Titanium Dioxide is not whitening

[Oceangazer1]

I need some help from the experts. :smiley2: I purchased 4ozs of TD at a local soap shop here in Florida. I have added the recommended amount to my lye water in one batch and tried some in my oils in another batch and also mixed it in glycerin...at any rate it is not whitening my oils. This is Before I add any fo. I don't know what is wrong. I emailed her and I'm doing what she suggests. Can you tell me how to use it so I get a white soap? Thank you!!:smiley2:

[soapbuddy]

What color are your oils or butters? Some are harder to get white.

[Oceangazer1]

What color are your oils or butters? Some are harder to get white.

I use olive, coconut, palm, sweet almond, sometimes grape seed, but not usually, shea or mango butter.

[MissMori]

How off white is your cured soap base without any fragrances or TD? None of the oils you listed will give you a stark white soap.

How much TD are you using?

How much olive and palm are in your formula?

Are you gelling?

Is your TD stark white? Is it water or oil soluble? Are you 100% certain it is TD? I ask, because I recently had a supplier send me something that was mislabeled.

If nothing works, it just won't work. You may have to reformulate your base using fats/oils that give a whiter soap and then give it the last push to bright white with TD.

[Oceangazer1]

How off white is your cured soap base without any fragrances or TD? The TD doesn't change the oil color at all. How much should I add and how?

None of the oils you listed will give you a stark white soap.

How much TD are you using? The recommended amount is 1/4-1/2 teas. so that's what I have been trying

How much olive and palm are in your formula? I'm not good with math, so I will give you my recipe. Lately I have been using a 1lb to test for myself 1oz fo's.

Here is my recipe...it varies depending on what I have on hand.

Olive Oil 4.8ozs

Palm Oil 4.4ozs

Coconut Oil 2.5ozs.

Veg Shortening 4.7ozs

Sweet Almond Oil or grapeseed, or castor (mostly sao) 1.4ozs

Lye 2.5ozs

Water 5.9ozs

Also I use mango or shea butter sometimes...and put it through the lye calculator

Are you gelling? Yes and sometimes I HP, but I only tried the TD in CP.

Is your TD stark white? Yes

Is it water or oil soluble? Oil

Are you 100% certain it is TD? Yes..spoke to the owner and emailed.

I ask, because I recently had a supplier send me something that was mislabeled.

If nothing works, it just won't work. You may have to reformulate your base using fats/oils that give a whiter soap and then give it the last push to bright white with TD.

Thanks for the help.

[MissMori]

Looking at your formula, I'm going to guess it's a combination of the olive, palm and grape seed. You have over 59% oils that are not white or colorless. Coconut isn't really white either, but much lighter in color than olive or grape seed, a bit lighter than palm. Are you using EVOO, pomace or a "light" olive oil? I was making ghosts this week and switched out my pomace for a light olive oil, because of the color... I too wanted a white soap.

You can up your TD to 1 tsp per pound oils. I wouldn't do much more than that. Too much and your soap will be chalky.

Does this soap get hard and lather? I ran it through SoapCalc, because I'm not going to do math either. It comes back at 36 for hardness and 10 for bubbly.

[Oceangazer1]

Looking at your formula, I'm going to guess it's a combination of the olive, palm and grape seed. You have over 59% oils that are not white or colorless. Coconut isn't really white either, but much lighter in color than olive or grape seed, a bit lighter than palm. Are you using EVOO, pomace or a "light" olive oil? I was making ghosts this week and switched out my pomace for a light olive oil, because of the color... I too wanted a white soap.

You can up your TD to 1 tsp per pound oils. I wouldn't do much more than that. Too much and your soap will be chalky.

Does this soap get hard and lather? I ran it through SoapCalc, because I'm not going to do math either. It comes back at 36 for hardness and 10 for bubbly.

It's extra virgin...so it's darker. How should I add the TD? Not to lye water, but to the oils...when before or after trace? I have tried both.. My soaps later very well...they are not rock hard but the cp one's are only up to 10 days old. I just started back doing this again, but I was never really good at it.

Do you have a simple bubbly recipe that is lighter in color I could try? For now I want to keep it local oils...such as olive, shortening, castor, coconut. I'm not using grape seed right now. Also, I don't want to use lard. I'm mostly a vegetarian.

[Stella1952]

Another factor could be the FOs or EOs you are using. Vanilla, for example, turns soaps a dark tan or brown. Vanilla stabilizer helps with that. Some FOs I use (nag champa comes quickly to mind) change the white color dramatically over a few weeks, even when TD is used. I add dyes right before it's time to pour and add the FOs or EOs to the oils.

[Oceangazer1]

Another factor could be the FOs or EOs you are using. Vanilla, for example, turns soaps a dark tan or brown. Vanilla stabilizer helps with that. Some FOs I use (nag champa comes quickly to mind) change the white color dramatically over a few weeks, even when TD is used. I add dyes right before it's time to pour and add the FOs or EOs to the oils.

Thanks Stella...I've been using FO's with very little vanilla except for the BRV soaps I did the other day and they are almost all dark even though I swirled with a lighter color. You can use vanilla stabilizer and TD? How much stabilizer and when do I add it? My family is going to have a lot of soap soon...I need to slow down and learn more.

[Scented]

You shouldn't need TD with BRV. At least in the three kinds I soaped, TD wasn't needed.

Here's how I mess with TD. If you have water soluable, put it in a cup and had a little water (very little actually). If it's oil soluable, then pull a little bit of oil from your melted oils and dissolve it in that. I use roughly between 1/4 to 1/2 tsp (probably closer to 1/2). When the soap is made, I pull off about 1/4 cup and mix it. After I have pulled other colors, I will add the TD to what's left and mix it. Two nights ago I had a yellow batch going (w/o) adding yellow. I used the TD and I have a creamy white or slightly off white color, which is a relief. The yellow wasn't going to go with my other colors.

One thing to remember about TD, it will affect all colors in your batch unless you separate it. Sometimes it can totally alter the initial color and sometimes it makes a color better.

[Stella1952]

Your issue intrigued me ('cause I am often surprised by "disappearing white"), so I went a-studying. I came upon these color tests at MMS... scroll down for the white one...

http://blog.thesage.com/category/color-in-products/

Nature's Garden says they have a vanilla stabilizer that really works well in CP soap (not all is for CP - some is for M&P)... read down in that page because the results are varied...

http://www.naturesgardencandles.com/candlemaking-soap-supplies/item/vawhite

Vanilla stabilizers in general are not a panacea - they don't last forever and eventually the soap becomes darker anyway...

http://thesoapmagician.blogspot.com/2011/01/question-about-vanilla-stabilizers.html

Perhaps you might be better off with another white colorant than the straight TD you have... I've also found zinc oxide and calcium carbonate used as whiteners...

It would be a good idea for you to mess around with different formulas and oils (I love to play on SoapCalc) so you can test which ones will be whiter than others, depending on the ingredients.

FO has a big impact on the color of soap - and it's NOT just vanillia scents that cause trouble, so keep this in mind... This issue makes me want to test each soap formula without FO first so I can see what it looks like before coloring and fragrancing... how dreary does that sound... :undecided

[curlycoat2]

I too have the same issue with titanium dioxide not whitening as much as I want or expect. In the end I went to micas, it seems to work better for me and I don't have the td crackling issue either. I use olive oil at 50%.

jo

[soapbuddy]

Try the lightest color olive oil that you can find. That should make the soap lighter.

[MissMori]

What soapbuddy said right above. I posted above that for white soaps I was making earlier in the week I ditched the pomace I normally use for a "light" olive oil, it was labeled as "light tasting" olive made by Bertolli. I did use TD to get it whiter, at about 3/4 tsp per pound oils.

More bubbles... up your coconut to about 20%, reduce olive and palm equally. Substitute castor for the sweet almond oil.

Check the ingredients in your vegetable shortening. The new Crisco is a mix of palm and soybean oils. Not my favorite to use. It may be better to use coconut, palm, olive, castor and shea butter. You know exactly what is in each and can control the qualities of the resulting soap more easily.

If you have a scale that gives you the option of weighing in grams, you should switch over. By switching to grams, you will reduce your margin of error significantly.

[Oceangazer1]

Wow...thank you everyone for the very helpful posts and advise. I went to walmart today and bought the light olive oil, more crisco, I am out of palm and don't want to reorder right now, until I get more acquainted with soaping. Plus my scale went on me after several years of use and I threw it out. Wasn't acting accurate at all. Thank goodness I was pouring wax testers. I am so familiar with amounts that I could do without the scale for that for tonight. I couldn't do that with soaping at all. With the left over extra virgin OO I'm going to make castile soap with it.

I'm also finding out that my soap recipe is too soft. Even in my HP I can indent it after 2 weeks cure. Now that I am looking a the recipes for harder bars here I see what I maybe doing wrong. I was going for more moisturizing, but they just don't seem to be hardening as much as they should, Unless I am being too impatient again. That is Always a possibility with me. lol.

I've been trying to learn the SoapCalc and omgosh...you've got to be kidding. I'm terrible with it. It's so confusing. As far as a scale goes, I may order KD7000.

[Stella1952]

I'm also finding out that my soap recipe is too soft. Even in my HP I can indent it after 2 weeks cure

What's your water percentage? If you are soaping at the default 38%, you might try lowering that to 35 or even 33 and see if that helps. Some soaps DO start out awful soft, but eventually harden up over time... When using SoapCalc, look at the hardness number (right column) of your formula... you can also look at the left column which shows the numbers for each individual oil... Keep playing with it - eventually it begins to make sense, honest! HTH

PS I just bought my first can of GV Shortening from WalMart. It is beef tallow and palm based... I think I will like the results from it better than the new Crisco with the soybean oil + palm... crossing my fingers!

[Oceangazer1]

What's your water percentage? If you are soaping at the default 38%, you might try lowering that to 35 or even 33 and see if that helps. Some soaps DO start out awful soft, but eventually harden up over time... When using SoapCalc, look at the hardness number (right column) of your formula... you can also look at the left column which shows the numbers for each individual oil... Keep playing with it - eventually it begins to make sense, honest! HTH

PS I just bought my first can of GV Shortening from WalMart. It is beef tallow and palm based... I think I will like the results from it better than the new Crisco with the soybean oil + palm... crossing my fingers!

I use the calculator on BB's site...it's easier for me. lol I have never been good with numbers so the candlemaking and soapmaking and Silicone moldmaking thing makes it hard on me. If and When I can't figure something out, I go to my husband, who is a math whiz. Go figure. lol. But he has been too busy lately to help me with soapcalc.

I was looking at the GV shortening with beef tallow, but I like vegan. lol. So I bought the new Crisco. I have to up the hardness oils big time. I will check the % of my water and post later.