Liquid Soap Skin

Hello, i am new in making soap

i have a lot of questions

i need your help

1)What natural preservative if we make liquid milk soap or liquid honey soap?

2)what natural antioxcidant if we add superfatt?except tocopherol vitamin e, ektrax rose,grapefruitsedd? and it is really can preservative and become antioxcidant?

3)what creteria oil, which can be used as superfatting agent, ecept sulfonated castrol oil dn grape seed oil?

4)it can be real?if we make soap with pure juice?it not become stinking?

5)what ingredient we can use for thickening agent except borax?and of course natural

6)is there have arange oil, i mean max oil we can used when we make liquid soap. example, coconut not more use than 30 %, and other?

7)what's a different between liquid gel and shower gel?

8)how long natural soap life?hoow to keep them?

Thank u very muach...

i really need your help

Hi Ellie

I don't have my copy of Failor's book handy at the moment, so I can't check your amounts, etc.

Most likely, the 'skin' you are getting on the top of your finished, cooled soap is due to too little dilution water. Soap is less soluble in cool solution than it is in hot solution, so the 'skin' may just be soap that precipitated out as it cooled.

Is the liquid soap clear or cloudy? Is the 'skin' translucent? if heated, does the 'skin' dissolve back into the soap to form a clear solution? If it does, heating & adding more water or a bit of ethyl alcohol will clear it up.

What did you use as a neutralizer to adjust the finished soap's pH?  If the soap solution is cloudy and the 'skin' is opaque, you may have reduced the pH too far.  9.2 to 9.5 is a reasonable pH range for liquid soap. If yours actually (accurately) tested at 8.0, you may have pushed the soap to dissociate back to fatty acids, which would cause cloudiness.  This is quite likely if one uses citric acid (very touchy) to neutralize a small batch and may also happen if one uses boric acid as neutralizer.  It is impossible, though, if one uses borax as neutralizer as its buffering action limits the pH to no lower than 9.2, just right for liquid soaps. The cure for cloudy soap due to dissociated fatty acids would be to add a bit of dilute potassium hydroxide solution (very little), then heat & stir  & let cool & retest pH.

What might you have used to thicken your finished soap solution? Note that it is impossible to get a thickened finished soap by simply limiting the dilution water.  Instead of getting thickened, cooled soap, you get a floating soap 'skin'. Liquid soap solutions are inherently water-thin and potassium soap 'clings' to itself so strongly that there is nothing between cooled, watery soap solution and having some precipitate out as floating soap paste.

As Failor explains, borax can be used as a thickener if the liquid soap formula contains a significant proportion of 'harder' oils. It will not, however, thicken liquid soaps that are high on coconut or castor oils and low on harder oils. One can also enhance thickening of liquid soaps by adding salt and boiling it. This will cause some of the potassium soap to become sodium soap, which is less soluble. All soaps are less soluble in salt solutions, so this may help thickening some, too. Adding a small amount of salt will also make the soap solution more ionic in nature, which can help borax work with the harder oils to thicken.

I've also experimented with using natural gums like xanthan and caragennan to thicken soaps, but this requires specially pure, non-clouding gums & a lot of knowledge of how they work & how to use them. (Specific amounts of potassium chloride for ionization and gums in specific ratios to each other; then heated to a specific temp & allowed to cool). Thickening with a combination of ethyl alcohol, glycerin (think hand sanitizers) and borax is also something  I've researched and experimented with, but again, it requires specific ratios, heating to specified temp & cooling.  I mention these processes to show that  working with liquid soaps can become quite an obsession over time if one has the "chem geek" gene....

Thickening the finished product is the 'Holy Grail' of liquid soapmaking and you'll get lots of differing advice. Get as much advice/info as you want and then go forth and experiment to find a method that suits you and the liquid soap recipes you choose to make. When you find something that you like, write it down!

When you feel fairly comfortable with the theory and practice of working with liquid soaps, you might want to try using our Summer Bee Meadow Advanced Soap Calculator. It can handle mixed potassium & sodium hydroxide soaps (another way to thicken liquid soaps), an optional alcohol broth method and presents a structured, measured methodology to make liquid soaps, measuring weights as you go.  Weighing stuff may seem off-putting, but following our method with our advanced calculator will allow you to have consistent results, with needed amounts of borax neutralizer computed and computed amounts of dilution water to reach specified final soap concentrations.

The advanced calculator is just that and requires a fair amount of knowledge and comfort with soapmaking to tackle it, but it can be a very helpful tool in making liquid soaps (and you won't find anything like it elsewhere).

Let us know how your soapmaking progresses!