Suddenly Soggy Foot Soak--A tale of woe

SomethingGoodAustin · Dec 2, 2014

The weirdest thing happened the other day and I'm hoping someone here can help me figure it out... I was making bath salts and foot soaks to sell in gift sets at a craft fair. I started by making a masterbatch of bath salts using an approximately 3-3-3 mixture of epsom salt, Dead Sea salt, and sea salt and a small amount of jojoba oil. I took a third of this mix (about 24 oz) and added a cup of baking soda. This _was_ going to be a base for a foot soak fizzy. I set it aside to work on something else and covered it with plastic wrap in the meantime.

A night or so later, I uncovered the mix to start working with it. Right away, I noticed it was clumpy and somewhat damp, even though the humidity hadn't been that high, maybe about 50% (I'm in Texas). I started to work it with my (dry) hands to break up clumps, and it seemed to actually get more moist. Very very strange. I added about a teaspoon and a half of neem oil, stirred it with a fork, divided the mix in half, and then scented each half with essential oils. I added NO other liquid, but as I continued to work it, it became almost a sticky paste--not wet, mind you--just damp, about as damp as you'd want a bath bomb to be. Perhaps foolishly, I added my citric acid and started stirring. Fizz, fizz, fizz. I frantically started tossing in additional salt, Kaolin clay, oat powder--anything to redistribute the moisture.

Anyone remember the Sorcerer's Apprentice? It was totally like that. Wetter and fizzier, no matter what. And oily. I tried to squeeze the mix into molds, but even though it was wet enough to fizz, it wasn't wet enough to hold together. I finally gave up and covered the bowls with paper towels so I wouldn't have to look at the sad mess.

Now I have two dishes full of congealed (but really good-smelling) stuff that is as hard as a rock, still slightly sticky, doesn't fizz, and seems immovable--it'll take a chisel to get it out of these bowls.

So..... Anyone wanna try and troubleshoot this mess? Thoughts on what might have happened? Has this happened to anyone here before--salts becoming suddenly soggy without actual water being added?

SoapStephanie · Apr 1, 2015

No help yet? BUMP!

Adding the citric acid after your mix got to a wet paste maybe wasn't such a good idea..

That makes sense to me.
But I don't know about the jojoba oil. I've never tried that before. Maybe that, and not drying the mix, was the problem?

Anyone else has any ideas?

powderpink · Apr 1, 2015

no chemistry background here or anything, so maybe someone else can back me up/correct me,
but could it be the minerals of the different salts reacting to one another?

I had something similar happem to me when I made some bath salts with epsom salts and magnesium chloride flakes. The minute the MgCl flakes came into contact with the epsom salt it started to get damp.

shunt2011 · Apr 1, 2015

I only have a guess that maybe it's the dead sea salt and the jojoba oil causing your problem. Not for sure though.

hmlove1218 · Apr 1, 2015

It's the dead sea salts. The mineral make up is drawing moisture from the air. I'd keep them to a minimum of you want to keep using them. Like 10% of less.

And I wouldn't put them in anything but bath salts. Nothing that would fizz or has dry ingredients because it can completely ruin them.

SomethingGoodAustin · Apr 1, 2015

I'd given up on this post, so thanks for the bump!

I've used a variety of oils in bath bombs and fizzies over the years with no real issues. Given that I had made a successful batch of foot fizzies a few months prior with a similar formula but with sea salt in place of DSS, I arrived at the same conclusion as hmlove1213--DSS is the problem. I don't know exactly why it happened the way it did, but I like to keep things simple and low-stress whenever possible. So no more fizzies with DSS for me.