[EVchem]

Can I ask why you want to go down the formulation route specifically?

you might want to join this community or look through their posts. Lots of people on there have product recommendations for various skin types/issues.
Honestly you’ll spend less time/money with more consistent results than trying to make your own home-crafted stuff.

Of the preservatives you want either cosguard or dermosoft. However you will need to be able to check the pH of your product reliably (no pH strips they aren’t accurate enough).  You ought to get a pH meter or keep your bottles even less than 3 months.  So you see how this project will become more involved and costly. Some of the ingredients on that page aren’t actually bug-killing preservatives, they are antioxidants that will do nothing to stop your product from growing mold.

I wrote all this before I saw Perry’s answer, but I agree with what he has mentioned. 

[EVchem]

My first guess would be add more petrolatum, but Belassi makes good points about the cool down and the variability of microcrystalline wax

[EVchem]

Uniclear was the name of the product, Croda acquired the rights in 2013. I don’t know if it’s still on open market from them, I didn’t see it on their website

[EVchem]

Haven’t used the dermofeel and montanov together but the easymulse data sheet has some good formulation tips

[EVchem]

Wow what a rollercoaster.

1. this is not organic. Emulsifying wax contains polysorbate 60.
 
2. you don’t have any of your phases defined but usually you do not homogenize shampoos or cleansers.

3. Take potassium sorbate out. It only works at ph<5.5 which your product is surely not at with castille soap

4. Take out castor oil, it will only impede performance. If you want it for claims keep at 0.01% or less. I’d say the same for coconut milk

5. Probably best to mix the fragrance in with some of  your decyl glucoside then add.

Why are you including the cetearyl alcohol and emulsifying wax at all? 

[EVchem]

not unless there’s a carbomer tree or bush somewhere I don’t know about…

the alcohol and olive oil could be organic

[EVchem]

You could try taking a sample and pushing it through syringe to see if you can replicate separation on small scale from shear. 

Is the liquid pool in the third picture water or oil?

[EVchem]

@Belassi curious how does 940 working better than 980?  The only difference is the solvent right?

[EVchem]

1. Nope sorry
2.Not sure but the mixture is ~50% water so take that into account
3. As the only surfactants? I’m not sure how the performance of that product would be. If I were you I would start with 3 different ratios- a 1:1, high lauryl to low capb, and then the reverse. Based on how those feel it should give you direction on what to do next

[EVchem]

As far as I know, a wetting agent helps coat pigments to be mixed into products for better color dispersion.

[EVchem]

your active % of CAPB is 27? CAPB often comes in ~30% mixes with water. And your chelator is at 2%? That’s very high.

Is your lamesoft lamesoft PO 65? If you give specific INCIs people will be able to help you faster and more effectively.

Oils will hurt your foaming a bit. If you look at the dove commercial body washes I doubt they will use the exact same surfactants as you. SLES is still king for foaming ability.

You could try sodium methyl cocoyl taurate. It’s not big foam but it does bubble up nice and creamy.

[EVchem]

How small, where are you located, and do you want a manufacturer or need a repacker/hobbyist site?

Sytheon and Givaudan offer it.

[EVchem]

So preservatives have a variety of methods of action and usually they work best against certain types of microbial burdens. So maybe one preservative is very effective at killing bacteria, but not mold. You use blends to give yourself  “broad-spectrum” coverage against potential contaminants. 

 Including certain ingredients may also help or hinder your preservatives efficacy- ex clays, lecithin, and some other plant based materials are more likely to bring burden to your formula. Meanwhile glycols and surfactants can change surface tension which makes it harder for some bacteria to live. There are even more ingredients like chelators, or pH adjusters which don’t directly preserve but act as boosters in their own ways.

Suppliers will usually tell you a range to use their preservative. If you are making the blend yourself it is a bit of trial and error. 

Hope that at least starts to answer your question

[EVchem]

https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/proposition-65//safeharborlist032519.pdf

Nickel on this list has a NSRL of 0.8 ug/day, and further they specify the nickel as “refinery dust from the pyrometallurgical
process”. I’ve never seen anyone give a warning for nickel. If you suspect your raw material  to be contaminated with nickel you could test the finished product for that specifically and see what concentration you fall at. 

Prop 65 gives me a headache, and at this point I don’t think it achieves it’s intended goals because their rules are so open to interpretation and obfuscation.

[EVchem]

OTCs can  be placed in alphabetical order rather than descending for US, but since this is a combination drug-cosmetic  I believe it should have been descending order.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/training/OTC/topic4/topic4/da_01_04_0120.htm

[EVchem]

You have to provide more information and ultimately experiment to answer that. Is your color a pigment or a dye? what other ingredients are in your product?

For shampoo you probably want a dye. usually people will make a stock solution of a certain amount (say 1%) and then use that in their final formula, so the final concentration of dye ends up being very small. 

You have to consider the light and chemical stability of the color as well. It might look good but fade rapidly, or interact with other ingredients.

[EVchem]

Depends on what other ingredients are in the product and what you adjusted pH with

[EVchem]

short answer no you have to buy it. follow up question why is your formula asking for it? 

[EVchem]

The preservatives  you have chosen only work at low pH. What is the pH of your finished formula? 

[EVchem]

If you are making a US cosmetic (see definition https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/it-cosmetic-drug-or-both-or-it-soap), the requirements are to use safe ingredients and to avoid making certain drug claims. As far as proving safety, you can go about this by doing things like:

-getting PET/AET testing performed on your finished product
-having HRIPT testing performed on your finished product to see if there are any reactions/skin sensitization
-getting an SDS generated on your finished product, or at least having an SDS for each component

I’d understand ‘unlisted’ ingredients to mean things with no INCI name. If you are using something in that situation you may still have a work around (https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-labeling-regulations/cosmetics-labeling-guide). Otherwise just stick to avoiding the list perry provided and be careful with claims.

[EVchem]

The biggest requirement is probably money. You have to register your product and pay for some pretty extensive testing

[EVchem]

Likely you’ll need more than one emulsifier, that’s the first issue.
I see the use level for olivem 900 is around 1-4%  for w/o, i only saw it at 12% for a totally anhydrous product.

W/O  products are challenging. You’re homogenizing so that’s good (do you know what RPM?), but I’d recommend doing it again at a cooler temp when your phases are a little more solidified. Other tip would be add the water painstakingly slow, in small increments watching it fully incorporate before you  move to the next addition

I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to decide if you need more salt or not (other than experimentation) but that could be another issue.

[EVchem]

Natural gums will be less helpful in stabilizing an emulsion for the most part, but if you go for a high enough viscosity  it might not matter. Won’t feel like a synthetic thickener though. 
You could incorporate a liquid or powder emulsifier (sodium stearoyl glutamate is an example)

[EVchem]

You want to end up with 2.5 % sodium PCA but it comes as a solution with 50% pca.  So if you added  2.5% of your material, you would really only have 2.5*.5 = 1.25% sodium pca

Following letsalcidos system you would set it up like this:
(x) what % of your lotioncrafter material to put in multiplied by
(0.5) 50% concentration of your lotioncrafter material)
=
(2.5%) how much pca you want to end up with  multiplied by
(1) 100% ‘pure’ sodium pca concentration

x*0.5 = 2.5 *1

solve for x

[EVchem]

We had a similar question asked and answered in this post https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/comment/41552#Comment_41552

“As we increase the moles of EO from one to two to three, how does it impact the performance of the product? Generally speaking here is how:
 - Increases solubility
- Increases mildness
- Increases flash foam
- Decreases foam stability
- Decreases viscosity building

These differences are not very prominent in most cases except for viscosity building; there is a significant difference between 2 mole and three mole. Two mole gives higher viscosity. In most applications formulators tend to use the 2 mole product like our Calfoam® ES-302.”

^ that’s from a product info sheet from Calfoam in the forum