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Copper is not a repellant for mosquitoes, but it simply kills the larvae (at high concentrations directly, at lower concentration by killing the algae that they use as food in stagnant water). It's an old trick to use copper wire in the vase saucers or even to put a copper-containing coin, to...

Oh I wouldn't chuck it straight away. There are other uses for it! If you like painting or know somebody who likes old painting techniques, basic copper carbonate is a very precious pigment for oil painting that it is used for light bluish-green, hazy coatings. (Check works from Rubens). It is...

I forgot to add that basic copper carbonate pigments come in two varieties, green verditer and blue verditer. To get a nice turquoise shade you will have to mix them together. I believe that a good turquoise mica will be far less expensive than quality inorganic pigments for oil painting (which...

I wouldn't use it for several reasons. 1) Color intensity: the refractive index of basic copper carbonate (you cannot have copper carbonate alone, it is an equimolar mixture of Copper carbonate x copper hydroxide) is quite low, at 1.66, that is, it's a very transparent pigment. For comparison...

Interesting question. I am not usually scouring the web for that kind of scent family, so I can't say. However, perfumer's apprentice sells geosmin (https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/c-255-earthy.aspx), which is the main contributor to petrichor. It does not come cheap, but that is...

In most cases, probably not. It might absorb some of it, but not completely. In a mixed environment like soap is, definitely hard to predict, however, I believe that the charcoal will be "mostly" loaded with oils of low molecular weight (perhaps the capric/caprylic/myristic fraction), or...

Even a heavy-hand with charcoal will never give you a perfect black, more of a gray shade (more or less black). Thus I believe that discoloration from vanillin will mute it to a warm(er) shade of brown, as opposed to the neutral appearance of gray. If you ramp up the charcoal (1+ Tbsp ppo) you...

We have noticed that too with TD. We cannot really make up our minds if it is a catalytic effect of TD (acceleration) of it is just a thickening effect. TD has a really good affinity for carboxylates; in nanotechnology, if you want to attach something to TD (surface, nanoparticle or colloid) you...

penelopejane Can't be sure, but if it happens again (or if you want to waste time and materials) and try and replicate the experiment it might be indicative. I would take out the "soft balls" and see how they behave: 1) if you leave them out, do they dry into something crystalline or hard as a...

If you have chopped lemongrass that's good for cooking, then I suggest using some kind of "infusion" method. We had our own bad experience with it with a Chicken Curry soup. No matter how long we kept it boiling and stewing, those pesky lemongrass bits were always gritty. From there on, we kept...

Well, not today but yesterday night... We did some confetti soap from old shavings, white soap base with TD and Kaolin clay, and Champagne FO from BB. Now I smell fizzy bubbles everywhere in the house! Also, we were busy unpacking three different shipments, that came (quite surprisingly) the...

It is, indeed, FDA-approved for human consumption! It has GRAS status, but needs to be "solvent free" in the eCFR 182.20 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&SID=5af375a9ef8d063fc6c3bb215b7d4332&ty=HTML&h=L&mc=true&n=pt21.3.182&r=PART Assumingly, having a GRAS status, there is no...

They are all good oils for the skin! Definitely rosehip and primrose are fantastic and dry-feeling. Apricot kernel is on the heavier side of the oils you mentioned, but not bad at all, and cheaper! In formulating, try to keep an eye on the temperatures your whipped butter will be subjected to...

Shea adds some grease feeling, personally I would stick to mango butter, as it is a dry-touch one. All the other oils you have are reasonably fast-absorbing and both rosehip, primrose, and jojoba are wonderful for older skin types! We never tried, but many add starches like arrowroot powder...

Some anthocyanidins (responsible for most of the blue colors in the plant world) are pH stable. One is petunidin, but I can't really say which ones are in the Blue Pea flowers. Most of the anthocyanidins are fairly stable to moderately alkaline pHs (let's say >7, but <10-11). So if the lye...

I roughly extrapolated from some papers I was browsing. Unfortunately, there is no official data on the matter, but I can check better tonight when I am home. Most papers report different conditions from the ones a regular soaper uses, stirring, bubbling of CO2, spray scrubbers, film scrubbers...

You're welcome! I can tell you for sure there are tests for unreacted / unsaponified triglycerides, but they can be messy, expensive, and more laborious than not. The main problem in doing that is that, chemically, a triglyceride is really not that much different from the fatty part of a fatty...

There will be no way of knowing if all the oils are saponified. The Zap-test gives a positive response for excess alkalinity (as hydroxide), but this is not an indication of saponification completeness (from the point of view of the oils). That is, a soap might be totally saponified in respect...

DeAnna, 90% of chapter 2 scores a 95 similarity score (out of 100) with other sources. I just checked ;) As for the stirring in one direction, it might be as you say. When hand-stirring, one would avoid splashes due to turbulent flow when the stirring direction is reverted. Any other hypothesis...

Very good point, indeed, DeeAnna! L.