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Cetyl alcohol an emulsifier? Hair wax formulation
hi all. Just a newbie here with a very basic question regarding a home brew hair wax in trying to make. My first batch came out way to oily feeling so I’m trying to delute it with water and trying cetyl alcohol as an emulsifier, but it’s still separating during the mixing stage.
Water - 47%
beeswax - 21%
castor oil - 16%
Bentonite clay - 5%
cetyl alcohol - 7%
sea salt - 5%im not quite sure if maybe the cetyl alcohol is just a bad ingredient, or maybe I’m just not mixing it hard enough (hand mixing in a bowl with small spatula). Either way, when I combine ingredients I can see right away that the water won’t combine, and even when I cool it down and start mixing I’m left with a ball of wax sitting on top of a puddle of water
ideas?
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8 Replies
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@Bkkornaker you have to heat up ( both water and oil phase) to 75-80C for beeswax.. you also need an emulsifier. Hand mixing with small spatula will not help for your water and oil phase combination. Why are you adding sea salt at high percentage?
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I’m combining all items Ina double boiler and heating them all up that way. I was under the impression that the cetyl alcohol was an emulsifier, but it looks like I was mistaken. Any ideas for a good oil in water emulsifier?
the sea salt im playing around with to make the product feel dry (beachy) in your hair so it’s not so oily and greasy feeling. Once I can get the emulsion to work, that’s the ingredient where I will start to make multiple batches with different amount percentages to see how this ingredient feels with less or more
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besides the fact there’s no emulsifier (as @cherri said) the large amount of salt is the other cause of separation here; emulsions and salt don’t mix
if you want a water-based hair wax to have a dry texture, you need to use a combination of resins and hard waxes
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I had no idea about the sea salt being problematic! I’m learning new things every day….thanks for the feedback guys!
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Here is a large part of your issue as well; (hand mixing in a bowl with small spatula). There are numerous posts on proper mixing equipment. Unless you fix this issue you will have issues.
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After a series of separation failures with my lotions, I FINALLY got myself a heavy-duty stick blender (it was on sale) in January. Since then, absolutely NO lotion failures. I am making creams/lotions on a very small scale, mind you.
This blender is especially nice because you can dial up the speed as you wish.
All-Clad, Stainless steel immersion hand blender
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/all-clad-immersion-blender/ -
Thanks for the link margreat!
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Some great points made by Mark, Bill and Margreat.
You might want to learn how to make a basic emulsion - swiftcraftymonkey has tutorials, as do I, and Perry’s course is a good start.
Don’t forget to use a broad spectrum preservative and clay can be a challenge in that respect.
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