Think I totally bombed first shampoo batch :(

[jessica rios]

I don't know anything really about soap making, I've bought a bunch of supplies with hopes of making my own shampoo. I wanted a thicker(more conventional) type consistency. Found a recipe online. 1/2 cup castile, 2 cups of water, essential oils. I mixed that all together, put about 2 tablespoons of jojoba, some argan oil. It was super watery. Soooo I tried salt..probably way too much(I'm sure someone is laughing while reading) That didn't do anything atttt allll. So, I grabbed xantham gum...and vegetable glycerin, immersian blender, and added a few tablespoons of glycerin, and a few teaspons of xantham gum. Then it finally got thick. I handed it to my good sport of a husband, who washed his hair with it. OMG, I thought I was going to fall over dead, I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. He had this white film all over his hair. Alls I can think o f is, maybe the huge amount of salt binded with small amount of oils? Is it fixable at all? It smells good haha. Thanks Everyone Jess

 

[KiwiMoose]

Never heard of buying castile. Castile is soap made of olive oil isn't it? Round here that's what some of us make.
What you made doesn't sound very good I'm sorry - you do need to do a bit more research.

 

[krystal klyne]

Sorry I cannot help but your story made me laugh out loud. I always get my partner to try out my recipes too, just in case!!!

 

[ThinLizzie59]

I don't know anything really about soap making, I've bought a bunch of supplies with hopes of making my own shampoo. I wanted a thicker(more conventional) type consistency. Found a recipe online. 1/2 cup castile, 2 cups of water, essential oils. I mixed that all together, put about 2 tablespoons of jojoba, some argan oil. It was super watery. Soooo I tried salt..probably way too much(I'm sure someone is laughing while reading) That didn't do anything atttt allll. So, I grabbed xantham gum...and vegetable glycerin, immersian blender, and added a few tablespoons of glycerin, and a few teaspons of xantham gum. Then it finally got thick. I handed it to my good sport of a husband, who washed his hair with it. OMG, I thought I was going to fall over dead, I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. He had this white film all over his hair. Alls I can think o f is, maybe the huge amount of salt binded with small amount of oils? Is it fixable at all? It smells good haha. Thanks Everyone Jess

Hello, and Welcome to the soap forum.
I use my own homemade soap as a shampoo. I make goat’s milk soap, without any coconut oil (coconut oil dries the skin) my goat’s milk soap also lathers but the bubbles are finer. Having used this ‘shampoo’ for months, I switched just once, to my old fairly expensive liquid shampoo just for a change. Wow! What a shock! My scalp burned and itched for most of a day. Then I remembered why I started using my own, gentle, homemade soap on my hair. Please, do a little research and find a recipe you like for soap, you may find one you like on your hair!

 

[atiz]

@KiwiMoose, people buy castile all the time -- or at least "Castile", loosely speaking. Dr. Bonner sells his soap as castile even though technically it isn't, and it is widely used for all kinds of purposes (there are like 20 different uses listed on the bottle). I used to buy it too .

@jessica rios, a lot of people here (although not everyone) will say that real soap is not good for hair because of its high alkalinity. You really should do a bit of research. If you do decide to use it, then I don't think you need to thin it out with that much water. Thickening with salt can be tricky; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but usually I have better luck using a strong salt solution (i.e., not just dumping the salt in the liquid I want to thicken but dissolving it first in a bit of warm water).

 

[DeeAnna]

Are you talking about grating up bar soap (Kirks for example) and adding water to it? As opposed to starting with a liquid soap (Dr Bronner)?

 

[Millie]

Thanks for sharing!!
I have no idea how to make shampoo. Lucky you have a willing guinea pig

 

[Kcryss]

There are a lot of crunchy diy sites/blogs that advocate making your own shampoo using castile as the base. Those same sites also have recipes for homemade diy cleaners etc. Most are castile based. Some work, some don't.

The good news is, those sites brought you here. This forum is a great place to learn about making real soap, including castile. All "soap" is made using lye. Many people seem to shy away from making soap because there is lye involved. It isn't really scary at all. I would highly recommend watching some youtube videos on making soap and check out the information on this site.

If you choose to become a soaper, happy soaping, if not at least continue researching and find what works best for you and your family.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[xavalyss]

I made shampoo bars years ago for a swap. They were quite popular with one member. Mine were CP though. Not knocking MP, it's just different.

 

[cmzaha]

First off, Welcome to the forum.
Before you get into using "Soap" as shampoo please do some serious reading and research here on the forum. Soap is not good for hair simple fact due to the ph of hair which is between 4.5-5, and high ph of soap 8-10. Some here will dispute this and get away with using such. But the majority do not. Most m&p is soap-based today no synthetic like it was years ago. Anyone with short regularly cut hair can get away with it. Keep in mind the big lawsuit over Chaz products, he lost and his product in question was basically liquid soap.

You also cannot purchase pre-made liquid soap and simply add oils and additives to the soap thinking you are making shampoo. Liquid shampoo can be made but true shampoo is synthetic ingredients, not soap. Sorry I am one of the biggest advocates on the forum against soap on hair, which comes from 30+ yrs of being a cosmetologist and seeing almost any damage a person can do their hair. But you have to make up your own opinion. I will note some gals here with long hair had to cut their hair off many years of hair growth. I am sure some are laughing knowing this post would get me started. trigger post for me

 

[jessica rios]

Hello Everyone! Thanks for all the feedback! The castile, is Dr. Bronners liquid soap. I've successfully made regular bars of soap using lye. I never thought 'shampoo' would be so difficult. So many recipes online. Most had some type of coconut milk..which I was trying to avoid. I guess I was hoping for something more natural then store bought . I have kids, and I knew if I made something of watery consistency I'd have nothing left in a few days, and a bunch of griping. Is there ways to do this without a ton of chemicals? I've had so many tabs open, and looking at recipes, I had bought the btms-50 emulsifier hoping to use that to thicken it, of course when i go to find a recipe, I see it's mostly for conditioner. Ugh, just lost.

 

[Saponificarian]

Google swiftcraftymonkey blog and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month. Search for simple shampoo and conditioner recipe and you will learn a lot.

This is a very good site too https://www.humblebeeandme.com/

Between both sites you should be good.

 

[DeeAnna]

Okay, now that I know what you actually used, I can offer some thoughts.

Salt won't thicken a Dr Bronners soap much, if at all, even if you try to use it to thicken the Dr Bronners straight from the bottle. Dr Bronners has a lot of coconut oil in it, and that kind of soap doesn't thicken well using salt.

If the soap is waaaay over diluted, as this was with 2 cups of water added to 1/2 cup of ready-to-use liquid soap, that makes it even less likely that you can get a thickened product that can actually clean.

***

The white film on your husband's hair may well have been hard water scum mixed with the fats you added. Frankly, you can't add a lot of fats to any shampoo, especially if you're trying to make a soap-as-shampoo. All you get is greasy limp hair. Not saying no fats ... but limit your enthusiasm to only a tiny bit of fat.

You used 1/2 cup of commercial liquid soap. Dr Bronners liquid soap, like any ready-to-use liquid soap, is pure soap diluted with water. A ready-to-use liquid soap might contain around 20% pure soap content with the rest being mostly water.

That means there were about 3 tablespoons of pure soap in the 1/2 cup of Dr Bronners you started with.

And then you added 2 tablespoons of jojoba and some argan oil. So you've mixed over 2 TBL of fat with only 3 TBL of pure soap. That much fat in proportion to pure soap will seriously reduce the cleansing ability of the soap. I might have added fat at 5% by weight in proportion to the pure soap. That translates to maybe 2 grams (a scant 1/2 teaspoon) of fat.

And then you diluted the soap content from maybe a 20% pure soap content -- a decent % for a ready-to-use product -- down to the 4% range by diluting it with 2 cups of water. Even without the added fat, it might not have cleaned his hair very well without using gobs of the product.

Small wonder your husband's hair didn't look good after he used this mixture.

***

I'm in the school that soap-as-shampoo doesn't work. My hair was in really bad shape after a year or so of using soap-as-shampoo with an acid rinse.

Other people claim soap-as-shampoo works wonderfully, however. So try it if you want to, just pay attention to your hair. The % of people reporting serious hair damage is pretty high, even with an acid rinse to try to repair the damage.

Nowadays, I make my own syndet shampoo bar (using synthetic detergents, not soap) and my hair is staying in much better shape.

 

[cmzaha]

Hello Everyone! Thanks for all the feedback! The castile, is Dr. Bronners liquid soap. I've successfully made regular bars of soap using lye. I never thought 'shampoo' would be so difficult. So many recipes online. Most had some type of coconut milk..which I was trying to avoid. I guess I was hoping for something more natural then store bought . I have kids, and I knew if I made something of watery consistency I'd have nothing left in a few days, and a bunch of griping. Is there ways to do this without a ton of chemicals? I've had so many tabs open, and looking at recipes, I had bought the btms-50 emulsifier hoping to use that to thicken it, of course when i go to find a recipe, I see it's mostly for conditioner. Ugh, just lost.

Please keep in mind not all chemicals are bad, not all surfactants are bad or harsh. Not everything natural is Safe. While a gentle "soap" may feel well on the scalp the damage it can do to the hair is irreparable. Hair is dead and dead cannot be repaired. Finding a nice shampoo the scalp like can take time and trial of different shampoos.

You simply cannot take a liquid soap and turn it into shampoo by adding in oils emulsifiers or anything else. I know I just repeated myself. In case you are interested what Chaz Dean sells now is basically a tweaked conditioner that serves as a cleanser and conditioner, basically, a 2 n 1 product and I think Swift Craft Monkey has one, but you have to pay a little to join her site. She does have e-books for sale. As for Humblebee and Me I am not real impressed with many of her recipes, so try small test batches of hers. You just might like a cleansing conditioner, but you will need preservatives because it is an emulsified product using emulsifiers, surfactants, water etc.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Apologies - we don't have Dr Bronners liquid soap here, so didn't know that was what you meant. I thought you meant a bar of soap made of olive oil.

 

[shunt2011]

I'm another not an advocate of using soap as shampoo. Ruined my hair. My ex-husband however has used my bar soap for years but he didn't have a whole lot of hair.

 

[Susie]

And...I'm another no soap as shampoo person. Had to have 13 inches cut off. Never again. It is cheaper (and easier) to buy shampoo at the store, and my dry, naturally curly hair likes store bought conditioner anyway.

 

[Kcryss]

I make shampoo using Decyl Glucoside. It's very gentle and easy to thicken with xanthan gum. Here is a good starting point for making liquid shampoos.

 

[DeeAnna]

Apologies - we don't have Dr Bronners liquid soap here....

I hate to tell you this, Kiwi, but Dr B's liquid soap is sold in New Zealand. At least it's available from a few shops in your country. I thought maybe one part of the world remained pristine and unsullied, but apparently not.

It's not very common where I live either -- I usually find it in "whole foods" markets which are located in larger towns and cities. I'm more likely to find Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products in the small country towns around me. At least the good Mrs M doesn't make the outrageous claims Dr B does, so her stuff doesn't set my teeth on edge.

 

[Obsidian]

Add me as another whose hair was ruined by lye soap. Took 2 years but eventually it started breaking off in chunks and I had to shave it right down to 1/2"

If you want a gentle shampoo for your kids, look for a sulfate free detergent based. I recommend accure, it cleans well, is gentle and has a lot of natural ingredients.