Preservative and fragrance help

[ilovelasun]

I am making lotions and cremes for myself from scratch, but I am very stuck on how much preservative and fragrance to add. I get that volume and weight are different, but my scale is just not picking up 1g...I dont know what to do. Online the closest thing I could find was that 1/4 tsp is a gram, but with every element being a different weight, I dont think that is the case for germaben II. Is there such a thing as putting too much preservative in something? I really didnt want to fork out $100 for a scale to measure in .01 g, so is there an easier way for little people like me? I make stuff in increments of 100 so how do I measure out that 1% for my preservative and fragrance? Thanks for your help.

 

[Hazel]

When I made small lotion batches, I used pipettes to add the preservative and fragrance. I know it wasn't as accurate as weighing but I felt using milliliters still resulted in being close to the amount I wanted. I actually didn't use ml - I used drops and counted them. I might have added more preservative than was actually necessary but at least I didn't add way too much.

Here's a link to the type of pipettes I used. I didn't buy them from NG. I'm just using their site to show what I had.

http://www.naturesgardencandles.com/candlemaking-soap-supplies/item/pipe

According to the info on the NG site, there are 23 drops in one ml (For some reason, I have it in my mind that I came up with 29-30 drops to equal one gram.) I came up with this amount by counting the drops and then weighing the amount on a scale. So, I would use 3 drops to equal .01 gram. I have to admit my scale isn't the best so the amount I came up with could be off a bit. Possibly off a lot. It was a pain so I ended up increasing my batch sizes so I didn't have to fiddle about with the pipettes. Also, the density of the ingredient would also affect the "weight" but this still shouldn't be too far off.

BTW, you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a calculator for small batches. I've seen jewelry scales on Amazon which weigh in increments of .01 grams. They're not expensive in my opinion - maybe $10+ with varied amounts for shipping.

eta: In such small batches, I think it would be very easy to add too much preservative. Most preservatives have been well tested but some people could find them irritating. Probably wouldn't be a problem but you also don't want to add more than you really need mainly because of the cost.

 

[ilovelasun]

Thank you so much for the response. I tried the pipette thing and it didnt work for me at all. Germaben II is too thick lol. Thanks for the jewelry scale recommendation...just bought one on Amazon! You saved me a lot of headache! =)

 

[Hazel]

You're welcome! Which jewelry scale did you buy? I've been looking at them for awhile because I've been thinking it would be nice to have a small scale.

 

[ilovelasun]

I ended up getting this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P1NYE8/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

I do in increments of 100 so I thing something that does .1 is fine...they had others that do .001, but I dont need that right now. It looks small, but its fine, its only for the preservative really, hope it works out...if it doesnt its fine it was only 6 bucks and had free shipping!

 

[Hazel]

Thanks for replying. I didn't even see that one and I hope it works out great for you. If you can, I'd love to hear your opinion of it. :grin: