soaping. Yes I am thinking if it is possible to make it like the shower gel that we get from store..
The best way i personally found was:
When your diluting your soap paste, make a strong soap solution, by mxing equal parts soap paste to water. First you bring say 16oz of water to a boil, when boiling reduce heat to a min simmer, then add your 16oz soap paste, cover, let stand for 10 min, then start working your paste in the hot water with a wooden/plastic spoon, breaking it up and mixing it. Because you are tryin g to make a strong soap solution it will become really hard to dissolve the final bits and peices of soap paste, this is were you need an electric hand blender, pulse the soap soltion to dissolve the soap several times. Once you can not see any soap pieces floating around, put solution in desired containers and let cool, ounce the solution reaches room temperature it should be like a gel consistancy. Sometimes when your using a electric blender it will cuase a TON of suds and amke it hard to see the solution while your trying to dissolve it, so the best thing is a little spray bottle with ethonol/vodka/or even rubbing alcohol. By spraying the sudz, they will dissloce back in to the liquid, all the alcohol with evapourate do to the heat, so do not worry about having a product with alcohol in it. This is the best method to making a
clear gel out of real soap, then you could colour it and scent it as it cools. Keeping in mind you need to use the right oils to produce a clear gel from real soap, oils like palm kernal/ shea butter tend to turn soap cloudy if used in high ratios.
I tried using things like salt, which turns it cloudy and settels to the bottom eventually, it also is limited in how thick it becomes, after a certain point it will not become any thicker no matter how much salt you use.
Xanthan Gum only works if your solutions is very diluted with 80% or so being water, as it need the water to gel, then your solution is so diluted that it barely sudz or bubbles when you use it, it also gets a slimey feel. If you try adding it to a strong soap solution, it just settles on the bottom as sediment.
Now if your not concerned about getting clear gel, then you have even more options, like addind Ceytl alcohol which will kinda pearlize it and thincken it nicely as well as add conditioning properties.
Or you can add some grated Naoh soap bars of any choice depending if their coloured or scented, this will thicken it up as well and also add extra bubles and lather as Koah soaps are naturally more lathery and bubblier then KOh soaps and make the lather and bubbles more stable. By adding Naoh soap to KOH soap, it keeps it from trying to revert back to a solid and keeps it liquidfied, but it will also cloud your product, so if your goal is clear like in the store or creamy like in the store will determine what you do.
I personally liked the ceytl alcohol and I even added some sulfinated castor oil fro extra conditioning, and adding grated Naoh.
Holy Smokes, sorry for all the spelling errors!!
