SD conditioner try #7, lucky #7

For this attempt, I decided to strip it right down. After the 6th failure, I'd started asking the internet for help. My prior research had not turned up enough to let me succeed, so I came out of my introvert hamster ball for a few minutes to see if other humans could help me. One helpful individual suggested I leave out the preservatives until I have something stable. That was a good idea and I decided to leave out all the fancy things too. The same person mentioned pH, and that got me to thinking that I hadn't been calculating the neutralization ratio for the SD for each recipe (1 part citric acid to 5.88 parts SD, theoretically), rather I had been picking a recipe and modifying one ingredient at a time... which is a good approach if your foundation is solid, but otherwise potentially useless.

I also went back to putting the SD in the oil phase, because, if you recall, back in that first attempt I did get emulsification doing that, until I added the cool-down ingredients.

So my bare-bones recipe was as follows:

A
81.8 g water
0.6 g citric acid

B
6 g cetearyl alcohol
3 g stearamidopropyl dimethylamine

Heated and held. Mixed. Emulsification was very thin. I added an additional 0.4 g of citric acid after checking the pH (was about 5.5) to total 1% citric acid. It thickened! Really nicely!

Relishing my modicum of success, I left it for 24 hours, using it in the shower that evening. It felt fine, though of course I missed my 'cones. The next day, it was still together and still as thick as Greek yogurt so I decided to be reckless and add things to it. I had just received a shipment with some powdered Germall Plus in it, so I thought I'd try that, so in went 0.14 g. Everything looked fine. Added 1.5 g of liquid panthenol and stirred it up. It didn't thin! I'd gotten a new fragrance oil too that I was loving, so I put in 0.2 g of Crafter's Choice citrus and sage fragrance... that was all I needed! It's actually not an in-your-face fragrance, very soft and fresh at the same time, but you don't need much. It was fine! Aaaah! It is still fine 2 days later! So exciting!

Now all I have to do is get the silicones in there and I'll have what I want! I may have to do another batch for that, since I've read that the dimethicone should go in the heated oil phase and the cyclomethicone should go in immediately following emulsion.

YAY!