[belassi]

Don’t have Pilot Chemicals in our market. As for Croda, it would be nice to be able to buy their ingredients, but unfortunately they appear to be so hostile to smaller manufacturers that nobody here does business with them. I guess Croda are OK if you are able to buy 200Kg at a time. I am going to get some Novethix L10 and try that.

[belassi]

I can see that just one ingredient - the papaya extract - will cause problems, you have it at 1% which is double the recommended limit. It is an enzymatic exfoliant and also increases penetration of other ingredients into the dermis.

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Thanks for trying to help. Neither Stepan nor Dow products available in my market. 

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I can’t get along with that. I have tried it. One reason is that I can’t get the air bubbles out. Another is the quite large pH change involved in my surfactant combination. One of the surfactants is a pure carboxylic acid.

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I was just thinking more about this. Surely we aren’t required to calculate %LOI precedence on anhydrous content? It would be pretty horrendous to do … because most of the polar ingredients are solutions in water. For instance when you buy SLES, it comes in all sorts of different concentrations. I don’t take notice of the % actives when I compile the LOI of a finished product. I just list in order the % used of each ingredient, an ‘ingredient’ being a drum of stuff that arrived from a distributor. 

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Perry is so right! In fact, the reason why I formulated my first skin cream was just such a ‘small company’ product. (Hell, I run a small company! Our #1 principle is “Do no harm”)

I bought a dish washing liquid that I found in the local supermarket not realising it was made locally… 3 weeks later my hands and my wife’s hands, the skin was lunar in nature. Horrendous. So being into chemistry I bought and tested an Evy & Crab hand cream, found it excellent, and decided to duplicate it.

In my local marketplace which is a huge fast-growing city, I see all the time small companies selling products with no LOI whatsoever, and often making ludicrous claims. Coffee that cures cancer and makes you slim and better looking, “alkaline” water, face creams that are basically yoghurt.

[belassi]

MEA shifts the ionic thickening curve to the left, so it sounds likely that’s what happened. But you seem to have mistyped: there is no such thing as “cetoceteryl” alcohol. Did you mean cetostearyl? But that is actually the same as Emulgin B2 except that B2 has higher ethylene oxide.

[belassi]

Wow, thanks for the info, glad I only bought a 500g sample.

I can’t source Antil here.

How about NOVETHIX L10? I can get that from Conjunto Lar. But I haven’t checked the price yet.

[belassi]

http://wellnessmama.com/3527/natural-vapor-rub/

Here you go! (No I have no idea what it’s like but it might work for you so why not?)

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Well … it’s a peroxide, so anything that can oxidise, will!

[belassi]

Sounds fine. No nasty SLS. Let us know how it goes!

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@nasrins: you did neutralise it properly? One of our popular products is a hand cream made with 940. We’ve been selling it for quite a while.

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Judging by my class experiences organic chemistry isn’t popular. My 9th grade students liked my firework class, but all the girls ran out the door the minute I opened the bottle of butyric acid, so the perfumes (organic) class had to be cancelled.

[belassi]

 Bob’s idea is pretty good. I suggest, David, that you approach your Lubrizol distributor and ask them for  samples of, say, Carbopol 940, Ultrez-20, and Aqua SF-1 (this last is really for shampoos). I have always found Lubrizol distributors happy to arrange that.

[belassi]

Propolis is a known antibacterial agent and I suspect that is the cause of your benefits. Olive oil and beeswax are reported on here: 

http://www.acne.org/messageboard/topic/319593-the-bad-list-comedogenic-ingredients-and-products/

[belassi]

Thyme extract works very well against acne and there is documentation for its ability to kill acne propionis. Tea tree oil is, from my own experience, probably going to cause skin problems at 4%. Then there is the expense: TTO is quite a pricey item (I am paying roughly USD $150/Kg)

As far as non-carbomer thickeners are concerned, I use this: https://www.lubrizol.com/PersonalCare/Products/MethylGlucosides/GlucamateVLT.html

which is derived from vegetables. It is one of my favourite ingredients but it is a bit pricey.

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They have different sensorials as well as different wetting. For instance I do not like Ultrez in a cream product because it is more jelly-like. 940 works better for that. But for a gel Ultrez works great.

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Agree with Bob. Freeze/thaw test everything. Well, not shampoos and conditioners maybe!

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Betty, first buy a stick blender - try to find one that has a long stick and a powerful motor. That will do high-shear mixing for you and create emulsions. A hair conditioner is basically an emulsion and you will be able to create 4 or 5 Kg using a stick blender.

Buy a 3L plastic jug to go with it and get yourself a plastic bucket capable of holding say 6Kg or so.

You will also need some mixing vessels, ideally chemistry beakers, sizes 2L, 1L, 500mL, 300mL, and 100mL.

A set of scales can be had very cheaply on EBay, buy a set that can measure up to 1Kg at 0.1g increments and a larger scale for weighing water etc capable of weighing 10Kg at 1g or 2g increments.

And a lot of plastic spoons. (If you mix things in beakers with metal implements, soon you won’t have any beakers.)

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@ozgirl:a valid concern. it is in the spec. that the DEAL is very high purity. 1 ppm dioxane according to test data. The E.U. criteria for ingested dioxane is <=5ppm and shampoo is a rinse-off product.

@eperfumes: Yes, I agree, I’ll try 1% fragrance. As usual I expect that I will have to experiment with fragrances to avoid compromising thickness.

[belassi]

Then why, can I add some blue pigment to water, and it will never settle out? Such as fluorescein I should think… 

[belassi]

This is interesting. While waiting for my consignment of Plantaren APB to arrive, I did a bit of looking around and discovered this formulation for shaving gel.

https://www.lubrizol.com/PersonalCare/M-0016(LA)Shaving-Gel.pdf

Note that part (C) 5 is actually Plantaren APB although they don’t say so! (How Lubrizol expect a formulator to make this up without specifying that several items are a proprietary blend is beyond me.)

I’ve got all the ingredients to make this, so when the Plantaren arrives I will try that formula.

I see that according to the data it makes a nice shampoo at only 20% concentration so it might be quite an economical choice.

[belassi]

It’s not a water soluble pigment, is why.

[belassi]

I don’t see why a water-soluble pigment should settle? It doesn’t settle in shampoo, for instance!

[belassi]

Very interesting Bill, thanks for that.