[Gunther]

These patents shine light on what’s going on:
Silicones sink down to the surface crevices
So either waxes to prevent them from sinking below the surface, or a lot of silicones 20-40% are needed to fill said crevices.

Furniture polish compositions based on silicone oils also suffer from a phenomenon known as “mottling”. Silicone oils tend to migrate into lower areas on the wood surface, such as imperfections (scratches, chips, etc.). This migration creates dull spots in the polished surface, or mottling. To prevent this migration, wax is added to anchor the silicone molecules to the surface. Ratios of emulsified wax:silicone oil as high as 1:1 have been used to anchor the silicone. However, the emulsified wax contains solid discrete particles which decrease the clarity of the resulting film or finish, and the hardness of the wax particles increases the amount of time and effort to buff the film to a shine.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5681377A/en

Two patents, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,221,433 and 6,206,956, by Muntz et al., describe siloxane automotive protectant compositions which contain about 10% to 20% by weight of organopolysiloxane and having comparable or improved gloss performance to comparative examples with 20% to 40% by weight of organopolysiloxane. Although these protectant formulations are an improvement over the previous protectants, there is still an opportunity to lower the amount of siloxane in the formulation to levels of less than 10% to achieve a cost savings while maintaining good gloss performance.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8974589B2/e

[Gunther]

- You’d need to increase CAPB to 10, 12 or even 15% ASM to get good foam out of it.
- Reduce the decyl glucoside to 10-20% of the CAPB on a ASM basis.
- Remove panthenol or at least reduce it to claim ingredient levels (0.1-0.01%) as it does nothing, increases cost, reduces viscosity and foam.
- Citric acid should be added as needed to get a target pH, not just added as a fixed amount.
- Or add some other surfactants as @ngarayeva001 suggested.
- I agree that PQ-10 is much better than 7.
- Add some silicones.

@natzam44  just a question, were you able to thicken it with 2.5% Polyacrylate Crosspolymer-6 ?

[Gunther]

1. Is that 9% active SLES, or 9% as supplied (usually 70%)?
2. Is that cationic guar gum? If not, drop it.
3. Why propylene glycol?
4. Drop the glycerin.
5. It seems to have way too much salt, especially since you already have CAPB to thicken it.
6. Way too much EDTA. 0.1% is enough.
7. Don’t just blindly add citric acid. Aim for a target pH.
8. Way too much polyquaterniums.

[Gunther]

Reduce CAPB to begin with.

[Gunther]

Sexual lubricants need to be sterilized too.
So do yourself a favor and find a real registered chemist who can properly formulate one for you, including the manufacturing details.
Don’t expect it to be cheap, though.

[Gunther]

Many individual ingredients contain preservatives, especially if they come in water solutions.
Small brands don’t realize it so they don’t list them on the label because they didn’t add them themselves.

[Gunther]

You may wish to consider a ready-made sulfate-free commercial combo.
They work better and are cheaper than buying the individual ingredients, unless you’re making tons of it per week.

[Gunther]

Water is the main thing that discolous hair dye. Surfactant choice plays a very minor or no role. @Perry posted his findings somewhere in this board.

Keratin is not absorbed by hair in any way. That’s BS and marketing nonsense.

Many people with damaged, dyed hair found they only benefit from co-wash or cleansing conditioners, not from regular shampoos.

[Gunther]

The problem is not hair dyes, but hair straighteners containing formaldehyde a known and banned carcinogen.
https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-products/hair-smoothing-products-release-formaldehyde-when-heated

The article mixes known science (formaldehyde being carcinogen and banned) with pseudoscience and hearsay.

The name says it all: the Guardian = SJW leftist.
Our unequal earth? Then get just some skills, work hard and you’ll be off poverty. A simple and time-proven solution, comrades.

[Gunther]

You can look at OTC supplements
MSM comes to mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylsulfonylmethane

But you’d need to make sure they are non irritant when applied to the skin. There’s a big difference between eating them and rubbing them on the skin.

[Gunther]

You’d better surf a perfume especific board like
http://www.basenotes.net/forum.php

But I can tell you that using fixatives doesn’t make a cheap copycat perfume last nowhere near as long as an expensive perfume with the proper base notes in it.
Combining different fixatives seem to work best, but it’s no silver bullet.

[Gunther]

BTMS doesn’t really emulsify silicones, they are just suspended because the formulation is thick enough.

You may wish to search for an old post of mine about a Croda formulation that claimed to hold about 50% cyclomethicone with BTMS. But at the end only experimentation can tell.

[Gunther]

You could use a w/o emulsifier like Span 20/60/80 but it’s better to stick to the approved ones as @Perry just said.

[Gunther]

You’d better make a dilute SLES working solution yourself.
Working with pastes is too time consuming and difficult.

Not for nothing many suppliers sell 26-29% SLES instead of the paste.

Diluting 60/70% SLES paste with 2x its water weight yields a water-thin solution.

If the working solution will be left standing for too long, you may wish to add preservatives. Although SLES ain’t too prone to feed bacterial growth.

[Gunther]

Sulfuric acid ain’t banned. It’s just a controlled chemical.
Pretty sure you can just fill the proper paperwork yourself in order to buy it, especially if it’s for smaller amounts.

Lots and lots of very small car battery manufacturers and repairsmen buy some of it and they don’t even have a legal department to handle the paperwork, so it’s easy.

What are you trying to synthesize?
Benzyl acetate? 
Pretty sure you can buy or import it ready made. Since it’s for fragrance it shouldn’t increase costs too much.

[Gunther]

This study is very eye opening
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ff15/e99672fdee23ec9779d72b605ad150b4e2d0.pdf

[Gunther]

It’s definitely possible.

I did some blind tests, and volunteer testers couldn’t find any difference between conditioners made with BTMS-50 vs those made with Cetrimonium chloride + cetyl alcohol.
In fact, I personally find Cetrimonium chloride a bit better at detangling.

Polyquaternium-7? 
You can add it, but Polyquaternium-10 or even Guar HPTC works better.

Dimethicone 500?
Is a higher molecular weight silicone better for conditioners, or is it the other way around? I already forgot.

Water dispersible silicone?
I thick they’ll just get drained off without being deposited on hair, They just add cost and may lead to emulsion separation problems.

Dimethicone+petrolatum?
I don’t think rinse off conditioners can deposit petrolatum on hair. So it just increases cost and may lead to emulsion separation problems.

Lamesoft PO-65?
IMO the glucoside may reduce the viscosity and I don’t think the glyceryl oleate will be deposited on hair in a rinse off conditioner.

Cyclopentasiloxane?
It will just end up being rinsed off. I don’t think it will deposited on hair as longer molecular weight silicones do. I might be wrong though.

Hydrolyzed keratin?
Hard to preserve and doesn’t do much in rinse off products. Better left as a claims ingredient at 0.1-0.01% or so.

Polyquart H81?
That would work, and probably replace Polyquaternium-10.

[Gunther]

So I guess that’s why you don’t hear about SLS being used solo?
By the way I considered using SLS in HI&I products as an alternative to alkylbenzene sulfonates.

Also by using copolymers, such as those envisaged by U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,199, containing from 20 to 25 weight percent of N-alkyl acrylamide units, it is possible to increase the viscosity of certain surfactants in solution, such as sodium lauryl sulfate at a concentration of 8 percent, but the texture of the resulting gels is too stringy on discharge and is not therefore practically suitable.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5324765

Anionic surfactant compositions such as sodium laureth (2EO) sulfate (SLES)/cocodiethanolamide (CDEA) provide a wide viscosity/salt curve that is only moderately salt sensitive and is about 3.5% salt tolerant, Figure 1. Ammonium lauryl sulfate (ALS) compositions, however, have a higher narrower viscosity/salt curve with a significantly lower salt tolerance of about 0.6%, Figure 2.

Use of anionic compositions, particularly with ALS containing compositions at high active ingredient levels and those containing amphoterics such as betaines, develop very high nonpourable viscosities that generally require thinning agents to lower viscosity.
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0574086A2/en

[Gunther]

Humectants don’t have enough time to act, and don’t cling to skin strongly enough in the short time a rinse off product is used.

The best thing to reduce irritation is to use milder surfactants, or lesser amount of them.

[Gunther]

1. At the end only experimentation can tell which and how much solubilizer you’ll need. 
As a rule of thumb, the more water it contains, the more solubilizer you’ll need. Conversely, the more alcohol it contains, the less solubilizer you’ll need.
You can try:
Dipropylene glycol (you may need to reduce the glycerin to reduce tackiness).
Poly Suga Mulse D9
PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil
Some polysorbate.

2. Exactly what colorant are you using?

3. What do you mean by a database?
Did you mean a fragrance supplier product range?

[Gunther]

Ain’t polidecanol the same as Laureth- , aka ethoxylated lauryl alcohol?
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polidocanol

If it is, then you can contact Oxiteno (they have an office in Mexico), or Sasol about their Marlipal product range.

Lots of generic ethoxylated lauryl alcohol suppliers too.

[Gunther]

In my opinion, cetrimonium (+ fatty alcohol) works the same or slightly better than behentrimonium / BTMS. By better I mean more detangling and conditioning.

Quaternized silicones (like amodimethicone) usually work better than plain dimethicone.

Polyquaternium-10 works great too. It helps with silicone deposition while it also conditions hair on its own.

I don’t know if oils are actually deposited on hair by rinse off conditioners.

[Gunther]

You don’t have an emulsifier.
Cationic emulsifiers (like cetrimonium or behentrimonium) work better in conditioners.
Fatty alcohols (cetyl, cetearyl stearyl) should thicken the formulation once you have a proper emulsifier there.

[Gunther]

Thank you.

[Gunther]

I kind of agree
Alkaline emulsifiers can be irritating to the skin, at least for some people.

In my opinion you’d better switch to other nonionic or even cationic emulsifiers that can withstand a mildly acidic formulation.

Better yet, find a ready made cream making commercial emulsifier blend.