Here’s a non-exhaustive list of home lab equipment I own.
Glassware
10L Schott bottle with wide flange (75mm flat ground)
5L Schott bottle (GL45) with bottom side port (GL32)
25cm vacuum desiccator, lid is currently stuck
~1.8L thick-walled reactor with wide flange (100mm flat ground) at the top, spherical joint at the bottom (28/15). No lid, but I do have a hose adapter (18mm?) and clamp to go with the spherical joint
100mL, 500mL and 1000mL volumetric flask (only 100mL one has ground joint & stopper)
250mL (8x), 750mL and 1000mL flat bottom flasks (only 250mL have 29/32 joint, most with stoppers)
500mL round bottom flask with single 29/32 joint, fits my heated mantle
Amber storage bottles in various shapes and sizes. Some beautiful wide mouth ones with octagonal ground glass stoppers that I use for salts (100-2500mL), some narrow mouth ones with screw caps that are more suitable to liquids (250-2500mL).
Chromatography column (?) that is jacketed for 40cm, has a slightly bulbous section on one end with a spout and a GL25 side port, has a GL14 screw connection at the top and two more for the jacket
Various flow meter tubes
Smaller glassware, including reaction tubes and amber dropper bottles
Equipment
200W heated mantle for 500mL round bottom flasks
Various pumps
Analytical balance 0-20g, accurate to a couple mg
Small balance 0-500g, accurate to a couple dozen mg
Other
Glassware drying rack
Beefy lab stand (16mm rod, 1m tall, heavy 45x40cm base)
When I go hiking with my backpack, and it’s a little chilly out, I often get a sweaty back and sweaty armpits. But when I take my warm layer off, my shoulders and chest get cold. Sometimes I’m even cold and sweaty at the same time. I already have the most well ventilated pack I could find, and I wear breathable wool, so I haven’t been able to find something that keeps me warm but not sweaty yet.
What if I make some sort of shoulder wrap, like the ones made famous by Outlander?
It’s a Victorian Sontag – usually it’s just a big triangle, but I guess I could take the “point” off and make the back much smaller. Then it would only warm my shoulders and core, without overheating my back and armpit areas. The bottom would just tuck into my backpack strap. It would be easy to put on, and very easy to make it less warm by just opening up the front.
I have no experience with knitting or crocheting. I guess crocheted, it would be thicker, heavier and warmer than needed. Perhaps I should just cut it from woven fabric, or maybe even weave something myself.
I could try air blown yarn, e.g. Drops Air, which is a lightweight alpaca/merino mix blown through nylon mesh. The mesh is strong, but from reviews it seems that the alpaca fibres will quickly come out and just leave the nylon mesh, so it’s not ideal in places that see much wear. Since it will be under my backpack shoulder straps, I think I need something a little sturdier. It would be nice to use wool so it will still insulate a bit in light drizzle.
Maybe still knit from a lightweight wool yarn, but sew on some sturdy fabric over the pack strap areas, like wool commando sweaters do?
I think this would also be a very nice garment to wear when I’m sitting in an office chair for hours on end. I have the same problem with cold shoulders and/or overheating back then.
Also, I’ve ordered some synthetic uv/cycling sleeves so I don’t have to change from a long sleeve base layer to a short sleeve shirt when it gets warmer. Been wanting to buy these for a while but hadn’t found them in the right length yet.
To solubilise HEC: add slowly to cold water with high shear mixing. To speed up, increase pH first until it hydrolyses, then pH can be adjusted down again.
BTMS-50 too heavy or too greasy in leave-in conditioner? Use Stearamidopropyl dimethylamine (SPDMA) or PEG-100 (emulsifier 165) instead? Panthenol just marketing, makes sticky, ok for leave in conditioner?? Could just use glycerin or proyplene gylcol as humectant, but also stick.
Quats (cationic), e.g. Cetrimonium chloride (detangler), honeyquat, polyquaternium (polyquat, e.g. polyquat-7, polyquat-10), – cationic conditioning ingredients. PQ-7 and 10 should be very low in leave-in product, 0.1%? Cetrimonium chloride is max 0.83% in leave-in products. But: in leave-on products, you don’t need specific cationic polymers. You can use emollients straight away.
Emulsifiers: cationic work best, nonionic ok too, but in leave-in conditioner cationic surfactants not needed. Frizz: can be both from cationic or anionic charge buildup.
Emollients, also for slip: carrier oils, silicones, esters such as C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, coco-caprylate (cyclomethicone replacement), PEG esters
Humectants: glycerin (but sticky at high concentrations), propanediol, sodium lactate,
Go for nonionic surfactants? Coco glucoside, Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside (only acidic non-ionic surfactant), fatty alcohols like Cetearyl Alcohol and Cetearyl Glucoside, sucrose cocoate (sanfteen, doesn’t work at pH<7), emulsifier 165
I’m looking to formulate a leave-in conditioner for my thin and damaged curly hair. After some searching I have found a product that works for my hair, but it’s a little heavier than I like (it’s not meant as a leave-in) and I would like a little more clumping/hold. It has the following ingredients:
Aqua,
Cetearyl Alcohol,
Stearamidopropyl Dimethylamine,
Glyceryl Stearate SE,
Hydrolyzed Keratin ,
Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice,
Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract,
Behentrimonium Chloride,
Dipropylene Glycol,
Cetrimonium Chloride,
Glycerin,
(parfum, preservatives, pH adjusters)
I’ve used the above formulation as a starting point but want to change a lot of things. I have the following goals for my formulation:
Wet detangling
Non-greasy / non-wet-look
Provides some clumping/hold
Does not build up on repeated use without shampooing
I want to lower the amount of cationic surfactants, but I can’t source SAPDMA, so I’m using BTMS as a high HLB surfactant. I want to replace Glyceryl Stearate SE with Glyceryl Oleate for its refattening properties, and use Cetearyl alcohol to make up the rest of the low HLB. Then, I want replace all the humectants with a bit of propanediol, and add Coco-Caprylate as an extra emollient. Finally, I would like to use some PVP/VA Copolymer for a bit of clumping/hold. I’ve read that natural gums are harder to use and can cause flaking.
Would these ingredients work well together as a non-greasy leave-in conditioner for curly hair? I am quite new to formulating, so are there any things to look out for, like incompatibilities?
Other film formers: 3.5% – 1.5% hydrolysed silk protein, 1.5% PVP/VA copolymer, 0.5% glyceryl oleate
Emollients: 3% – Coco-caprylate
Oil phase: 4.5%
Formulation:
Heated water phase
88.55% Distilled water
1.5% 1,3-propanediol
Heated oil phase
0.75% Behentrimonium chloride
0.5% Glyceryl oleate
1.5% Cetearyl alcohol
3.0% Coco-caprylate
Cool down phase
1.5% hydrolysed silk protein
1.5% PVP/VA copolymer
0.2% fragrance/essential oils
1.0% Geogard
PVP/VA copolymer gives a wet look which I don’t like. Use less/no humectants (only film forming) to give a dryer look? Some may still be necessary to keep gel hydrated
Idea: LGN using glyceryl oleate (GMO) and Polysorbate 80. This study uses 90mg GMO to 40mg polysorbate 80, for 30% high-HLB by weight. 10-30% is recommended. However, this gives an overall HLB of only ~7.4 which may be too low to emulsify emollients. To get a HLB of 9.3, it would need to be ~45% high-HLB. Calculating by molar percentage, I have to get the molar weights. I asked Perplexity, the answers were wrong but the sources are useful: glyceryl oleate 370.5234 g/mol polysorbate-80 428.60 g/mol. This means the molar ratio in the study is 1:2.6 (high:low), but to get an overall HLB of 9.3, it would need to be 1:1.2. Ratios within 1:1 and 1:6 are mostly LGN, with 1:6 to 1:3 giving high viscosity. Ratios within 6:1 and 1:1 are mixed type emulsions (LGN & micellar system). Additionally, emollients such as ester oils like the coco-caprylate I’d like to use can reduce viscosity.
So: this anionic thickening LGN may be possible, but it may not emulsify coco-caprylate. For it to emulsify, it would no longer be thickening. I would need to add something like cetyl alcohol (242.4 g/mol).
To get to a HLB of 9.5 (ignoring the cetyl alcohol) and a 1:3 ratio high:low, starting from 0.5% glyceryl oleate, I would need the following amounts:
0.50% glyceryl oleate
0.50% polysorbate 80
0.50% cetyl alcohol
Which might not be thick enough because of the coco-caprylate interaction. With BTMS or BTMC instead of polysorbate 80, I would need more cetyl alcohol.
What if I drop the coco-caprylate, so the HLB can be lower?
1.5% Glyceryl oleate (conditioning, refattening)
0.5% BTMC (this brings HLB to ~6, and molar ratio 1:3.3)
5% L-arginine (emollient & simple humectant & fixative) – use 6% if L-arginine HCl
may not emulsify fragrance/EO
May not be thick enough
1% Geogard
acid to pH 4.5-5.0
If using 5% L-arginine (free base)
~3% lactic acid (L-arginine 174.20 g/mol, lactic acid 90.08 g/mol -> about 2:1 molar ratio to neutralise)
~5% citric acid (closer to 1:1 molar ratio)
~1% phosphoric acid (tripolar 98.00 g/mol -> about 5:1 molar ratio to neutralise)
It doesn’t work with glyceryl oleate (GMO) alone, so above formulation needs a thickener or change to BTMC/cetyl alcohol
This study suggests it does work as LGN, but at 25+% surfactant, together with GMS, and even then it is not thickening
GMO together with Polysorbate-80 gives nanoparticles, not really thickening?
GMO:Tween80 ratios ranging 6:1 to 3:1 worked well, 3:1 gave larger particle size
Total surfactant 7-8%
Another study used Ewax (cetearyl alcohol & tween60) & GMO at different ratios; 3:7, 5:5 and 7:3, plus tween80. No info on concentrations or viscosity, but 3:7 Ewax:GMO gave the largest nanoparticle size
Lipid nanoparticles may be too stable. You can dry them and resuspend them, so perhaps they will not disperse in hair?
Conclusion: don’t try to make an LGN with GMO as the LGN promotor. Just use cetyl alcohol. Or use something else to thicken, HEC?
Do I even need GMO? It’s a refatting agent, but I don’t use harsh surfactants. Probably better to use conditioning polymers instead?
Dropping the glyceryl oleate, putting the coco-caprylate back
0.8% BTMC (emulsifier, conditioner)
1.5% Cetyl alcohol (emollient, thickener)
2.0% Coco-caprylate (light oil-like emollient)
6.0% L-arginine HCl (emollient, humectant, provides some hold)
1.0% Geogard
0.2% fragrance/essential oils
acid to pH 4.5-5.0
Process behind the ratios
I looked on specialchem.com and found that Coco-caprylate (or the very similar Coco-caprylate/Caprate) is typically used at 2% in leave-in hair care formulations.
I read into emulsions. The 2% Coco-caprylate that I want to emulsify requires a HLB of 9.3, Cetyl alcohol requires a HLB of 15.5. If I want a total HLB to match with the HLB of BTMC which is 12, I calculated that I need 1.5% Cetyl alcohol.
I want to thicken my conditioner using LGN, so I read into LGNs. If I understand it right, for high viscosity, the molar ratio of surfactant to LGN promotor should be between 1:3 and 1:6 for high viscosity. I calculated that I need about 0.8% BTMC to get to a 1:3 ratio.
I cheched with some light leave-in conditioner formulations I could find if the BTMC and fatty alcohol values are in the right ballpark. Humblebeeandme has 4 light leave-in conditioner formulations, 2 of which use BTMC. The first uses 0.5% BTMC and 1% cetearyl alcohol, but they also use 0.3% cationic guar gum to help stabilise the emulsion and don’t recommend leaving it out. However that formulation has a larger oily fraction (5.5% vs 2.25%), so I might still get away with leaving it out. Also, the L-arginine might help stabilise the emulsion? Their second formulation uses 1% BTMC and 1% cetearyl alcohol, but it doesn’t have to emulsify any oil other than 0.5% fragrance oils. So I think I’m in the right ballpark with 0.8% BTMC and 1.5% Cetyl alcohol.
I read that Arginine at 5-8% has nice fixative properties. I’m starting with 6% L-Arginine HCl which equals about 5% Arginine. I thought about getting the free base instead, but then I’d have to add the acid anyway to get the pH down to 4.5-5. This way I can avoid using strong acids.
Forum post titled “Can Arginine function as a fixative in a leave-in conditioner?”
I want to make a leave-in conditioner for personal use. I want it to be a good wet detangler, provide some clumping/hold for wavy/curly hair without weighing it down too much, and I want it to not build up on repeated use without shampooing. Because of the latter, I’ve settled on trying to formulate a conditioner that mostly works by penetrating hair fibres, instead of creating a film.
I’ve set my eyes on Coco-Caprylate as a lightweight emollient, and I want to try Arginine for its emollient, humectant and supposed fixative properties. For my formulation I took 2% Coco-caprylate as a starting point, calculated that I need 1.5% Cetyl alcohol to get the HLB to 12 (same as BTMC), then calculated that I need about 0.8% BTMC to get to a 1:3 molar surfactant to fatty alcohol ratio for high viscosity LGN. I hope I understand the emulsifier & LGN theory right and this will create a nice consistency, perhaps with a little experimentation.
0.8% BTMC
1.5% Cetyl alcohol
2.0% Coco-caprylate
6.0% L-arginine HCl
1.0% Geogard
0.2% fragrance/essential oils
pH to 4.5-5.0
My questions:
Am I using Arginine correctly in this formulation? I could only find the recommendation by @vitalys on this forum that it has “excellent fixative properties” and “5-8% will already bring nice fixation, especially in hair sprays”. I did find formulations using Arginine but they were all <0.5%.
How can an amino acid like Arginine have fixate properties? Does it polymerise, or maybe remodel disulfide bonds? Is it an interaction with other molecules taking advantage of Arginine’s affinity for hair protein and its cationic charge at pH<9?
Will this formulation work well for what I want, or does “fixative” for instance necessarily mean that it won’t be a good wet detangler?
Thanks for any help!
Feedback: BTMC to 1% active, ratio to 1:4, maybe more emollients
I managed to fit the small inductor into the other dimmer. It fits, but only just.
Please don’t look at my shoddy soldering job. Also, I did tape it up to be safer.
This definitely lessened the chopping noise from my speakers, but unlike with the other dimmer, the noise is not gone entirely. I guess it’s because I tested the specific inductor with the other dimmer and lights, and because this dimmer runs right next to the amplifier.
Still, the noise is much less than before and only noticeable because I know it’s there, and even then I can only hear it when I turn the volume way down. I might revisit this in the future, but for now, problem solved :)
I dug out my box of random inductors and tried to quieten one of the LED dimmers today. Contrary to what I thought in my previous post, the coils actually worked best when installed in series between the dimmer and the LED load. Almost all the inductors I tried helped quieten the chopping noise heard on my headphone amp. One interestingly completely stopped the noise when dimmed at 0%/50%/100%, but was still slightly audible at the in-between settings:
Two of the inductors were able to completely remove the noise. This one, and a very similar looking one:
Yay, I can listen to my headphones and dim my lights at the same time now! I love simple solutions :)
The other inductor that removed all the noise looks very similar but it’s slightly smaller. I might actually be able to fit it into the other dimmer module, to solve the noise on my speaker amp.
I used to have an RSS reader a long time ago. Now I manually check a dozen websites daily.
I want to go back to RSS.
Update: installed Feedbro extension for Firefox. Had to use Proxygram for Instagram posts, Politepol for one website, I think I’ve got most of it working now.
Couldn’t get automatic post updates from my Facebook group using Zapier though, despite connecting my account and adding the app to my group. Meh
Update: I think I got the Zapier integration to work after fiddling with a test group for a bit. :) The problem was a hidden permission setting somewhere with Facebook
Update after 2 weeks: very happy with my feed reader, I should’ve done this way earlier. I mostly got rid of my routine of cycling through websites to see if I missed any updates, and my internet browsing has gotten less passive. I just check my feed reader a few times per day, so I can browse what I find interesting, instead of mostly what algorithms think I find interesting.
We have several Edmund Bühler VKS75 orbital shakers at our lab, at least one of them is older than I am. They are very large capacity (up to 75 kg depending on rpm) shakers, and we have them as single, double and triple platform ones. They are very sturdy machines that are supposed to last nearly forever, but lately they have been breaking down at an alarming rate.
At first I thought it was because they were overloaded; one of our students was loading a lot of them full of 500 mL square bottles. But I checked and no, this was well within the machine’s capacity. I checked with Edmund Bühler and they confirmed, the weight shouldn’t be a problem. But the machines were shaking on their feet, making noise, and sometimes they tended to shake themselves across the room. And they were breaking down more often than they should.
I checked if the machines were installed level. Turns out, the floor in the room they’re in is far from level. My predecessor, whom I inherited responsibility over the machines from, had apparently attempted to solve this by levelling the machines with rubber pads. Or perhaps those were intended to prevent the shakers from walking around the room? I now think that this extra rubber was a big part of the problem; the shaking motion compressed the rubber, magnifying the movement of the entire machine. This was mainly a problem with the tall 3-story ones. The machines already come with rubber feet, I suppose they are specifically sized to dampen the movements and any extra rubber probably makes things worse.
Anyway, the machines’ feet are not height adjustable, so I bought some 50×50 mm plastic levelling tiles in different thicknesses to replace the rubber pads. The floor is really wonky. With some machines, there was up to 7 mm difference from one foot to another to get the machine level, but I only had tiles up to 5 mm thick. I levelled them as best as I could and it was a big improvement over the rubber pads. The machines were no longer making ominous noises, and compared to with the rubber pads they were barely moving any more.
But one of the shakers still managed to shake itself off its little levelling tiles the day after I levelled it, so back to the drawing board..
I designed a simple levelling tile holding foot, and had a set of them 3D printed with 100% infill. It’s a round puck, with a square recess for the tiles such that you can easily get them out by the corners. It’s tall enough that I can stack multiple tiles to make up the 7 mm floor difference without the shaker shaking itself off, but low enough that you don’t have to lift the machine very far to put the feet under.
So far, it seems to work really well! I love simple solutions :)
Dyeing polyester is a chore. Maybe I can just paint them instead, using acrylic paint.
I could make my own fabric medium (for thinning down acrylic paint) using glycerin, vinegar and water. I have some old glycerin that I wanted to throw out anyway.
This video looks very similar to what I want to try. They came out a bit blotchy but I think that’s a cool look, if I didn’t want that I could wet the fabric beforehand to make the paint stick more evenly.
Would need a hot iron to completely cure the acrylic onto the fibres. Or perhaps an oven, or a blow dryer.
I want to dye my curtains. When I moved into my current place I really needed curtains and I bought the first ones I could find that were cheap, “blackout” and at least somewhat close to the colour palette I wanted for my room. But they turned out to be “greige”, while I wanted beige. Now I have them I think I’d like them better in a shade of brown.
For some reason, I have a complete extra set of these curtains, so I shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. Also, I don’t mind if it turns out a bit more “rustic”; the colour doesn’t have to be perfectly consistent. Finally, it doesn’t have to be the most permanent dye, because I rarely (if ever) wash my curtains.
Of course, I don’t want to make things easy for myself and just buy fabric dye. I want to see if I can make my own.
I’m thinking of walnut husks, or iron oxide. I don’t necessarily want to go for natural dyes, but they seem the most accessible and I want to dye it my curtains a natural colour.
I’m doing some research and it looks like polyester is typically dyed in pressurised machines at 130°C to swell the fibre and open it up for dye penetration. It is possible to dye at lower temperature, but the compounds needed to swell the fibres at a lower temperature are generally toxic (benzoic acid, dichlorobenzene) and even though I could probably source them, I don’t think it’s environmentally responsible to use those. In general, polyester fibres are hydrophobic and will not absorb water-soluble dyes.
Alkaline treatment can help make the fibres hydrophilic, although this comes at the cost of some fabric weight loss.
Apparently somebody found that the bark of a tropical tree can be used on polyester, in combination with a copper sulfate mordant it would give the colour I want.
One study looked into madder as a natural dye for polyester, at different temperatures and using different mordants, and found that at 100°C the mordants performed no better than without, however copper sulfate seemed to perform similarly to using no mordant at 60°C. It gives a bit of an orangy-beige colour. Apparently potassium sulfate can work as a mordant too and I could experiment with magnesium sulfate too.
Continuing reading, I’m starting to realise that this would be a logistically challenging project. Even the commercial fabric dyes would need close to 100°C to work, and I don’t think we have a pot big enough to fit even just 1 of the curtains on our stove. I might be able to borrow a vat that I could dump them in together with boiling water, but I probably won’t be able to get it over 60°C. Maybe I can throw a heating element in.
One study found that vanillin can be used as a sustainable carrier for low-temperature polyester dying. The results are promising! It’s not as good at colouring as the carcinogenic ones, but, well, it’s not carcinogenic. (Para-)vanillin is easy to get and relatively cheap in low quantities and improves the K/S value (I guess this is the maximum colour uptake value?) from 2 to 3.5 compared to using no carrier. Ortho-vanillin could get to 7.5, but I can’t source it.
Other essential oils (Cinnamaldehyde, Thymol, Geraniol) may function similarly. Acetone may solve as a co-solvent?
One study used iron sulfate and fatty acids to colour polyester at boiling temperature.
This study managed to dye (green) using ethanol extracted chlorophyll from sweet potato leaves at 60-80°C. They used metal ion mordants and found that copper sulfate works best, at a very low pH around 3. I really like the idea of dyeing with leaf matter, and I think green curtains would work well as well.
I would need:
A vat with a heating element and a thermometer
A bunch of green leaves, they dried at 50°C
Ethanol to extract chlorophyll – they used 100g dried leaves per 1L 60% ethanol
A pot to boil the leaves – they extracted for 100 minutes at 90°C
Copper sulfate
An acid
Still, metal ions aren’t great to dispose of in the sewage system and it’s still a lot of hassle.
I’ve decided I want to try this formulation with some substitutions.
I found an old tin of moustache wax with only 3 ingredients; beeswax, lanolin and sandalwood oil. I think it’s 50-70% beeswax, 20-40% lanolin, and up to 10% sandalwood oil. I think I will remelt some of that and use it as the beeswax and heavy oil part of the formulation.
6g BTMS-50
8g remelted moustache wax
4-5.6g beeswax
1.6-3.2g lanolin
<0.8g sandalwood oil
5g mango butter
8g light to medium oil – grapeseed, argan, almond
2 drops vitamin E oil
10 drops of essential oil (fir, rosemary, ..?)
Update: I melted down some of the moustache wax with olive oil in the microwave as a simple test. I found out that even with a much lower fraction of beeswax, I really don’t like this type of moustache/beard balm. It’s not a very strong hold, but it is sticky enough that I really don’t want it on my hands.
If I’m going to do a moustache/beard balm, it has to be water soluble.
Soluble calcium in the formulation reacts with fluoride to give insoluble calcium fluoride, making it less effective unless you don’t rinse and drink anything for several hours after
If I want the best fluoride action, I should get soluble sodium fluoride, and I should not use calcium compounds as the abrasive. This is why the toothpaste tablets I buy from the store have cellulose and silicate instead of calcium carbonate, I think.
I could spend €20 to get 100 grams of sodium fluoride which would last me a lifetime, but I’d prefer to not have so much of a toxic compound in a drawer so I’m continuing to look for smaller quantities.
Cellulose (microcrystalline cellulose, MCC, E460): this is also less abrasive than most other most other toothpaste binders. I can’t find a good source for buying it yet.
Sodium bicarbonate – more of a filler, not abrasive enough on its own
Magnesium carbonate – also makes fluoride less effective, but magnesium fluoride is slightly more soluble
Dehydrated silica gels – too hard/abrasive (Mohs 7 vs enamel’s 5)
Silicates – too hard/abrasive
Hydrated aluminium oxides – I don’t want aluminium, also way too hard (Mohs 9)
Phosphate salts, e.g. dicalcium phosphate dihydrate (DCPD), insoluble sodium metaphosphate (IMP), sodium hexametaphosphate. Having a hard time finding any of these
Fluoride: I want sodium fluoride or sodium monofluorophosphate (MFP)
Zinc (zinc chloride 47.98%, zinc citrate 22.77%, zinc acetate 35.64%, zinc gluconate 13.29%): inhibits plaque formation, prevents halitosis. Allowed up to 1%, although there was a proposal to lower this to 0.1% for toothpaste but in this study 1% was deemed to be perfectly safe. I’m finding it difficult to find any food safe soluble zinc powder as a consumer though. Perhaps zinc oxide (80.35%) works ok? Colgate uses it
I’ve decided that calcium carbonate base would still be the easiest, even if it makes the fluoride less effective. Many toothpaste products still combine these two.
Total formulation:
50% calcium carbonate – 500 g makes 2.0 kg for €6.88
20% sodium bicarbonate – 454 g makes 2.3 kg for €1.70
With each tablet being about 0.3 to 0.5 g, this set of ingredients would make me about 3000 tablets for €48.44 (€0.016 each), compared to about €0.042 each at the store. Including the €5.99 silicone mould the break even point for 1 person is about 2 years worth of toothpaste tablets (~1500).
The surfactants I only need very little of, and I’m already buying them for other products, so I guess the total cost for this project is a little lower. The zinc oxide and sodium fluoride I will have way too much of, but the calcium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate and xylitol are easy to get more of so if I really wanted to I could make 20,000 tablets for around €100 (€0.005 each) which would last me about 27 years.
I want to make a mattress extender, but to make it wider instead of longer. There’s about 20-25 cm between my bed and the wall, I’ve got square buckets of hydroponic media there for storage but I think it would be nice if I put some sort of mattress extender on top of it. Perhaps I can just make it out of an old duvet cover, which is already the right length. I’ve still got a bag of foam scraps that I used to make my beanbag, I don’t know if it’d be enough.
I ordered some items that I hope to be able to use as moulds.
The first is a pet treat baking mould that I hope to use for making toothpaste tablets. It’s made out of food-grade silicone and has 468 “hemispheres” of 12mm diameter. They’re not entirely pill-shaped so I hope it works! I looked up toothpaste tablet sizes and apparently they range from about 8mm to about 12mm so I guess it should be about the right size.
The second item is a pair of Onigiri rice ball presses that I hope to use for making shampoo bars. Again I don’t know if it’ll work, but apparently some people have had success with them. The shampoo bars I buy from the store are 6cm diameter, 3cm thickness, 65g, but I wouldn’t mind them to be a bit bigger. The rice ball press is about 7.5×9.5cm so a little bigger but I think it would still be a nice size.
I just found out that I have some rancid old stuff in a box. I want to see if I can reuse it for something where that doesn’t matter so much.
I have this rancid stuff:
250 mL shea butter, bought 4 years ago
250 mL shea butter, bought 8 months ago
500 mL coconut oil, bought who knows how long ago
“Jojoba oil” (mostly grape, then jojoba, some vit E and also sunflower), bought I don’t know how long ago
150 mL glycerine, bought I don’t know how long ago
I can’t find any uses for the rancid glycerol, I’ll probably just throw it out. I guess it could burn in a diesel stove or perhaps mixed with ethanol in a small burner, although it would produce a lot of particulates and I haven’t got any of those anyway.
The newer shea butter smells slightly vinegary, but the others are most definitely very rancid. I think it would be fun to see if I can reuse at least some of them for something.
One way to reuse rancid butter & oil for soap is to do a brine wash, to salt out the non-saponifiables. There’s a good guide in this thread. Nice video here.
I have an idea to make liquid dish soap from the shea butter and jojoba. Something like the liquid laundry detergent I also want to make, but with 10% soap added. For the soap I could use this calculator to see how much lye I need; since I don’t want superfat and I will brine wash anyway I think I can use an excess of lye.
10% soap
1.1% lye
8.9% shea butter
15% SLS
5% Coco betaine
3% Coco glucoside
Citron essential oil
pH adjustment to about 9
No idea if this recipe would actually work. It would cost about €2.50 per liter in ingredients which is slightly higher than store-bought washing up liquid. So.. I might as well just try to dissolve the soap in store bought washing up liquid?
Some more research: apparently this would make it a “combo” soap, although that might refer to anhydrous products. These products apparently contain 10-50% mild syndet (surfactant based soap) next to the regular soap. Syndet bars (e.g. shampoo bars) can be around 80% surfactant, so soap:surfactant ratio is roughly anywhere between 10:1 and 1:1.
On the other hand, traditional soap is known to leave film on dishes and on the sink, and regular washing up liquid works just fine, so there is no reason to actually do this other than to use something that I should throw away. Also, rancid oil can cause people to develop annoying sensitivity to specific oils.
Maybe I should just do that and throw all this stuff out.
Update 3 weeks later: I’ve discarded everything rancid in the “used oils” waste disposal bin. I’m proud of myself
I want to buy some ingredients, so I’m making an overview of what I want and what I have. I went through a box of old stuff and found some ingredients, most of which are rancid..
Have
Shea butter, rancid
Coco butter, a little rancid
“Jojoba oil” (mostly grape, then jojoba, some vit E and also sunflower), also rancid
Glycerine 150mL, possibly rancid?
Aloe vera gel 92%, still smells ok
Essential oils:
Tea tree 40mL
Rosemary 40mL
Citron 30mL
Lavender 10mL
Various powdered chemicals, e.g. NaOH and fertiliser ingredients
Want
Assuming 100g toothpaste tablets, 200g shampoo bar, 500 mL conditioner, 500 mL lube, 1 L wool wash, 100g deodorant, 50g beard balm
150g Sodium cocoyl isethianate (SCI) – for shampoo bar, wool wash
108g Coco betaine – for shampoo bar, detergents
30g Coco glucoside – for detergents
14.5g BTMS-50 – for beard balm & conditioner & shampoo bar
6g BTMS-50 – also helps against build up (could replace with BTMS-25)
2-4g beeswax
5g mango butter – could replace with shea but greasier
12g oils (could be replaced with grapeseed, sunflower?)
Vitamin E
And an even lighter conditioning formulation (6% beeswax):
3g BTMS-25
0.9g beeswax
3g coconut oil
8g oils (jojoba, argan, ..)
Vitamin E
Also, this guide is great for checking the effect of different percentages of beeswax. Basically:
50%: hard & sticky, doesn’t melt
33%: firm & not really sticky, melts slowly
25%: soft & not sticky, melts averagely
20%: not solid, melts averagely
17%: not solid, melts quickly
13%: not solid, melts very quickly
BTMS and any butters also affect the consistency. BTMS-25 is a more potent hardener than BTMS-50. The butters from soft to hard: coconut, mango, shea, cacao – this matters less at >10% wax. Of these, mango is the least greasy. Only coconut melts directly on skin contact, the others need some convincing.
I think I’d like to try the BTMS-50 & mango butter one, perhaps substituting coconut oil instaead.
My cheap AliExpress LED dimmers are noisy. Not audibly, but they output a lot of EMI (?).
One of my (triac?) dimmers has multiple Philips bulbs on it. When I turn it on, I can hear a loud chopping noise on my headphone amp.
Another dimmer is in the same socket as the amplifier for my speakers, and the cables run closely parallel to each other. When I use this dimmer, I can hear the same chopping noise on my speakers, and at a little lower volume I can hear it on my headphones too.
I’m thinking of modifying the dimmers by adding a coil to them. I’ve never used them before but I have a big box of de-soldered ones from when I first got a soldering iron and liked to disassemble things.
What I need, short of getting better dimmers, is probably a lamp debuzzing coil in series. There might not be enough space in the little dimmer modules to add an inductor, though. The dimmer running to multiple bulbs already has a junction box that I can put it in, so I can experiment with that one first. The coil should go on the load side (or at least not between the dimmer and the load).
I have no idea how to calculate the ideal inductance value, and I probably can’t even measure the inductance of the ones I have, so I should just experiment with a few different ones to see which solve the problem without affecting the dimming.
I’ve always had problems with my sleep schedule. It used to shift forward slightly every day, and sometimes invert – and sometimes I had big sudden shifts in my sleep rhythm. I also used to often wake up around 3 or 4 am. At one point I just gave up with trying to have 1 long sleep, and would do some reading in the middle of my sleep for an hour or two and that improved my sleep.
I think it 2021 when I read about polyphasic sleep and I did a rather strict period of siesta-ext (6h30m+1h20m) for about half a year. The adaptation took a while, but afterwards this was the best sleep consistency and quality I’ve ever had. This schedule is a little reducing for me, with about 8 hours of sleep where my natural monophasic sleep duration is closer to 9 hours on average.
I still try to stick to the siesta-ext schedule as much as possible, but I’m not strict with it at all any more. It can be hard to fit the afternoon “core” in and I’ve been moving towards a much longer night core. I’ve tried to do shorter naps when I can’t do a full afternoon core, but I still only manage an afternoon sleep just a few times per week. Lately, my sleep time has been shifting forward again too – I have flexible work times but now it’s getting a little out of hand.
I’m thinking of being a little stricter for a while again, to get to a Biphasic-X schedule where I do sleep twice every day. This schedule is very flexible, in that the night core can shift a bit, and the daytime nap can be anything from 10-90m in the afternoon.
I think it would be good for me to stick to the following for a while:
Strict bed time; always go to bed at 00:00. This is just to get back to a more stable rhythm
Wake up between 7 and 8, with an alarm at 8 if I haven’t gotten out of bed yet
Strictly nap every day, between 11:00 and 18:00
Nap: core (1h20m) if I can, nap (10m or 25m) if I can’t. No 25m nap between 16:00 and 18:00. Set alarm/timer to avoid in-between durations
This recipe with zinc ricinoleate & zinc – hard to get
Alcohol based: isopropanol? Might not be good for skin
Try to recreate my current deodorant based on Triethyl citrate (TEC) – probably about3-5%. Replace propylene glycol with glycerin like this product? Or this one? Formulations on Specialchem (or at least the ones without alcohol) have about 3% glycerin.
Some ingredients:
Glycerin
Triethyl citrate (TEC)
Xanthan gum? HEC?
Isopropanol?
pH buffer
I did find TEC (29%) in a product called dermosoft decalect deo MB, which also contains sodium caproyl/lauroyl lactylate (70%) and sage oil (1%). Specifically meant for deo. Maybe I’ll just buy that. At the recommended concentration of 0.5% however that’s only like 0.15% TEC though. Hm.
I want to make my own soap-free laundry detergents; one for wool wash and one for general laundry. The general one should use aggressive surfactants, the wool one must obviously be mild. I haven’t made any detergent before.
I’m starting off my research here at thethingswe’llmake, where they use liquid SLS, coco betaine, and decyl glucoside as surfactants, salt as a thickener, and preservatives. This looks like a great recipe for cotton and synthetics, but the SLS is too harsh for wool.
Wool is in some ways similar to human hair, and on hiking trips I’ve used my (CG) shampoo bar for washing my wool clothes. I think if ingredients are not CG, they are probably not good in a wool wash detergent too. Handwashing with mild shampoo seems to be considered safe.
Wool wash detergents typically contain:
Surfactants such as SCS, lauryl glucoside, and cocamidopropyl betaine – similar to some shampoos.
Emollients like lanolin (wool fat). Typically 0-1%, or 5-7.5% in lanolin replenishing formulations. However lanolin is probably not what I want, it’ll prevent moisture wicking of the garments.
pH adjusters such as citric acid – pH should be neutral to acidic (pH<4 can help preserve)
I guess I could just adjust the thethingswe’llmake formulation to use a milder anionic surfactant:
5% SCI – poorly soluble so mix with coco betaine first (melt the surfactant phase?)
5% Coco betaine
3% Coco glucoside
2% table salt
pH adjustment to pH 5-7 is ideal for wool, pH <5.5 is ideal for Geoguard, pH >6.0 is best for SCI because otherwise it will start to hydrolyse. Maybe another surfactant or preservative? Aim for pH 5.5-6.0 otherwise
I’m quite happy with my shampoo bar. However, it’s only available from 1 shop and they’ve been known to change their formulation.
The current formulation uses the following ingredients: SODIUM COCOYL ISETHIONATE, AQUA (WATER), GLYCERIN, COCAMIDOPROPYL BETAINE DODECANOIC ACIDS, PARFUM (FRAGRANCE), OLEA EUROPAEA (OLIVE) FRUIT OIL, SIMMONDSIA CHINENSIS (JOJOBA) SEED OIL, PRUNUS AMYGDALUS DULCIS (SWEET ALMOND) OIL, PERSEA GRATISSIMA (AVOCADO) OIL, CHONDRUS CRISPUS EXTRACT, URTICA DIOICA (NETTLE) EXTRACT, RUBUS IDAEUS (RASPBERRY) FRUIT EXTRACT.
The formulation clearly uses SCI in noodle/needle form to give the soap bar some texture, which really works well to get the soap into my hair so I want to replicate this. I’ll have to look up how to make a formulation without melting the SCI.
A similar recipe using SCI and Cocamidopropyl betaine can be found here although they use SCI powder. Also they add BTMS-25 which is what I already was going to get for my conditioner. Humblebeeandme also has a recipe including BTMS. Wait, this is what I was looking for! Humblebeeandme figured out how to leave the noodles intact. They use SCI/SCS/glycerin/oil instead of SCI/coco beatine/glycerin oil, and probably quite a bit less glycerin, but it’s close enough. The idea is that they use just enough water to dissolve the surfactants together but not enough to dissolve them completely. Alternatively, the secondary phase can be melted separately and mixed with the cold surfactants to melt them together but not melt them completely.
The 3 formulations I could find use about 90% surfactants, 2-4% humectant/binder, 4-6% oil.
Surfactants
Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate (SCI) noodles
Cocamidopropyl betaine
BTMS-25
Humectants / binders
Glycerin – in original formulation probably used to keep the bar from cracking
Hydrolyzed protein – but I don’t want protein
Agar
Carrageenan
Oils
I’d like to use some lighter oils than the Kruidvat bar:
Sunflower oil
Almond oil
Argan oil
Formulation
Taking the savvyhomemade formulation and the humblebeeandme one as inspiration, this is the formulation I would like to try:
