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Brush latherable shaving cream with transparent lather
Questions:
- What enables a shaving cream to be “latherable” with a shaving brush?
- How can one ensure that the lathered result is transparent?
Below are the ingredients for two shaving creams which provide good lather when a small smear on the cheeks is agitated with a shaving brush — but the resulting lather is non-transparent. I would like to know- what role each ingredient is playing, and
- where the non-transparency is coming from, and
- how one might adjust the ingredients to generate a transparent lather.
Ingredients in Product A:
(1) Water
(2) Stearic Acid
(3) Gylcerol
(4) Potassium hydroxide
(5) Lauric Acid
(6) Myristic Acid
(7) Perfume
(
Sodium Hydroxide
(9) Borax
(10) Cera Alba (Bees wax)
(11) Sodium Silicate
(12) Ethoxylated Lanolin
(13) Methyl Paraben
(14) Propyl Paraben
(15) Aloe Extract
(16) Cl-47000 Type-IIngredients in Product B:
(1) Aqua/Water/Eau
(2) Stearic Acid
(3) Myristic Acid
(4) Potassium Hydroxide
(5) Coconut Acid
(6) Glycerin
(7) Triethanolamine
( Parfum/Fragrance
(9) Phenethyl Alcohol
(10) Panthenol
(11) Caprylyl Glycol
(12) Sodium Hydroxide
(13) Creatine
(14) Sesamum Indicum Seed Oil/Sesame Seed Oil
(15) Bertholletia Excelsa Seed Oil
(16) Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice Powder
(17) Tetrasodium EDTA
(18) Hydrolyzed Lepidium Meyenii Root
(19) Citric Acid
(20) 1,2-Hexanediol
(21) Capryloyl Glycine -
11 Replies
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Those are pretty extensive questions and in the end, you are asking for changes in the Formula. To be fair, you would need to pay a Consultant for such an extensive process.
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Have you ever found a product that gives a transparent lather? If so, looking at the ingredients of that might provide a clue, but pretty much all foaming products I’ve ever come across form a white lather.
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LincsChemist said:Have you ever found a product that gives a transparent lather? If so, looking at the ingredients of that might provide a clue, but pretty much all foaming products I’ve ever come across form a white lather.Good points. As context, I was using “lather” to mean just a layer — not necessarily a layer of foam. For example, one can apply a thick coat of paint with a brush — since the area being painted is large, one can afford to waste the product that gets trapped in the paint-brush. Shaving creams and soaps made for application with a brush can generate a lot of foam from a very small quantity of product, and so one can afford to “waste” any product left over in the shaving brush (some people squeeze the brush and apply the extracted foam by hand).It seems foam is just lots of tiny bubbles — and when light goes through these bubbles the material looks white and opaque. So if lather is just foam, then it will be opaque.I have not found any shaving product that can be applied with a brush to result in a transparent layer. All the layers that result from brush are foam.There are some not-so-good shaving creams/soaps whose foam dissipates soon after application — so as they are being applied with a shaving brush, they are foamy and opaque; but shortly thereafter, the bubbles disappear and what remains is transparent. However, what remains from these products seems to be just a very thin layer of water. It would have been nice if the residue after the disappearance of the bubbles had been a thick, slick, transparent layer.
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Right, think I understand what you’re trying to achieve. You want something that foams up nicely for application but dissipates quickly, leaving behind a transparent lubricating layer. Is that right?
I’m really not sure what you’re looking for is possible, I certainly wouldn’t know how to got about it, I’m afraid. I’ve made some fairly decent non-foaming shave gels that are transparent and stay that way, or you could consider a shave oil, but I think any decent “traditional” foaming shave cream will stay foamed and opaque.
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LincsChemist said:… You want something that foams up nicely for application but dissipates quickly, leaving behind a transparent lubricating layer. Is that right?Not exactly. I just want something that can be applied with a shaving brush with the result of the application (possibly some seconds after the application) being a transparent layer suitable for shaving.LincsChemist said:I’ve made some fairly decent non-foaming shave gels that are transparent and stay that way, or you could consider a shave oil, …How are those products applied? By rubbing with hand or with a brush?
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Belassi said:What’s the relationship between WD-40 and this topic?
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Normally when I do this it is because I think the question is silly and there is no logical cosmetic chemistry. I am sure that WD-40 will give you a transparent, lubricated, shaving experience. What’s more, you won’t rust, either.
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Belassi said:… I think the question is silly and there is no logical cosmetic chemistry. I am sure that WD-40 will give you a transparent, lubricated, shaving experience.If indeed “WD-40 [would give one] a transparent, lubricated, shaving experience”, your response of a picture of a WD-40 spray can would be relevant to cosmetic chemistry — but not to this post since this post is about shaving products applied on the face with a shaving brush.Even if you could prove that it is impossible by the laws of Chemistry/Nature to have a product of the nature this post is about, it would be more meaningful to at least make that claim rather than just declaring that this post is not relevant to cosmetic chemistry.Until I find that the desired product is not possible by the laws of Nature, I will attempt to invent one. And once I have done so, you can be assured that I would not be bothering you by consulting with you for product design.
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@sg_ Foam is opaque by a physical phenomena. For foam being produced, air is trapped by a thin film which comprises a mixture of surfactants, co-surfactants, waxy materials (in the case of shaving creams), etc. If you have just few bubbles of any type of surfactant solution, you’ll see it more or less transparent. But the more bubbles come together, the tighter the packing between them and the harder the light to pass through unaltered, so I don’t believe you’d be able to have transparent lather.
Nevertheless, shaving foams are more solid and wither than foams from other surfactant solutions, since they have waxy materials (like stearic acid, myristic acid, lauric acid, beeswax) to increase creaminess and durability of those foams. You could try to make a surfactant solution with regular synthetic anionics (like SLES, or sulfonates) and make the film more rigid by using co-surfactants instead of waxes (like CAPB, CDEA, amine oxides, etc.). This foam won’t be transparent, but it won’t be so white either.
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The transparent shave gels I’ve made would usually be applied by hand, I don’t suppose there’s any reason you couldn’t apply it with a brush. They’re fairly straightforward aqueous gels with some humectants and claims ingredients - depending on the gellant used you can get quite good lubricity.
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