Cold Process Body Wash

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Phate

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Hello friends

Can someone suggest to me a great body wash cold process recipe? Or maybe help recommend a recipe based on my favorite oils?

I want to keep it simple. It is just for my family and gifts for friends. I prefer working with 92 degree coconut oil as a main ingredient. I want to include shea butter and maybe neem oil. I'm also a big fan of grapeseed oil and jojoba. I've made cold process soap before, but I'm not super educated on the amounts or percentages of each type of oils to include to make a well balanced bar. I do intend on adding essential oils or a blend of essential oils as well.

Thank you for any help!!
 
By "body wash" you mean you're wanting a liquid cleanser that you can use in a squeeze bottle or pump dispenser, right?

If so, you're looking at making liquid soap which requires using potassium hydroxide (KOH) as the alkali. In case you were thinking about using NaOH, you'll find NaOH soap does not make a "liquid" soap that is stable and has a consistent texture.

Neem has a strong odor so be sure you're going to be okay with that.

In a liquid soap, fats high in stearic and palmitic acids -- the neem and shea -- are likely to make a cloudy soap. That may or may not be an issue for you, but it's a good point to keep in mind.

A recipe high in coconut oil will probably have a lot of lather, but it's also going to be drying and stripping to the skin.

Grapeseed oil goes rancid quickly, so liquid soap with a lot of grapeseed oil is likely to have a short shelf life.

Jojoba doesn't saponify much, and it's not really all that good in soap. Although it can be used in soap if you have your heart set on it, it's best in things like lotions.

I agree with lsg's suggestion about Irish Lass's coco-shea soap, which is opaque. I think you could substitute shea for cocoa butter called for in this recipe -- that would be a reasonable subsitution I'd do if I didn't have cocoa butter but did have shea.

Another popular recipe that is reliable to make and produces a clear liquid soap is this one: Soaping 101 liquid soapmaking video? It's a good choice for first time liquid soap makers.
 
By "body wash" you mean you're wanting a liquid cleanser that you can use in a squeeze bottle or pump dispenser, right?

If so, you're looking at making liquid soap which requires using potassium hydroxide (KOH) as the alkali. In case you were thinking about using NaOH, you'll find NaOH soap does not make a "liquid" soap that is stable and has a consistent texture.

Neem has a strong odor so be sure you're going to be okay with that.

In a liquid soap, fats high in stearic and palmitic acids -- the neem and shea -- are likely to make a cloudy soap. That may or may not be an issue for you, but it's a good point to keep in mind.

A recipe high in coconut oil will probably have a lot of lather, but it's also going to be drying and stripping to the skin.

Grapeseed oil goes rancid quickly, so liquid soap with a lot of grapeseed oil is likely to have a short shelf life.

Jojoba doesn't saponify much, and it's not really all that good in soap. Although it can be used in soap if you have your heart set on it, it's best in things like lotions.

I agree with lsg's suggestion about Irish Lass's coco-shea soap, which is opaque. I think you could substitute shea for cocoa butter called for in this recipe -- that would be a reasonable subsitution I'd do if I didn't have cocoa butter but did have shea.

Another popular recipe that is reliable to make and produces a clear liquid soap is this one: Soaping 101 liquid soapmaking video? It's a good choice for first time liquid soap makers.
Hi there,

I meant Cold Process soap bars. What I'm really going for here is for someone that is experienced to suggest percentages of the ingredients I listed to create a well balanced body wash bar, strictly for personal use. I've modified my original post to better show that. I also removed jojoba oil and grapeseed oil.

Thank you, DeeAnna!
 
Body wash when used in this forum usually refers to a liquid cleanser, not a solid bar. And it usually refers to a cleanser based on synthetic detergents, not lye-based soap.

If your goal is to make lye-based soap, please just call it "soap" in this forum. "Body wash" is a super vague term here, as you can see by our posts in this thread. We've been trying to figure out your meaning, and every one of us has guessed wrong.

As far as a well-balanced soap, there are tons of recipes that will make a nice bath soap, but most recipes that I'd call "balanced" contain fats you don't have and less of the fats you want to use.

An example that's loosely based on one of my latest batches:

Coconut Oil 76°
15.0%​
Sunflower high oleic
25.0%​
Neem Tree Oil
20.0%​
Lard
40.0%​

With this recipe, I'd use a 33% lye concentration (2:1 water:lye ratio) if using a cold process method. For hot process, I'd use 25% lye concentration (3:1 water:lye ratio).

I'd suggest anywhere from 2% to 5% superfat. My personal preference is 2%, but I'd guess most soap makers would use a superfat that's more in the 5% range.

You could substitute palm oil or soy wax (hydrogenated soybean oil) for the lard. You could also include some shea butter, but I don't think it would work well to make shea the whole 40%, based on what others say about soap with a high % of nut butters. Shea is often used at 20% or less of the total fats.

The neem oil is another fat that's similar to lard, palm, soywax, and the nut butters (shea, etc.), so neem at 20% is a nice addition to soap, as long as you're okay with the odor. I wouldn't go higher than 20% neem, however.*

You could use any high-oleic (HO) oil in place of the 25% HO sunflower oil. There are many HO oils to choose from: olive, avocado, sweet almond, HO canola, HO safflower, rice bran oil, etc. You could include hemp oil as part of the 25%, although it's a low-oleic oil and also because it goes rancid fairly fast. I'd only use maybe 5% or so to minimize these issues.

If you have dry or sensitive skin, be careful with the coconut oil amount. Some people's skin can't tolerate any coconut oil in their soap. About 15% is what I normally use. Some people go as high as 30% in their regular bath bar recipes. So it's very much a personal choice. If you want more coconut oil, then investigate recipes with 80% to 100% coconut oil when made with a high superfat (around 20%).

I'd leave the jojoba entirely out of a soap recipe. There's no particular magic to using it in soap. But if you have your heart set on using it, keep the amount low -- maybe 5% of the total fats.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/100-neem-oil-soap.77969/https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/pine-tar-neem-oil-cp-recipe.73194/https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/neem-oil-accelerating-trace.79743/
 
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