The key to making low sweat mp

[seven]

calling all soapers who made their own base i live in hot and humid climate, therefore, a ls base is a MUST for me, otherwise i'm screwed.

before, i came to the conclusion that glycerin is the key to ls, but lately i was reading around ingredient lists for ls base, and it seems that i could be wrong.

now i am more confused than before..

is it the proportion of solvents? choice of base oils? which is it? *scratch head* :crazy:

also, i am not chem savvy, so i was hoping perhaps the more knowledgeable ppl are willing to shed a light in this topic, pretty please?

so far i am using the combo of pg, sorbitol, glycerin (and sometimes capb). i understand that glycerin is a humectant and draws water from moisture. sorbitol is basically a sugar solution, could this also be a factor?

 

[RhondaJ]

I would love to know more on this topic myself I'm just starting to experiment with making my own M&P base and living in FL, low sweat is definitely a must for me as well.

 

[seven]

right now, it is rainy season, and my usually okay recipe is a bit wet at the moment. i've eliminated glycerin altogether, and it still has dew. info on the www is pretty limited about ls base, but from reading ingredient lists at bb, wsp, etc i found that glycerin is still present in their ls bases, and although i cannot see the actual percentage, it is named not at the end of the list.

 

[Dorymae]

Well I did a google search and came up with this recipe:

http://oilandbutter.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-to-make-your-own-melt-and-pour-soap.html

I have never tried it and the description says this is made with a 100% ppo of glycerin. It also says it can be made with only 25% glycerin.

This is different from most recipes I've seen, it might be worth trying out with the 25% in a small batch. I was thinking perhaps the solvent with the glycerin is what causes the sweat. (as usual - could be way off base) This uses glycerin as the solvent. Might give you a better idea for what you need to do, if nothing else.

 

[seven]

thank you Dorymae, i have seen that one a while ago but have not tried it. i am scared of glycerin for mp to be honest, lol... i do have an idea though, i think i will do a series of small batches using only 1 solvent, and see which one sweats the least. seeing your post gave me that idea, so thank you

 

[RhondaJ]

Right now I'm tinkering with a really basic recipe that uses more PG than Glycerin. I'm trying to keep the glycerin level down as much as possible to reduce sweating so we'll see.

I did two batches today - one using aloe juice as the liquid the other using coconut milk, same exact oils, etc. I want to see if different additives affect sweating as well.

The batch I did the other night is holding up well so far, in the house of course...

After these are done I'm going to melt and put them in single bar molds along side some of the LS base I have that I purchased and let them all sit on the curing rack for a couple weeks and see how they compare to the purchased base.

 

[seven]

cool... i'll let you know how my experiments come out... am gonna try single solvent first and compare... my last batch was made w/o glycerin at all, and it still sweat... it IS very humid over here currently....

we will conquer this beast together RhondaJ

 

[RhondaJ]

cool... i'll let you know how my experiments come out... am gonna try single solvent first and compare... my last batch was made w/o glycerin at all, and it still sweat... it IS very humid over here currently....

we will conquer this beast together RhondaJ

Same here Seven! It's gotten better later in the day but earlier we were having 90%+ humidity, it's cooler the last couple weeks so that's a plus, I'm curious to see how these all hold up once the temps go back up as well!

Please keep me posted on how your experiments go, I love using M&P along with my CP, but hate buying it and even the LS stuff I purchase is never LS enough for FL so hopefully we can come up with something that works better!

 

[seven]

Last night i made a tester batch. Fats were: coco, stearic, myristic. Cut back the solvents to about half of what i usually did. Pg, sorbitol, minimal glycerin. No surfactant. Crock pot method.

Cutting back on the solvents has its drawbacks. Less time to work, soap formed a thin film immediately after taken out from the heat.

It is still in the mold, so will report back later re: clarity and sweating issues.



RhondaJ, yup.. I like to be in total control of my ingredients, thats why i dont like buying premade bases. Plus, i cant find a good supplier here in my country, so yeah, making them is the only way to go...

 

[seven]

6 hrs later the soap has set. Poor clarity. No sign of sweating. A good candidate for a white base but def need to work on the solvents to achieve more transparency.

Will update again tomorrow re: sweating and shrinkage (this particular formula has minimal water).

weight: 582 gr at time of writing

btw, this recipe has coco, stearic, myristic, all hard fats. i usually has some soft oils thrown in (like castor) and kept my stearic at around 45%. this time it was only 40% but the soap was pretty hard. i will do another experiment, tweaking the numbers a bit. from the looks of it, those 3 fats are good candidates for ls bases. last batch i did was already sweating while it was still in the mold.

 

[RhondaJ]

btw, this recipe has coco, stearic, myristic, all hard fats. i usually has some soft oils thrown in (like castor) and kept my stearic at around 45%. this time it was only 40% but the soap was pretty hard. i will do another experiment, tweaking the numbers a bit. from the looks of it, those 3 fats are good candidates for ls bases. last batch i did was already sweating while it was still in the mold.

My last 3 test batches were just castor, co, and stearic - the stearic was at 30% with 1 part glycerin to 4 parts PG...we've had quite a bit of rain the last 2 days and I have bars stored in the bathroom....and I'm not seeing any sweating so far.

The batch using aloe as the liquid isn't all that bubble though so I'm not real fond of that one! The other 2 were beer as liquid in one and coconut milk as liquid in the other, both bubble nicely ( for a M&P ) and seem pretty hard.

The beer soap is a translucent brown, need to get a cheaper, lighter beer and give it a whirl I think.

The coconut milk one is a yellowish translucent.

If I cut off a 1/4 to 1/2 inch wedge you can see thru them both pretty well, so they'd be "ok" for say doing embedded paper if I could get the beer one lighter in color. Not going to work so well if you want clear all the way thru the bar though.

It IS setting up pretty darn fast though and I too have the thin film almost immediately, so I'll be tinkering again this weekend as well