Thinking about a dish soap...

[JimSteel]

I've never used a CP soap for my dishes, and am beginning to wonder why. Before I go crazy and start experimenting, I want to get an idea of where I should begin. I've done some reading and found very little on Bar soap for dishes. This leads me to believe that it is neither a desirable or effective option, but me being the pioneer, just has to give it a shot.

What I have read (on these forums and elsewhere) is that 1) soaps don't provide enough bubbles and those bubbles don't last long enough. 2) soaps don't have the grease cutting power that's needed for dishes. 3)soaps will need a very low SF, possibly less than 1%.

So here's what I'm thinking.

High coconut oil percentage for cleansing and bubbles.
10% castor for bubbles.
Palm for stability and hardness of bar? or should I just go with straight stearic.
d-limonene for grease cutting.
maybe a touch of lemon grass for scent (orange/lemon)

Now the questions:
1. Will a high CO, low SF be drying as a dish soap, I know it will as a hand soap and am inclined that this wouldn't be any different. Should I have conditioning oils in there?
2. Are there any natural additives that might boost it's cleaning power - borax or something else like that?
3. Anything else that could boost the bubbles?
3. Anything else I should be considering?

Peace, Jim

 

[Seawolfe]

I'm willing to bet our grandmothers used bars for dish soap, rub a rag on the bar and scrub the dishes. There are even dodads that grate the soap as needed if you want grated soap on your scrub sponge

I don't think you want more than 5% castor for fear of making your soap sticky. Stearic or palm might be nice to make it less soluble. You don't want a superfat in your dish soap, it will leave a film on the dishes and inhibit lather.

Personally I would use a 95% coconut oil, 5% castor, 0.25 or 0% superfat bar with sugar in the water before lye to boost the bubbles, and citric acid to help with hard water and better rinsing, and sodium lactate to harden the bar. I dont think I would put borax in the bar for fear of increasing the superfat. Or I would use my laundry soap which is 100% CO soap grated and mixed with borax and washing soda.

I used to fear 100% coconut oil 0% superfat soap, but I've gotten over it - it doesn't bother my hands at all, even when its the concentrated paste for liquid soap.

Speaking of liquid soap - why not just make liquid soap?

 

[Susie]

I agree with the liquid soap statement, and all of the others. The first idea you need to get rid of is that you will have a sink full of bubbles. Just not going to happen with hand made soap. Does 100% CO soap work to de-grease and clean dishes? Yes, absolutely. Does it dry my hands...some, but not as bad as commercial syndet. I just dab some liquid soap paste on the cloth to wash the dishes with. No muss, no fuss.

 

[JimSteel]

Thanks for the feedback, I think I have some citric kicking around. How will that affect the superfat? in a tester batch I can't be very precise. I'm literally looking at making a single puck of this right now. Looking ahead, if I calc to a 0-0.25% superfat, won't adding citric to the mix affect my numbers by neutralizing the lye?

Not sure if I want to undertake liquid soap right now, even though it's probably far superior for this purpose. I've heard it's rather complex , prone to spoiling etc.

Any resources for a simple and reliable liquid soap recipe? I have KOH on hand.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

You increase the lye to allow for the citric acid. The extra lye and the ca combine to make sodium citrate, so overall no change to your superfat

As for liquid soap, have you seen the easy to follow methods in the liquid soap section of the forum?

 

[DeeAnna]

You're missing a critical point. Your experience so far has been with soap on a washcloth or rubbed directly on skin. In this case, the soap is fairly concentrated. Soap squirted into a large pan of water is a very dilute solution and doesn't give the same results at all as far as suds. No amount of coconut or castor will create lots of long lasting suds when the soap is diluted. That's why lye soap is not worth making into a bubble bath either. You need synthetic detergents to get longlasting suds when diluted that much.

Bar soap is fine when you're scrubbing it onto a washcloth and directly washing skin or dishes -- there's enough soap to actually clean. But if you want to add soap to a large amount of water to wash clothes or dishes, you have to get enough soap into the water to do some good. That's where bar soap is at a big disadvantage compared with a liquid soap.

As the others have mentioned, the old fashioned way was to grate or shave the soap into hot water. That's what my grandmother did with her lye soap on wash day -- shaved the soap into hot water in her wringer washer while the agitator was running. Even she didn't have that kind of patience when washing dishes, so she used liquid detergent at the kitchen sink. Like my grandma, I use powdered NaOH soap for my laundry but I use liquid KOH soap for dishes.

 

[Seawolfe]

Yes citric acid will neutralize the lye, so yes you need to compensate for that or you just end up with too much superfat.

The citric acid information according to DeeAnna is:

CITRIC ACID in Soap
Citric acid and Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) make Sodium citrate in soap
Typical dosage: 10 g citric acid for every 1,000 g oils (1% ppo). Range 0.1% to 3%.
10 g citric acid neutralizes 6.24 g NaOH
10 g citric acid neutralizes 8.42 g KOH

So for every 10 g of citric acid added to the recipe, you would also need an additional 6.24 g NaOH or 8.42 g KoH

Liquid soap is just as easy to make as hot process soap, or as cold process soap if you go look at Susies tutorial in the Liquid Soap Making forum. I store the bulk of my LS as paste and dilute a half gallon at a time, certainly never had a problem with spoilage.

Unless you have a jewelers scale, I'm not sure you have enough accuracy to properly make a single soap to evaluate.

 

[lsg]

I have tried using several liquid soap recipes, but with our hard water they don't work. Many of our ancestor had cisterns and collected runoff water. This water was soft, so it worked well with lye soap. I make liquid dish soap using eco friendly surfactants. This works much better for me.

 

[JimSteel]

I guess I'll look into some liquid soap. Haven't even checked in that forum section. I guess my intuitions were correct, there's a reason bar soap isn't widely used in dish cleaning endeavours.

I'll also need to add that citric information to my spreadsheet. Good stuff.

Thanks everyone.