Category: Household chemistry

Personal lubricant

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Things to avoid

  • Silicones, they don’t play nice with toys and some can apparently cause uterine cancer
  • Petroleum-based products, sticky and generally bad
  • Parabens, might mess with hormones
  • Anything that can cause a yeast infection, e.g. sugars, honey, glycerin (except ultra pure stuff). Apparently (corn) starch is ok though.
  • Any oil, because it can break down latex and is not always toy safe either – however besides that it can work
  • Most preservatives can act as irritants, and often are only safe for external use

Things to consider

  • pH (water based lubes): for genital use in the range of 4.5 to 5.5, for anal use in the range of 5.5 to 7.5
  • Osmolality (water based lubes): should be around 300 mOsm/kg

Oil based formulations

Not for use with condoms and some toys!

I’ve already experiment with a whipped oil recipe, I’ve tried this formulation and it works well. I could experiment with the following:

  • Different oils (e.g. coconut, shea, sunflower oil, olive oil)
  • Different amounts of starch

Water based formulations

Typical recipe:

  • Water
  • Humectants. These are the ones I could find that are not on the avoid list:
    • Pure aloe vera
    • PDO (1,3-propanediol) as a vegetable-based replacement for propylene glycol – not well researched
    • However, because of osmolality, perhaps a humectant (other than aloe) is not a good idea anyway
  • Gelling agents. These are the ones I could find that are not on the avoid list:
    • Xanthan gum
    • Carrageenan (E407)
    • Hydroxyethyl cellulose – also a humectant
    • Carbomer
    • Agar
  • Preservatives, e.g.:
    • Potassium Sorbate
    • Citric acid
    • Sodium Benzoate – might not be safe, but probably fine
    • Vitamin E (Tocopheryl Acetate)
  • Other stuff, e.g.:
    • NaOH – to adjust pH
    • Lactic acid – to adjust pH
    • NaCl, KCl, CaCl – to adjust tonicity/osmolality

I could get concentrated aloe with preservatives already added, Xanthan gum and hydroxyethyl cellulose, and then experiment. Perhaps try to reverse engineer BioNude or just try this recipe. Here‘s an overview of some commercial formulations ordered by how safe they are.
All of these ingredients are CG approved, so I could use them for hair products too.

If I want to use both HEC and xanthan, the ratio HEC:xanthan should probably be around 2:1. The xanthan-only recipe uses 0.66% xanthan and 15% aloe. The BioNude formulation does not give percentages, but this HEC-based lubricant uses 1.27% (w/w) HEC and no xanthan, 8.5% (v/v) glycerin, 5.5% (v/v) propylene glycol. Another one uses 1.6% HEC and 20% butylene glycol. I’m thinking to combine this info into the following recipe:

  • 10% (rehydrated) aloe
  • 10% glycerin
  • 1.5% HEC
  • 1% Geoguard

Toothpaste tablets

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I like using toothpaste tablets but they’re expensive and the store where I get them doesn’t always have them in stock. Recipe: Xylitol, Microchrystalline Cellulose BP, Dicalcium Phosphate Dihydrate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate, Mint Powder, Menthol, Sodium Fluoride.

Maybe this recipe?

Maybe use hydroxyethylcellulose? About 1%? The brand I’m currently using containts microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), and some brands contain up to 70% MCC. I can’t find any good sources for MCC, I guess calcium carbonate has the same function.

Hair conditioner

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I use a lot of conditioner and so far I haven’t found the best one to make my wavy hair easier to handle and more curly. So I want to make my own recipe. Apparently it’s really easy to make, with only a couple of ingredients: water, oil, an emulsifier, and a preservative.

The emulsifier

I found two very similar recipes using BTMS as the main ingredient over at Humblebee & Me and The Things We’ll Make. BTMS is a lightweight, plant-based cationic emulsifier that is apparently a really good detangler and hair conditioner.

BTMS-25 and BTMS-50 are roughly the same price, but the latter is twice the BTMS concentration of the former, although with less of the stabilising additives blended in. I want a thin, lightweight conditioner that doesn’t weigh my hair down much, so maybe using less of the more concentrated BTMS is the best option for me.

For leave-in conditioner, about 3% BTMS-25 seems to work fine, so maybe I’ll try 1.5% BTMS-50. The TTWM recipe is 5% BTMS-25 and the Humblebee one is 4% BTMS-25 but those are not specifically leave-in, for which they recommend a lower strength. Humblebee does have a 1% BTMC leave-in conditioner recipe, and that is about twice as strong as BTMS-50. I could try the BTMC instead, but it’s harder to get and I’d have to get cetearyl alcohol too.

The oil

I’m looking for a lighter oil, this rules out things like shea & coconut butter. Also, I’m not really looking for a coating oil that makes my hair shiny – what I’m looking for is a penetrating oil. The following I think are light penetrating oils judging by this site:

  • Sunflower oil
  • Grapeseed oil
  • Almond oil
  • Argan oil

Grapeseed is the lightest oil and sunflower is by far the most penetrating out of these. The other two contain vitamins, almond oil also containts proteins, and none of these should leave greasy residue on fine hair.

TTWM uses a 1:1 oil-to-BTMS-25 ratio (5% oil), Humblebee uses a 2:1 ratio (8% oil). If I indeed go for 1.5% BTMS-50, I guess I could start with 3% oil. I could also try the Humblebee formulation without oil first.

The preservative

I need to do more research but it looks like 1% Geoguard would work. Interestingly it is the most expensive ingredient at around half of the total formulation cost.

Other ingredients

  • Film forming humectants, plant gels
    • Panthenol – expensive but good idea, 0.5%?
    • HEC for enhancing slip? Should be 0.5-2%
    • Carrageenan
    • Aloe vera
  • Film forming humectants, hyrolysed protein – I’ll try without first
  • Glycerin