Shampoo instead of castor oil? Big mix up.

[techiemeka]

Hi.

I've been making soap with out much issue and with great success for several years now, however today I messed up big and hoping someone here with great chemical smarts (Deeann?) could chime in.

I substituted a surfactant shampoo for castor oil. They are in the same shape bottle and similar in colour and were on my table at the same time (good lesson here!). I got much of it out but not nearly enough and then put in the castor. I decided to go ahead to see what would happen. The batter went to trace very quickly and I barely got it into the molds. Some of the batter on the bottom of the pot was jelly like.

My question is what does anyone think will happen in terms of lye heavy etc or any other thoughts? I'm thinking that there will be lye heavy pockets where the it mixed with the shampoo as well as heavy where the oil mix was not high enough.. Obviously I'm not going to use this with out really testing it out. Right now the soap in the molds is heating up normally although perhaps on the hotter side, with a very light expansion compared to my normal recipe.

Shaking my head at this stupid mistake. Also think it's a bit funny - my husband laughed and commented on the increased lather potential [emoji12]

Thanks all!

 

[atiz]

What % of shampoo did you end up using in the recipe?
There are people who make hybrid bars (I'm also interested but haven't tried it yet), in which you add in surfactants to the CP batter. Some people really seem to like the results, so it can definitely be done even intentionally.
Whether your soap ends up being lye heavy will depend on the % and also on your superfat %.
This is at least an interesting experiment, you might even like the result!

 

[techiemeka]

Castor should have been at 10%. I think I got about half of the shampoo out. SF was 5%. Hadn't heard of hybrid bars so I suppose there is hope yet. Thanks!