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Belassi said:

EWG? EWG??????@!@!!! Words fail me.

It’s a trend these days to have formulas that only use ingredients approved by larger sites like EWG. There are products out there that claim to use only green-labeled (for safe) ingredients, like the Purito Centella Green Level Buffet Serum, which is very funny because the enormous amounts of lavender oil in it irritated my skin. Just shows that it’s the dose that makes the poison!

I think this trend will go away quickly, for what it’s worth.

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The castor oil might be breaking up the film. Try replacing it with more isododecane to see if it helps. 

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Maybe you could get away with a dispersion or emulsion in a silicone base? That might give it some heft without the sticky feeling of glycerin. I don’t know if this is feasible because silicone emulsions aren’t my thing, but it could be worth a think. There’s some very nice silicone polymers that could help.

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I must have forgotten the link

http://www.cosmeticsdesign.com/Business-Financial/Is-Unilever-about-to-acquire-Estee-Lauder

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Oh man, this company keeps doing that! First it was that thing with the ineffective sunscreens and now this!

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I will be there and roaming around as well. I’d love to say hello!

What is everyone hoping to see? I’ll be looking out for packaging and color additives.

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Thank you so much!

Pearlescent micas sound like the way forward. I’ll be experimenting with those.

You are a lifesaver! Thank you so much for your help!

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It’s fairly thick, yeah. Regrettably I don’t have a hegman gauge yet (the ones on eBay look a bit banged up). It went through the mill three times.

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@Bobzchemist have you seen the Dermamill 100? That one has individually removable rolls for cleaning, which I thought is pretty clever. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

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@cindyhr look into exakt and torrey hills. They’re not cheap machines though.

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@DRBOB@VERDIENT.BIZ you need them for pigment dispersions if you’re going to mill your own. Otherwise you’ll get poor color performance.

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@chemnc I’m mostly interested in reds 6,7 and 27. I don’t think any non-certified color additives come close to those, except for carmine and I’m trying to avoid animal products. But if there are I’d love to know about them, since mostly I’m familiar with mineral pigments like iron oxides and manganese violets.

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They’re all lakes, I really shouldn’t be calling them dyes. Regrettably for us smallfolks getting color additives that go beyond mica can be a bit complicated.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what kind of volumes Kobo sells their dispersions in?

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Today I poured the same recipe into a four cavity split mold warmed to 40C and left to cool in air on a steel table, and the result was four perfect bullets, no cracks or any other appearance issues. I dripped some onto the metal table itself, which is quite cold, as a test, and that cracked instantly. I think this settles the question.

To everyone who helped, thank you so much! I can’t say how grateful I am that you all took time to share your hard-earned knowledge with me. You are wonderful! <3 I have learned a lot with this thread!

Thank you!

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I think I might be on to something. I think my mold is too cold because it’s winter and it’s really cold here. So I warmed my little four cavity mold until it was nice and toasty, poured, parked the mold in a container with water for a slow cool (didn’t want to overwhelm the fridge), and when I went to unmold it, I found both halves of the split mold were now firmly shut together because it got flooded with hot wax (next time more elbow grease on the screw). Once I managed to separate the two halves, have broken the top half of the bullet off in the process with my delicate touch, I took a hard look at the two pieces and no cracking was found. This needs to be tested again, preferably without causing a calamity, but I think this may be it.

My theory is that because the mold was so cold, an instant layer of cold balm formed without any inside support, allowing it to contract too much and crack. That same coldness prevented the liquid part of the balm from seeping into the cracks and filling them, but the inside cooled more slowly, preventing the cracks from propagating all the way inside (at least until some force was applied). Will be testing again (time to go now before I get stranded sans train).

I feel like Chew in Blade Runner:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3d/1c/9f/3d1c9fc3f6cec0f6da0fff855fe469a9.jpg

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The plot has thickened.

I added castor oil at 10% (took away from the rice bran oil), still cracked.

Then I took 10g rice bran oil and 10g of the above, melted it all together, basically to halve the amount of wax in the formula roughly, and not only it cracked, but catastrophically so, as the stick with so much oil was too soft to hold itself in one piece.

Haven’t measured melting point yet, but I know it’s way too low on the second bullet and it still cracked the same way, so I don’t think MP is related at this point.

I am truly stumped.

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Thanks for the tip @HelenB, I’ll be trying that! 

@johnb, @Bobzchemist, @HelenB y’all have been wonderful <span>:smiley:</span> As soon as I get out to the lab again I’ll be trying all of these!

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@johnb surprisingly it feels quite nice, smooth with good slip, leaving behind a nice, occlusive layer. No grittiness, no grabbyness (though it got a bit tacky in the shea-less versions).

The original formula had castor oil as part of the pigment dispersion (so 66% of the dispersion used at 18%, so a total of 11.8%) so that’s something to try out.

@HelenB I forgot to mention, a version without ozokerite also misbehaved, though having it here is probably not hugely improving matters. The melting point of the crystalline wax I use is 51.6C, so the supplier tells me (haven’t actually tested it).

Do you know of any way to estimate the MP of a blend of waxes? Somehow I don’t think it’ll be just a weighted average of component melting points.

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That’s a good point, cocoa butter is really no better than shea in this respect.

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Thanks @johnb, Abe Books has quite a lot of stuff! Also, bookfinder.com seems to aggregate a lot of different shops into one search, which is also cool. Found a few things that might also come in useful to read

Still no sign of the book I originally set out to get though oh well. It’ll turn up eventually.

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Thank you @Christopher and @johnb. Today we all got to learn something new

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You’re right, @johnb, I’m just a bit miffed because this threw a bit of a wrench into the works Information is hard enough to come by. Thank you for the link, I have added it to my collection!

Where do you shop for out of print books?

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I wonder how the authors feel about it. This is royalties they’re not earning. I hope they get released from their contracts and decide to publish elsewhere, but I think the outcome is that most of that knowledge will not come back.

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@johnb That’s very interesting, it looks like after 30 years he succeeded in dropping books. But in doing so he also left a lot of people in the lurch, I’m afraid. Magazines are great for learning about amazing new ingredients and so forth, but the books were great for the real, practical and theoretical knowledge that can’t be gotten from a promotional pamphlet. I’m learning by myself, without the benefit of a mentor or an academic program, so books are a tremendously important source of knowledge for me.

@Bobzchemist the thing about digital editions is that if you’re so worried about pirating that you’re going to make life difficult for your paying customers, they’ll stop being your paid customers and your books will be pirated anyway (there’s no DRM that can’t be broken, and physical books can be easily scanned). I’m worried about the description of an online-only book on Allured’s website because that’s a very annoying option. I want to read my book when I’m riding for 90 minutes in the train on my way to work, where I won’t have internet access, and I don’t want to be stuck with some probably awful website-based reader app. Basically, .epub or bust. It seems that Chemical Publishing has the right idea selling Harry’s Cosmeticology both in ePub format and hardcover (and it’s definitely on my To Buy list).

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@johnb @Perry Thank you for those resources! I’ll be subscribing for sure!