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Shampoo Bar Formula Help
Greetings all! I made a batch of shampoo bars for dry hair (adapted from a swiftcraftymonkey formula) and it both failed to harden up after 4 days and is oily feeling to the touch. Obviously there is something wrong with either the ingredients that I chose or my method, because Susan’s formulas are great.
Formula:
SCI (Powder) 25% Stearic Acid 5% SLSa 22% DLS Mild 10% Cocamidolpropyl Betaine 15% Cetyl Alcohol 3% BTMS-50 3% Shea Butter 5% Coconut Oil 5% Silk Protein (Foaming silk) 2% Panthenol 2% Dimethicone 1% Fragrance (Lavender) 2% Phenonip .5% Method:
Because I’m using an SCI powder and don’t need to melt it, I melted the Stearic Acid, Cetyl Alcohol, BTMS-50, Shea Butter, and Coconut Oil together until all liquid. Then I added the DLS Mild, Cocamidolpropyl Betaine, and Foaming Silk, SCI, and SLSa. I removed from heat and added the Panthenol, Dimethicone, Fragrance, and Phenonip, then glopped into molds.
Did I choose a bad combination of ingredients? Heated and mixed things out of order in a not good way? Some other thing that I haven’t thought of but is obvious to you more experienced formulators out there? Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you very much!
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26 Replies
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My guess would be that you have tried to add too much extra and don’t have enough solid surfactants.Try taking out or reducing the stearic acid, cetyl alcohol, shea butter and coconut oil and replacing these with more of your solid surfactants (SCI and SLSa).Save the cetyl alcohol, shea butter and oils for your conditioner bar. -
BTMS-50 is cationic, and not compatible with anionic surfactants (SCI, SLS, DLS); try again without the BTMS-50 and see how it turns out
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Decrease liquid surfacants, increase solid surfacants. I would take out stearic acid. You don’t need a preservative.
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Your product failed because you didn’t follow the instructions. None of her formulas have 19% of emollients. You don’t need that much oil. You don’t need any oil at all in fact. And stearic acid makes it draggy. Remove all oils, stearic and cetyl. You can keep dimethicone if you wish.
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@Bill_Toge, I absolutely agree that BTMS can’t be mixed with anionic but syndets are the exeption from this rule. It’s an anhydrous product and thus they don’t react.
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Huh. I know that some SCI noodles come with stearic acid added to them - should these also be avoided?
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Huh, the formula that I was using came from her complete hair care ebook, and it really did call for 10% hard butter, 3% cetyl, SCI with stearic, preservative, etc. I really appreciate everyone’s comments and assistance - I’ll increase my solid surfactants, decrease my oils, and take out the stearic!
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SCI is required to make pH balanced bar. I am saying that additional stearic acid will make the product draggy, especially at this concentration. When adding something always ask “what is the purpose of this ingredient in this formula”?
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Also, dry hair do not need oil. Oil doesn’t really absorb. You need silicones and cationics. Add 3% of polyquat 7 or polyquat 10 plus dimethicone and it will be a shampoo that makes dry hair look much better.
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ngarayeva001 said:Also, dry hair do not need oil. Oil doesn’t really absorb. You need silicones and cationics. Add 3% of polyquat 7 or polyquat 10 plus dimethicone and it will be a shampoo that makes dry hair look much better.
I agree. For personal use tho, my scalp and I came to a happy with 5.5% oils, but not every oil too. I can only handle three washes and my scalp is dry with no oils 😐
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I am afraid oil doesn’t do much here. You need gentle surfactants for dry scalp (CAPB for example). Oils in shampoo reduce lather and destabilise the product. They don’t stay on the skin -you simply wash them off. Oils are used as a fairy dust in commercial products at no more than 0.5%
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ngarayeva001 said:I am afraid oil doesn’t do much here. You need gentle surfactants for dry scalp (CAPB for example). Oils in shampoo reduce lather and destabilise the product. They don’t stay on the skin -you simply wash them off. Oils are used as a fairy dust in commercial products at no more than 0.5
While they may end up in the drain and I would agree the shampoo needing a less harsh surfacant for dry hair/scalp. I would question that ‘oil doesn’t do much’. For instance, the super fat in soap makes a huge difference between 0 and 10% and here is where I get confused about the solid shampoo and would love to hear your thoughts, if I double/triple the amount of surfacants, why don’t i increase some of the other ingredients, to ‘soften the blow’ of the surf a can’t, like an oil for instance, well perhaps not essential oils :smiley: that said while I have not notice much difference between 0-10% oil in shampoo on my hair, it seem to make a huge difference on the scalp. That’s the same recipe taking away from CABP. Would love to hear your thoughts.
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Well, traditional soaps are very different from syndet bars. Traditional soaps are highly alkaline and you definitely want to avoid those on dry skin/hair. They strip off acid mantle. I can totally see that superfatting a soap makes it better (by making it less concentrated), but the soap is a very “aggressive” product in general.
Talking about sensitive scalp, you need very gentle combination of surfactants at a right percentage. You might be using a product that is too concentrated for you. I suspect that the reason why you like shampoo with oils is that oils neutralise some portion of surfactants by forming micelleswhich makes your product less concentrated (and less efficient). But it is the same as intentionally cutting your finger and putting a bandaid. Try to formulate a shampoo (not a syndet but a liquid shampoo) with a high concentration of CAPB or another amphoteric surfactant (70% of total surfactants). The total concentration of surfactants should not be higher than 15%. That should work for dry scalp withouht any oil. It won’t foam well but will clean. -
Try Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium C14-16 Olefin Sulfonate and around 2% of Cocamide DEA. I know DEA doesn’t have good reputation (without any legit reason), but it is important to add it, because this combination is very hard to thicken otherwise.
Another option is Cocamidopropyl Betaine and glucosides (Decyl Glucoside, Coco Glucoside), but glucosides tangle hair. -
ngarayeva001 noooooooo :smiley: I was afraid you would say something like that, which was in my thoughts all along and the liquids shampoo does work perfectly, those with milder surfacants. I am on a personal quest to making a solid shampoo that work on a dry scalp. What are your thoughts of replacing some of the solid surfacats with something different. I ve seen many products out there with avena sativa, sodium bicarbonate, topioca starch, clays… and what not instead the slsa.
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Oh and just to add I have a bar with rhassoul clay instead of the slsa plus decyl ‘curring’. My dry scalp does not mind it at all. I am sort-of sceptical but will be trying it on my own head 🙂 so far it’s rock solid, harder then others in fact, no problem with the way it lathers up as well.
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You can formulate a gentle sulfates free bar. But unfortunately I can’t suggest a good formula because all my experiments weren’t successful. The idea is using SCI, CAPB and olefin sulfonate instead of SLSa. It works well but all bars I made with this combination were too soft. Disclaimer: I don’t generally mind sulfates, but there are more gentle options (lather will be worse)
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I ll continue experimenting, tho I might stay clear of oleifin sulfonate. Never used it, but read/hear to many bad things about it. As for lather being worse, I generaly don’t concern myself with it for personal use.
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ngarayeva001 Thank you for all your input.
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Olefin sulfonate is amazing!! It’s cheap and performs great in hair products! I have both powder and liquid (by Stepan). My favorite shampoo brand OGX bases all of their products on SCI and olefin sulfonate. Make sure that what you read about it is not chemophobia from “natural” DIY crowd.
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It could have come from chemophobia, they also tell me soap makes a wonderful shampoo tho. I still have some of my CP shampoo from two years back, used it once :smiley:
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Soap makes a horrible shampoo. There is no soap with pH lower than 9. Virgin hair (not chemically treated) have a pH around 4.5, which is even lower than skin.
Simplistic but very visual picture. -
So, give olefin sulfonate a chance. Combination of olefin sulfonate and CAPB is amazing (but hard to thicken).
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Meh, using it once was enough to know it’s a terrible idea :smiley: do you ever adjust the ph in your shampoo bars to be more acid regardless of the good ph without adjusting it. I think I need to start my own thread regarding conditioner bars now. There is too much to know!!!
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So, there is a pH balanced formula developed by swiftcraftymonkey that I use a lot (with my own twist to it). It is made of SCI, SLSa and CAPB. That formula doesn’t need any adjustment as it comes out around 6. I do adjust them when I try to change something. For example I am still struggling with sulfate-free formula: SCI, Olefin Sulfonate powder and CAPB that one needs to be adjusted.
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