Stain Stick/Laundry Powder

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MrsSpaceship

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I was reading through THIS thread on stain stick are made with kerosene.

Does anyone make this? I'm curious as to how long the kerosene remains viable. I only plan on making a 1 lb finished batch as a test, but since there's only laundry for two of us, it may sit around for a while.

At the moment I plan on doing a 100% coconut base with a low (1% so I have a error margin) SF, but am not adverse to using other oils if they work better.
I'll make a few stain sticks, the rest I plan on grating and mixing with borax/washing soda for laundry soap.

If anyone has advise that can keep me from ending up with a toxic slop that I have to figure out proper disposal on, or improvements on the concept, I would appreciate it.
 
I would use 0% SF for laundry/stain stick. You don't want extra oils running amok in your laundry if you can help it.

Many old time recipes for household soaps included kerosene. Seemed safe enough then, I suppose.

ETA-If DeeAnna says they are safe and effective, you can take it to the bank. She would not post a potentially hazardous recipe without long term testing.
 
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Good point, 0% it is.
I have the utmost faith in DeeAnna, but her comment in the thread was a consolidation of from other posts in which the majority of the members haven't been active for years (as well as using different oil combos than what I purpose).
I thought I'd see if there are any new developments/improvements and if anyone had a long term review in addition to making sure I wasn't going to crash and burn.
 
I have had this on my soapy 'to do' list for some time, now. I haven't done it yet, but I'm all set to go now that I have a bottle of turpenoid in hand, which is an odorless turpentine substitute that I bought from Hobby Lobby in the artist's supply section.

For my recipe, I'll be using 70% lard and 30% coconut oil at 0% S/F, and 1.6 oz. of the turpenoid ppo, (MikeInPDX's recipe, which is still somewhere on the forum). Now the only thing I need to do in order to make the sticks is to find the time to tear myself away from the crazy roll I'm on making my 'pretty' soaps for Christmas gifting. lol


IrishLass :)
 
Thank you EG, Lucky you! I'm glad that they keep their cleaning power.

Irish Lass,
Thank you. I've been chasing threads for a few hours and I think I finally found Mike's recipe buried in a thread. I thought that it would have a higher CO content. Is there a benefit to having the 70/30 ratio?
 
I just posted this on another thread. I make a stain stick with Coconut & lard 70:30 with 1% turpentine and it works quite well, but has to be tested for color fastness before using on a good garment. I mainly use it for removing stain on light colors. The turpentine I add in at trace

ETA: 0% superfat my 70:30 is coconut to lard
 
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Thanks Carolyn (belatedly) I will try this on my next batch, this one I was hoping to not have to purchase anything for, so I went with the kerosene option, since I have it sitting under the kitchen sink.

I made it as follows...

100% CO (800 grams)
0% superfat
80 grams kerosene added at trace.

While the CO reached trace rather quickly, the kerosene cause it to loosen up considerably, and it took a while to get it back to the point it had been.

It began to thicken while I poured it into individual silicone molds, and within the hour was pretty well set, after which I didn't continue to monitor because I went to bed.

A couple of days later, I took two of the soaps and shredded them down for laundry soap use. I ended up with a total of 200 grams shredded which I mixed with 200 grams of washing soda per DeeAnna's instructions HERE .

For anyone that might later read this, a blender won't work well for this process. I don't have a food processor, so attempted to use my Vita-mix blender. I ended up with about 1/4 of the fine sand like texture DeeAnna recommends, and the remaining heated and clumped up.
I ended up using a mesh strainer and the back of a spoon as well as my fingers to sift and break down the remaining portion. I think that if I had shredded the soap, then let it sit overnight to dry, I would have had better luck mixing it with the washing soda.
All in all, I felt that I had to go to a lot more work than the small amount of detergent was worth. Whether or not that would be the case if a food processor was involved, I can't say.
I gave several bars to my girlfriend who had requests something similar to Fels Naptha and am waiting to hear her opinion (since she's used said name brand and I have not) , and I have several bars left for personal use/holiday gifts.
Thank you all for reading my (rather long winded I realize as I proofread) rambling, and for your input. All in all, I'm very happy with my stain stick outcome and will reserve judgement on the laundry soap.
 
I have a blendtec (similar to a vitamix) and I'd say my blendtec would put a lot more heat into the soap shreds than my food processor does. When they say you can make hot soup from cold veggies by just blending them in a blendtec/vitamix ... well, that's a lot of energy!

So far a food processor fitted with a cutting blade is my tool of choice for pulverizing the soap shreds into powder. There is certainly some heating, which is why I use about half soap shreds and half washing soda when processing the soap into powder -- without the washing soda to tame things down, the soap shreds definitely do get hot and ball up. But I'm certain the heating is not as much as you get from your vitamix.
 
I made the deal with the Hubby that I'd get rid of an appliance when we got the Vita-mix. I'm regretting it now. :( I was hoping that short bursts would do the trick, but alas, it was not to be. I'm hoping I can make it work if I work really slowly and put the mixture in the freezer to make it more brittle/workable.
 
Is there a way to make an effective stain stick without kerosene?
 
If you don't have super greasy ground in grime, there's no need to add a solvent. Definitely do an all soap stain stick. That's what I make too.
 
Thank you guys! you're awesome! I will make it this weekend!
 

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