Hey everyone! I am going to make a soap paste. It uses dual lye. It is cooked in a crock pot. No color, no fragrance. With this paste, I should be able to make liquid soaps, whipped butters, etc. Do any of you use this type of paste to make soapy things? I'd like some information about your experiences using soap paste. I have no idea why this "paste soap" fascinates me. I have heard it is a money saver in that you don't have to buy bases to make products. Any help and ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks!
I use soap paste to make liquid soap, shaving soaps, and
whipped sugar scrubs (link to our long thread on that, including links to YT videos). Mine are mostly KOH and not dual lye, but it can be fun to play around with dual lye and see how it affects pastes with varying FA profiles.
One thing I will say is that sugar scrubs made with soap paste are more drying than those made with syndets. That's due to the higher pH in true soap, as opposed to the lower pH in syndets. The other benefit of syndets is the lack of soap scum, which means that they don't require a chelator. If you are using a soap paste, you really need to include a chelator because your end users may have hard water. Without a chelator, they will not only see soap scum build-up, but they will also have reduced lather, and may experience DOS, too.
I've also experimented with making sugar scrubs by mixing my soap-based paste with
this homemade syndet base. The idea was to see if I could reduce the overall cost while maintaining the quality of the product. The outcome was decent - not as nice as the syndet base, but still quite usable, and less drying than the base made with just soap paste.
HTH, and have fun!
ETA: I
never bother with cooking my soap paste. Just like CP bar soap, you can make CP soap paste. Blend to the paste stage, cover, and let it sit. Like CP bar soap, it saponifies on it's own, without the need for babysitting it over a crockpot. Mine is usually zap-free within a few hours. I typically use a 2:1:1 ratio of glycerin:water:KOH since that does speed up trace.
