Dead Sea Salt Facial Bar

[hmlove1218]

I'm wanting to adapt my current salt bar recipe into more of a specialized facial bar. The current recipe calls for 85% coconut, 10% olive, and 5% shea. I'm wanting to change it to 85% coconut, 10% grapeseed, and 5% shea. Also, instead of using regular sea salt, I'm thinking of using dead sea salt at 85% oil. Would that cause problems? Any suggestions that might make it more suited to be a facial bar?

TIA!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

If I recall, Dead Sea Salt is too full of other minerals to be used as the majority of the salt. Just like Epsom salts. You can use it as a percentage, of course, but not an overly large one - the minerals in certain salts will start to weep out from the soap.

A seasoned salt-bar maker (insert rather posh laugh here) will be able to give you much better information than I can. Take what I say with a pinch of salt (posh laugh here, too)

 

[hmlove1218]

I was thinking I had read somethin about that but I couldn't remember if t was for MP or CP

 

[Seawolfe]

I've read the same about Dead Sea salt & Epsom salts. I would be interesting to find out how much you can put in before it goes gooey.

One option might be for other fancy salts that do work - red hawaiian, pink himalayan, black, sel gris... or add pretty coarse grains to the top as an accent.

My salt bar with 15% shea, 80% CO and 5% castor is lovely and silky. On my second one I added some tussah silk to the lye water - can't say I notice the difference, but it is a lovely bar and it looks fancy on the label I've only used 80% canning salt, haven't changed that as I like it so well.

 

[Mellifera]

I make a DSS bar that's very popular. I use 100% coconut with a 20% superfat. When I tried to add coco butter, or use coconut milk, or anything fancier, it just didn't work: they often fell apart (it can probably be done, but didn't work for me). And yes, there is a limit to the amount of DSS you can use. I'm not sure I've reached it yet, but 10% of the salt weight is definitely safe.

When they first come out of the mold, they will crumble unless you are very careful. Be patient. I use a slab mold with dividers, and oil the dividers up. Because if they stick, they break. Often, I'll let them sit in the mold for a couple of days, then pull out the dividers.

Once they've hardened up, they are like any other salt bar, but they are finicky coming out of the mold. I wouldn't even attempt to cut them.

 

[hmlove1218]

So out of the 85% salt, 10% DSS is a safe number? And I have an awesome silicone cavity mold that I use for my salt bars just so I don't have to worry about missing cutting them.

 

[Mellifera]

Right. So if your salt weight is 40 ounces use 4 ounces DSS and 36 sea salt. And the silicone molds also work great, but corners can be fragile. Patience is your friend.

 

[Bayougirl]

I do my salt bar recipe and use Dead Sea Mud and sea salt and pour into the little brownie bite silicone mold that makes little squares. I use these for my face every night.