Mixing KoH & NaOH for liquid soap?

My experiments with liquid soap are still resulting in too many bad batches,... the ones that cook a beautiful clear amber are often too watery,.. and other batches the gel is really hard to dilute at the end of cooking.

One experiment I did try that seemed to work well was taking away 10% of the KoH from the recipe and replacing it with 8% NaOH,... this produced a thicker liquid soap that I was very happy with. BUT,... I've never heard of anyone else trying this, & wondered if it was safe??!!

My method was to add the NaOH first & stick blend for 5 mins,.. to the point where I'm confident it would be at trace if there was more lye in there,.. and only then do I add the larger quantity of KoH & stick blend again.

What do you guys think?

I would want to run it through a lye calculator first. (Soapmaker3 has this functionality built in). If you use an online calculator, it's a pretty simple procedure to just run it as 2 separate recipes by calculating about 90% of your total oils and running that through with KOH, then running the other 10% through with NaOH.

Combining KOH and NaOH is a common method for making cream soaps.

Also try adding your borax solution to your paste before the big water addition. Sometimes this helps it to dilute a little quicker. Also I love using a crocpot set at warm to dilute mine.

Bruce

Bigmoose said:

Also try adding your borax solution to your paste before the big water addition. Sometimes this helps it to dilute a little quicker. Also I love using a crocpot set at warm to dilute mine.

Bruce

Click to expand...

I'm trying to do 100% organic soap, so Borax is out.
Is there any organic alternative?

Bigmoose - can you elaborate on the method for adding borax solution to the paste? I'm trying to picture adding anything to the paste and I don't see it combining at all (I just see liquid sitting on top of/next to the paste). I had a hard time diluting my paste (I've only made one successful batch of liquid soap, so I don't have anything to compare to).

SudsyKat said:

Bigmoose - can you elaborate on the method for adding borax solution to the paste? I'm trying to picture adding anything to the paste and I don't see it combining at all (I just see liquid sitting on top of/next to the paste). I had a hard time diluting my paste (I've only made one successful batch of liquid soap, so I don't have anything to compare to).

Click to expand...

Take your amount of borax and 3x water and cook till clear. As soon as it is clear pour over paste and try to stir in. This does not work with all recipes but it does with some. The easy way is just to make your liquid soap with the alcohol method, your soap stays liquid the whole time.

Bruce

In the LS book from Failor she adds CP soap to a LS batch to make thicker soap - there is also cream sopa that is deliberately made with KOH and NaOH to create a thicker soap, so I am sure it is fine. If it works for you, why not?

KOH and NaOH

I use both to make my liquid soap. I don't see any difference in thickness due to the combination. It still depends on the amount of olive oil in your recipe.
I have thickend using a salt mixture as well as a borax mixture. I have had luck with some batches and not with others. One thing I can say for sure about attempting to put borax right over your paste is...... try not to do that.
If you don't dilute to test ph first before the borax goes on and you end up putting too much on then the whole bacth of soap could be wrecked before it is ever diluted.
If you are having a bit of an issue with your paste being rock hard in the middle of your water it is because you added cold water to the paste and when paste gets cold it gets hard. it will still dilute but you have to give it way more time and a bit more heat for the first little bit. after it starts to warm back up again you can then start to break up the big chunk into little ones and put the heat to a mild simmer. also add lots of water. once the paste is all diluted you can then leave it on the stove or in the crock pot and slowly evaporate the excess water back out.
also a little glycerin added to warm paste helps it break down a bit better as well as add moisturizing properties to it. but too much can changed the amount of bubbles it makes.

Hon, that post was from 2011.