My liquid first dish soap... Maybe my last.

[JayJay]

Hi there everybody!

Whew! I just had a marathon soap making day. I made several batches including my very first liquid dish soap. Yep, I read through that mammoth liquid soap thread and decided to jump in. I made a LS with 95% CO AND 5% castor (I was hoping to sustain the bubbles). 0% superfat. ...well I actually went -3% because I added citric acid. I also added sugar for more suds.

It turned out just fine. I diluted it at .40 in the crockpot on low. I ended up with clear as a bell colorless soap. My FO/PS80 mix added a little color but not enough to bother me.

I was so excited to make a sink of dishwater! I got lots of suds! My dishes came out super clean.

Two cons:
1. The suds die really quickly. I don't need suds but my husband likes them and I want to keep him happy so that he can keep washing the dishes!
2. It's freaking expensive! I spent $10 making 1/4 jug of dish soap. I may have to stick to traditional soap in the future.

Now that I think about it, using this stuff to wash my dishes almost feels like a waste of money. I may save it and mix it with another paste to make some hand soap or body wash. I have a 100% olive oil paste. I could mix it with this dish soap to make a nice hand wash.

 

[JayJay]

Here is a picture of the water after I had washed my soapy dishes.

 

[Susie]

My hubby likes lots of bubbles, too. And I am highly motivated to keep him happily washing...

 

[kumudini]

By adding CA, you increased the SF of your soap not decrease it to negative values. That could have affected the bubbles but in general lye based soap bubbles don't last very long, you will need surfactants for that. If you wish to pursue home made dish soap any further may be you could research surfactants and settle on something that meets enough of your criterion. I'm planning on doing it sometime soooooon. Although, I'm the one doing dishes at home and I don't mind low bubbles as long as dishes get super clean.

 

[cmzaha]

By adding CA, you increased the SF of your soap not decrease it to negative values. That could have affected the bubbles but in general lye based soap bubbles don't last very long, you will need surfactants for that. If you wish to pursue home made dish soap any further may be you could research surfactants and settle on something that meets enough of your criterion. I'm planning on doing it sometime soooooon. Although, I'm the one doing dishes at home and I don't mind low bubbles as long as dishes get super clean.

CA is used to lower the ph in place of borax in liquid soap. She would not have added to the superfat as the soap is already fully saponified and CA added in after dilution. Okay scratch that, just reread the thread and looks like she did add the CA into the batch. You are right Kimudini she would have added to the superfat and yep I would add in surfactants to help lasting bubbles. JayJay remember if you want to add in CA for Chelating you need to add in the extra lye to make, Potassium Citrate in the case of making ls with KOH. Someone please correct me if I am wrong about this

 

[JayJay]

I lowered my superfat to -3 in order to make up for the addition of CA. I calculated it to add the SF amount of lye that was neutralized by the CA. Did I do something wrong? I used SM3 plus some hand calculations to make sure that it worked out both ways.

And Yes I have some SLSA on my BB wish list. I was thinking about trying my hand at bubble bath. :mrgreen:

But still, I am not sure that I want to sink more money into this dish soap thing.

The store-bought detergent doesn't bother my husband. I wear gloves, so I am wondering why go through the expense and effort.

Laundry soap, on the other hand, is TOTALLY worth the effort. Store bought stuff had me itching under my clothes. Now that I make my own, I have no problems.

 

[kumudini]

It's just the way I read your sentence jay jay, you did not probably do anything wrong but I would still calculate extra lye for however much CA you add instead of doing lye excess and guess how much CA to add, unless you actually know how to do the math. I don't know how to.
SLSA seems to be the way to go for solid bubble bath bars as that's the only thing that's in powder form although it seems like people also use liquid surfactants which might also act as a binding agent, I'm not very sure though. For liquid soap there's a wider selection if you head over to lotion crafters, but I agree, I won't probably go that extra effort for dish soap.

 

[cmzaha]

As long as you added the CA into the initial batch before cooking you are okay. LS soapers used to use up to -13 superfat to assure clear soap then neutralized the diluted ls with citric acid solution

 

[JayJay]

I entered my recipe with 1000 grams of oil just to make the calculation easier. My recipe called for 276.45g KOH according to SM3. On paper, I added 10 grams of CA and 8 grams of extra KoH. I ended up with a calculation of 284 grams of lye. Then I went to my recipe (in SM3) and lowered the superfat number until it reached 284 grams of lye.

Then I resized the recipe by 50% (also an automatic function in SM3) and started making the soap. The process went very smoothly and it diluted to a crystal clear, colorless liquid. I used the glycerine method where you use half glycerine and half water.

Edit to add: I used the CA to reduce soap scum because I have hard water. I wasn't trying to neutralize the soap. I am not advanced enough to begin to do that.