Overshooting cleansing range

[kagey]

Hi all --
a total newbie here - but have done a lot of extensive research.. so, I'm dangerous because I think I know what I'm doing!

I'm trying to create a soap that's "stronger" than what's out there.
Stronger, as in, I'm trying to get find a way to get manly BO and deep-seated oils off hands.
So one formula will be for a CP body soap -- currently rated by soap calc as "28" in cleansing.
The other is a CP hand soap to get your hands clean -- rated "33" in cleansing.
Both are over "44" in conditioning... and I plan to superfat 5+%.

One of my first soaps had 20% CO with a cleansing rating of 18 - and it just didn't take off the stubborn oil.
In a new recipe, I'm trying babassu, murumuru and palm kernel oils to see if they're any better than CO..

Am I being too aggressive with my cleansing oils?
How bad is it to have a cleansing rating way past the 12-22 guideline?
Thanks for any input.

 

[Tara_H]

Have a look on this site for gardeners' or mechanics' soap recipes. A higher cleansing number is not necessarily what's needed to clean off stubborn dirt but there are plenty of recommendations and ideas here which will hopefully be helpful.

 

[CpnDouchette]

I agree with Tara. Higher cleansing can mean unpleasant to use rather than squeaky clean (although my husband does love my squeaky clean bars) (I find anything with a cleansing value greater than 12 unpleasant). I'd look at using exfoliators and more sugar instead.

 

[artemis]

Also look for "blacksmith" here. I think it's Earlene who makes a soap for a blacksmith.

 

[artemis]

Found it!
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/borax-hand-soap-for-blacksmith-or-other-dirty-work.61277/

 

[kagey]

Thanks guys.
Read through blacksmith, mechanics & gardener's soap threads... great discussions but
unfortuneately haven't seen the <22 cleansing rating addressed.

It seems that most soapers prefer to keep their cleansing rating low to avoid dry skin.
But a 100% CO salt bar would probably have a 67 cleansing rating. Right?
And folks who SF it by 20% say it's not drying.
So maybe we can go over the 12-22 cleansing rating guideline as long as we compensate with more conditioning ingredients?

I guess I'll just have to create single loaf versions and try them out.
No worries -- guess it's all part of a soaper's journey.
I'll post results, if anyone is interested.

 

[dibbles]

I guess I'll just have to create single loaf versions and try them out.
No worries -- guess it's all part of a soaper's journey.
I'll post results, if anyone is interested.

Yes, post results. We're always interested! Although many enjoy the testing process, many others have just had to come to terms with it as a necessary step in finding the answer to what works best for our wants/needs.

As for the cleansing rating, I'd look at trying some of the things already mentioned for the hand soap. A higher cleansing rating for oily hand washing only should be okay for that application, but I don't know if you would like it as the only soap used for hand washing. I keep a bar of my regular soap by each of the sinks, and it works just fine for general purposes and doesn't leave my hands overly dry.

For manly BO elimination, I'm not sure that just raising the cleansing number will give you the result you are looking for. This will also require testing to see what you like for your own personal use. I like bubbles and many of my soaps have 25% coconut oil, which a lot of the people here find to be too much. A typical recipe with this coconut oil amount has a cleansing value around 17 and a conditioning value around 53. FWIW, my hubby enjoys a lot of outdoor activities and he is a sweater. A normal soap recipe takes care of BO with no problem.

 

[earlene]

Thanks guys.
Read through blacksmith, mechanics & gardener's soap threads... great discussions but
unfortuneately haven't seen the <22 cleansing rating addressed.

It seems that most soapers prefer to keep their cleansing rating low to avoid dry skin.
But a 100% CO salt bar would probably have a 67 cleansing rating. Right?
And folks who SF it by 20% say it's not drying.
So maybe we can go over the 12-22 cleansing rating guideline as long as we compensate with more conditioning ingredients?

I guess I'll just have to create single loaf versions and try them out.
No worries -- guess it's all part of a soaper's journey.
I'll post results, if anyone is interested.

Kagey, is this soap for a specific man in your life who needs the extra strong cleansing? I have read some soapers say that men tend to tolerate higher cleansing numbers than some women. I cannot say for sure, as I have never personally looked into that aspect of soapmaking. I have made salt soap with 100% CO (no other oils) and salt equal to the weight of CO (so a 1:1 ratio of salt to oil by weight) and 20% SF. The problem for me, personally, is that it took about a 3-year cure before I found this soap to be tolerable. BUT I seem to be an anomaly when it comes to salt bars. Most other reports I read seem to indicate that folks like a salt bar just after a year's cure (some sooner). My skin just seems to be unhappy with the scratchiness of plain table salt, but I find many things in soap scratchy that others don't, so I may not be a good indicator. Plus I am a woman, and if your target client is a man, that's who should be testing your soap.

As far as the cleansing number for my blacksmith soap, the one I made with lard for my brother has a 14 cleansing number, but it's not the CO per se that is working to get his blacksmith hands clean, but the combination of Borax and pumice. However, you can certainly increase the cleansing number in any recipe by tweaking your recipe.

My husband was happy with soap with Borax added to it had a cleansing number of 20 (30% CO, 30% Lard, 40% Crisco; 7% SF) and made no mention of it being too drying, although that was about 5 years ago and I haven't made that recipe again because he also prefers the blacksmith soap when his hands get really dirty from working our cars.

Here is one recipe I used as a jumping off point. I changed the recipe to fit what I could easily find (lard & Crisco). I don't know what the cleansing number is for that particular soap, but if you enter the information into a lye calculator you can find that out.

As regards strong BO, I agree that just a high cleansing number is not necessarily going to be sufficient. You can wash off the odor, but as soon as the person starts sweating again, the BO comes back. Or are you saying that the soap he (?) uses doesn't remove enough BO to begin with? If that's the case, maybe salt soap would help with that. But be prepared, the BO will still come back as soon as he starts sweating again.

 

[kagey]

hey @earlene
thanks for your great posts about your blacksmith soap using borax and pumace.

the test subject for the manly BO soap is myself.
as is this kitchen soap I'm trying to develop to take off all oils, greases and smells.
I live in the south - so I'm always around humidity and when outside, sweat.
I have yet to find a soap that leaves me "squeaky clean" AND takes away all past smells.
I'm told BO is a function of moisture and bacteria -- so my soap really can't do anything about that once I step out of the shower unless I use than deoderant/ baby powder. (Although I'm considering adding Tea Tree EO and other antifungal EO in the men's shower soap... but one step at a time.) I just want a soap that takes away ALL of the past!
I'll probably add some activated charcoal as well -- but I'm not really looking for a strong exfoliating soap -- at least not more scrubby than ground walnut shells.

Since most soaps use CO for "cleansing" and I found it ineffective, I'm looking into using other saturated fat oils to create a more cleansing soap. And why not use several at the same time?
Many soapers use many soft oils and butters in their soaps to condition (many which offer similar fatty acid properties) -- why not use this approach to cleaning soap?
I'm actually looking to create a soap that's closer to 60:40 for sat:unsat then what most soapers use.

Anyway, that's the plan.
While it seems most soapers have entered this journey from the "sensitive" side soaping and finding commercial soaps too harsh, I'm actually approaching it from the opposite side! The soaps I've tried aren't tough enough for what I need them to do.

Thanks again to all for comments, suggestions.
Will post results after my Murumuru Butter arrives and I've soaped.

 

[dibbles]

I don't know if I am typical, but the reason I don't combine a lot of different cleansing oils is storage and cost. I buy larger amounts of coconut oil and would prefer to use available $$ and space for butters and other oils. I don't particularly like working with palm kernel oil as I find it speeds trace, but many people like it alone or in combination with coconut oil. Babassu is very nice, but much more expensive than coconut oil.

For a different approach to controlling BO, this thread might be of interest to you.
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/de-funk-de-pits.60682/

 

[Zing]

Good luck to you on formulating your recipe. I do not know how much truth there is to this but I've read that using brewed coffee and coffee grounds can help eliminate odors. I do like to use both in my mechanic/gardener soap and my BIL who is a factory worker and mechanic swears by my soap.

Note that when you use brewed coffee (double+ strength) to replace water and mix with lye, it will smell nasty -- but will have no effect on the scent of your final product; I use essential oils for scent.

Soapers have strong opinions on coconut oil but I tolerate up to 30% -- but most of my current recipes are 20-25%. I use inexpensive oils and butters for soap -- and I use expensive butters and oil for lotion bars.

Keep us posted on your progress. The cure time sucks when you're experimenting but 3 weeks will give you a hint.

 

[kagey]

Cleansing bar update:

My murumuru butter never arrived (dang that make your own buzz) so I reformulated my "kitchen hand soap with babassu, palm kernel and coconut.
Yes, I'm using 3 oils high in lauric & myristic fats in the same way some soapers use cocoa butter and shea butters in their same formulas. I realize it's redundant - but this is a test batch to see if I can remove my kitchen hand smells and slime without resorting to borax or abrasive exfoliants. (I'm looking for a "natrual chemical" clean.)
My final cleansing rating was 30. And sat:unsat ratio was surprisingly 50:50.

Okay - so, I've CP my soap with no real challenges.
Added 4tspn of dried,used coffee grounds at trace thru a sifter (I think only 3 tspn got thru) as exfoliant
I also added sugar to my lye water and cornstarch to anchor my scents.

I unmolded my soap after 8 hours (because I could) and plan on using it starting today.
Again, I understand that it's supposed to cure for 4 weeks or more... but I don't care about the hardness/solubility of the bar right now. I want to see if this chemical formula removes the kitchen dirts. I'm thinking that since curing the soap longer only removes extra water, using it now should not affect performance. (But I might be wrong.)

I'm attaching my soap calc rating to give you an idea of what I was talking about.
The condition score is 48 - which is well in line with a good conditioning bar. Plus, I SF to 7%.
I tweaked my recipe until I got that magic 160 INS number... I don't know what that does but it wasn't that difficult to reach. Although, I did workt to keep my Linoleic score below 15.

Here's something interesting that I've never heard soapers talk about:
When I add up the Lauric, Myristic, Palmitic, Stearic, Ricinoleic, Oleic, Linoleic & Linolenic scores - I typically come out with the number 97. (On rare occassions it's 95 or 96... but mostly 97.) In this recipe, it's 95. So what does that mean?
Well, to me, it meant that fatty acid formulating is a zero sum game: if you want a more conditioning bar (higher oleic & linoleic scores) then you have to give up bubbles (palmitic & stearic) and cleansing (lauric & myristic).

Of course, these score are a bit deceptive as many have pointed out because a "0" Castille bar still cleans... I guess this is where science meets art, and not all soap qualities will be revealed on paper -- but from a chemistry POV, I found this to be a good starting point.

I plan on using this soap myself and distributing it to others to test and report back about "dryness." I substituted coconut for murumuru and put it at under 10% so I can see if babassu and palm kernel would do a better job at cleaning than my last kitchen soap.
If any experienced soapers (who responded earlier) are interested in evaluating this soap, (PM me) I'd be happy to share a sample to see what your evaluation might be. My under 3lb loaf made a little more than a dozen bars -- but I can always make another batch if necessary.

Thanks again for all thoughts and suggestions.
I'm on a mission. It's great to have wise and helpful advisors along my journey.
best,
kg

 

[penelopejane]

I don’t go by the numbers (gives me a headache just reading about it and never works for olive oil soaps) but a 30/30/30/10 olive/palm/coconut/castor soap is an excellent place to start for a hard, squeaky clean feel bar that guys love.

 

[earlene]

There is a soaper here, @cmzaha, I think, who combines CO & PKO for a 'better' or more tolerable cleansing. I have made a couple of soaps using her reports as a guideline. So far, I have not spent enough time testing them to report (too much else is going on in my life of late).

I haven't actually used babassu in soap as yet as far as I recall (but maybe once & I just don't recall - my notebook would tell me but I'm not near it atm). I love it in deodorant, as it does not stain clothes the way many other oils do. But that is another thread altogether (and a very long, although extremely informative one here.)

As to BO, I notice that there are many factors that can alter or worsen BO, besides hot weather & humidity, such as diet, weight loss, medications even. Finding internal ways to reduce the odors of sweat can a difficult process, of course, but might be worth investigating.

Regarding adding things that reduce odor to your soap: I am not totally convinced that it works that well to add them to soap as we don't leave soap on our bodies long enough to pull away odors. Also, even though coffee grounds do pull away a certain amount of odor in some situations, a strong Fragrance Oil is not removed by virtue of coffee grounds being present in a coffee soap.

I have made soap with Tea Tree Oil and it does temporarily leave a sort of medicinal scent (watch your safe usage rates for all EOs), but I cannot say for sure that it truly eliminates or prevents odor.

Be careful not to add too much Activated Charcoal because it will not only produce a grey lather, it drips that dark color all over your sink or tub or shower, and in a white washcloth leaves a dingy color that is somewhat annoying to the fastidious launderer. In other words, lots of after-wash-up washing up is required.

hey @earlene
thanks for your great posts about your blacksmith soap using borax and pumace.

the test subject for the manly BO soap is myself.
as is this kitchen soap I'm trying to develop to take off all oils, greases and smells.
I live in the south - so I'm always around humidity and when outside, sweat.
I have yet to find a soap that leaves me "squeaky clean" AND takes away all past smells.
I'm told BO is a function of moisture and bacteria -- so my soap really can't do anything about that once I step out of the shower unless I use than deoderant/ baby powder. (Although I'm considering adding Tea Tree EO and other antifungal EO in the men's shower soap... but one step at a time.) I just want a soap that takes away ALL of the past!
I'll probably add some activated charcoal as well -- but I'm not really looking for a strong exfoliating soap -- at least not more scrubby than ground walnut shells.

Since most soaps use CO for "cleansing" and I found it ineffective, I'm looking into using other saturated fat oils to create a more cleansing soap. And why not use several at the same time?
Many soapers use many soft oils and butters in their soaps to condition (many which offer similar fatty acid properties) -- why not use this approach to cleaning soap?
I'm actually looking to create a soap that's closer to 60:40 for sat:unsat then what most soapers use.

Anyway, that's the plan.
While it seems most soapers have entered this journey from the "sensitive" side soaping and finding commercial soaps too harsh, I'm actually approaching it from the opposite side! The soaps I've tried aren't tough enough for what I need them to do.

Thanks again to all for comments, suggestions.
Will post results after my Murumuru Butter arrives and I've soaped.

Cleansing bar update:

My murumuru butter never arrived (dang that make your own buzz) so I reformulated my "kitchen hand soap with babassu, palm kernel and coconut.
Yes, I'm using 3 oils high in lauric & myristic fats in the same way some soapers use cocoa butter and shea butters in their same formulas. I realize it's redundant - but this is a test batch to see if I can remove my kitchen hand smells and slime without resorting to borax or abrasive exfoliants. (I'm looking for a "natrual chemical" clean.)
My final cleansing rating was 30. And sat:unsat ratio was surprisingly 50:50.

Okay - so, I've CP my soap with no real challenges.
Added 4tspn of dried,used coffee grounds at trace thru a sifter (I think only 3 tspn got thru) as exfoliant
I also added sugar to my lye water and cornstarch to anchor my scents.

I unmolded my soap after 8 hours (because I could) and plan on using it starting today.
Again, I understand that it's supposed to cure for 4 weeks or more... but I don't care about the hardness/solubility of the bar right now. I want to see if this chemical formula removes the kitchen dirts. I'm thinking that since curing the soap longer only removes extra water, using it now should not affect performance. (But I might be wrong.)

I'm attaching my soap calc rating to give you an idea of what I was talking about.
The condition score is 48 - which is well in line with a good conditioning bar. Plus, I SF to 7%.
I tweaked my recipe until I got that magic 160 INS number... I don't know what that does but it wasn't that difficult to reach. Although, I did workt to keep my Linoleic score below 15.

Here's something interesting that I've never heard soapers talk about:
When I add up the Lauric, Myristic, Palmitic, Stearic, Ricinoleic, Oleic, Linoleic & Linolenic scores - I typically come out with the number 97. (On rare occassions it's 95 or 96... but mostly 97.) In this recipe, it's 95. So what does that mean?
Well, to me, it meant that fatty acid formulating is a zero sum game: if you want a more conditioning bar (higher oleic & linoleic scores) then you have to give up bubbles (palmitic & stearic) and cleansing (lauric & myristic).

Of course, these score are a bit deceptive as many have pointed out because a "0" Castille bar still cleans... I guess this is where science meets art, and not all soap qualities will be revealed on paper -- but from a chemistry POV, I found this to be a good starting point.

I plan on using this soap myself and distributing it to others to test and report back about "dryness." I substituted coconut for murumuru and put it at under 10% so I can see if babassu and palm kernel would do a better job at cleaning than my last kitchen soap.
If any experienced soapers (who responded earlier) are interested in evaluating this soap, (PM me) I'd be happy to share a sample to see what your evaluation might be. My under 3lb loaf made a little more than a dozen bars -- but I can always make another batch if necessary.

Thanks again for all thoughts and suggestions.
I'm on a mission. It's great to have wise and helpful advisors along my journey.
best,
kg

 

[kagey]

Update on "C30 Kitchen Soap" --

So far, so good.
I've used it after some cooking and it seems to do well.
I took a bar into the shower and got "squeaky clean" with no over drying or tightness of the skin.
I had my wife smell-test my arm pits and this "30 cleansing" soap did the trick!
No odor after exiting shower and drying off!
Compared to all the commercial mens (liquid) soaps (Dial for men, Dove Mens, Axe, etc) -- this is
the first time that all odors were fully stripped off my body--- everything!
(And this isn't even my mens soap!)

Will this cause skin dryness/tightness after prolong usage? Dunno... yet.
But note: this was not created as a shower bar. This was designed for kitchen sink usage.

Since I added sugar to the water before lye, I expected lots of bubbles.
But funny thing: I got lots of lather! More lather than bubbles in kitchen sink.
(Although, remember lots of lather and bubbles in shower.)
The photo is after just 10 seconds in the sink.
I don't know if this is what the "creamy score" of 18 is supposed to look like.
But this is what using Babassu, Palm Kernel & some Coconut Oil produces.

I'm going to put this through the ultimate test later today to see if it performs the way I designed it to.
Will report back if anyone's interested.

 

[kagey]

About my "mens soap" --- wow! so much to report!
So I made another batch using Babassu Oil... plus finally got my Murumuru Butter.
In addition, I decided to try some Neem Oil (inspired by Agent Teresa's "defunk da pits" post)
So this formula uses Babassu and Murumuru as my cleaning team.
This got a cleansing score of 29.
It also got a condition score of 48 and I was originally going to SF at 7%.
But best laid schemes of mice and men...

Man, did I screw up this batch!

when pouring soft oils - I would pour into same container and just tare the scale.
unfortunately, I overpoured some sunflower oil -- so had to go back to the Soap Calc
to make it match my already mixed lye water. Plus, used the soap calc's default 5% SF...
which means that my scores below aren't fully accurate...

My plan was to separate the batter into 3 sections:
Section 1 was to be plain
Section 2 was to get some honey (which should discolor the soap and accelerate trace)
Section 3 was to get activated charcoal

So I prepared my lye water early so I could soap at a lower temp.
I had two bowls of oils - one for my hard oils, one for my soft oils.
It wasn't until I had already mixed my soft oils that I realized that I need to use some of my Sunflower oil to pre-mix my activated charcoal. So, I simply used a little bit of my premixed soft oils with the charcoal that gave me a goopy, sticky syrup. (Is that normal?)

Finally, my Amazon package with the Murumuru butter arrived (which I had never seen, read about or worked with! NOT RECOMMENDED.)
When it arrived, I weighed it - added it to my tallow. But it was still hard.
Why isn't my Murumuru butter melting? Oh, internet says it has a HIGH melting point.
(Something I should have been prepared for.)
Easy solution right? Use the heat transfer method.
So, I added my lye water to the hard oils thinking this would melt them.
Well, it would have if my lye water was new and hot. It had cooled to 89 degrees.
Murumuru melts at 33C! What's that? 91 degrees American!
Oops.
So I microwaved it in short bursts. This seemed to work.

Back on track... Everything was fine for a whie... Got to emulsion and light trace.
But before I separate the batter, added my EO which included Sandalwood.
Does Sandalwood speed up trace?
Dunno but all the batter turned dark brown!

As I'm separating the batter - I think my answer is a YES! Uh oh!
So, I rush to pour my plain batter into the mold. It's already setting!
(Probably didn't help that I soaped at 45% lye concentration!)
I put as much activated charcoal oils into section 2, stir and pour it on top of the plain batter.
Then, section 3... forget about the honey, honey, this is Play-doh already!
I get my spatula and force as much as I can on top -- but it's really sticky. Yuk!
Welome to soap on a stick! ha ha...

I covered the mold - wrap it in towels and start cleaning up.
Not fun.
The sticky, black activated charcoal oils and all goopy saponified blackness is a pain to clean.
I used mostly paper towels to collect it and throw it in the trash.
And grease-cutting dish soap to get it off my hands... but it got everywhere!
The plastic container that I used to mix the charcoal and oils is impossible to get clean!
(I can't wait to use this soap in the shower - ha ha!)

Upon cutting it, it crumbled and broke apart easily. (I'm guessing this is a function of the soap seizure.)
Attached is a photo of my final C29 Mens Soap.
Not pretty -- but hopefully the formula will prove itself to be up to the job.
Will be testing it tonight.

 

[Tara_H]

Sounds like a dramatic session!

grease-cutting dish soap to get it off my hands...

... You were wearing gloves, right?

 

[kagey]

no... not during clean up.
once the lye water has saponified and all containers that came in contact with the lye water neutralized with white vinegar, I didn't see the point.

 

[penelopejane]

45% lye concentration might be a little fast moving for your experiments. Add FOs or EOs to the oils before the lye - that will account for any that speed trace.
Take a full mix just to emulsion. Then separate. Then colour. Activated charcoal stick blended in requires less activated charcoal than hand stirred. This is great because if you use too much it stains.

you really can’t work out if a formula is going to be “good” or not until it has cured for a minimum of 6 weeks. Soap qualities change over time.

 

[kagey]

agree that 45% lye concentration is too "aggressive."
will probably drop it back to 40% for future experiments.

Soap qualities change over time.

would love more clarification from this.
my understanding is that saponification is complete within 24-48 hours.
so no further chemical reactions will take place after this.
curing soap simply allows the water to evaporate.
so, the cleansing properties of this soap should not change... no?