New project, lots of questions!

can you provide a link to the blog set up by Chris, I'm interested in crafting scents as well.....What does the Opoponax look like?


Max

Sounds like your opoponax might be a resin, or a resinoid that is undiluted/unliquified.

Probably, (Although someone could contradict me...) all the rest of your solids can be added to your perfume oil concentrate and left overnight to allow them to dissolve into your concentrate.

From hearsay, I haven't tried it yet--musk ketone will be difficult to dissolve. You need to choose the solvent carefully, I believe benzyl benzoate works, and stir for days (a magnetic stirrer is recommended). You can do a Basenotes search for more information.

I managed to dissolve 1 gram of Musk Ketone in 10 ml of Benzyl Benzoate within 8 hours, room temperature, shaken every 2 hours. Rather quick

My perfume formulation blog

Goodness! As that picture was taken last year around my 51st Birthday I'm either weathering rather well or you're being excessively flattering (if the latter please feel free to continue . . .)

Opopanax resinoid is normally rather like sticky toffee in consistency and should smell sweet and sticky too. It dissolves well in ethanol but is a fiddle to weigh out and needs lots of stirring. I find it best to weigh & tare the empty flask and spatula so that I can accurately weigh the stuff stuck to the spatula before adding ethanol and stirring until the spatula is clean. If I'm making more than a very small amount I'd then put it on an automatic stirrer to complete.


Vanillin and Ethyl vanillin are both very similar and will dissolve readily in ethanol or DPG - in the latter case you need a good deal of stirring, in ethanol it's not too difficult. You don't want too high a concentration, especially with ethyl vanillin, as they are strong.

Musk Ketone - I use benzyl benzoate and ethanol together (50/50) and find that works well to get a 10% solution you can work with. To get a higher concentration than 10% is very difficult and in my view not worth the effort.

Omega pentadecalocton is better known as Exaltolide (or Exaltolide Total - same chemical Exaltolide is at 98%, Exaltolide Total at 92% purity) and it is normally supplied as a single solid lump in the container. It will melt at about 50-60 ^oC so a hot water bath is the easiest way to get it liquified. At 50% or less in ethanol it stays an easy mobile liquid even in the fridge.

Iriswortel is orris - presumably you have the so called absolute (technically it's an essential oil) also called orris butter. This is most easily dissolved in IPM. It is the high myristic acid content that makes it solid and that is poorly soluble in ethanol and as orris is expensive you'll want to give it as much help as possible. Again gentle warming by sitting the bottle in a hot water bath will melt the material.

Sorry for the slow reply - all a bit hectic here at the moment - I'll see if I can give you some useful answers:

Technically what you are making are dilutions, rather than tinctures. It's a tincture when you put a whole material into alcohol to extract the aromatics from it.

There is a great deal of variability in strength and certainly vetiver is pretty strong. Galbanum, violet leaf absolute, lavender absolute and vanilla absolute are all pretty powerful naturals as well and I keep those at 1%. Lime is another one to watch out for as it's very easy to overdose, though I normally keep that at 10%.

With the spreadsheet you can use any units you like in the 'formula' column and it will multiply up or down to give the correct proportions. If you do that though the calculation for bottle size will be wrong so just ignore that.

You can get an approximately correct 10% dilution by putting 0.8g of solid into ~9ml of alcohol. Essentially measure 0.8g of solid into the bottle and top up to 10ml with alcohol (which will be roughly 8g of alcohol), approximate but adequate for your purpose I think.

Finally on the rose oil, I keep mine at 10% and it should not smell weak. Depending on where you got it it is possible yours has been adulterated. It is something where a little goes a long way in improving a blend, however if you want a noticeable rose note then you'll need more. To save money, especially to start with, I would recommend using a good, industry standard, rose recreation instead. Rose Givco and Dossinia are both good options (I have both, De Hekserij have the Dossinia SA E on their standard list and I think Perfumers Apprentice stock Rose Givco), of the two Rose Givco is cheaper and more immediately recognisably rose (it is a recreation of Turkish rose oil), Dossinia is a deeper, greener interpretation.

Hopefully that helps.

I hope that you don't mind me answering... ?

No, I can't recommend this scale because this scale will severely limit the scale of your formulations.

This is the scale I use and recommend:
http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/my...lance-101.html

Paul's right 10g capacity isn't enough. My scale has the same accuracy but will take 200g and I still find that quite limiting and therefore have lower accuracy, higher capacity scales that I use for manufacturing as distinct from blending.

Details of considerations are on the blog here where there are links to two that I recommend.

Sounds like you've got the raw, unprocessed natural material (resin) and not the solvent extracted perfume material (resinoid). You can still tincture it but you'd most likely have to strain it afterwards.

According to Arctander there is an Opopanax Resin produced which is that which remains after the essential oil is extracted from the resionoid. This is distinct from the Opopanax Resinoid (sometimes called absolute, technically incorrect by Arctander's definitions but widely used nevertheless) which is an alcoholic extraction of the crude oleo-gum-resin material including all the alcohol soluble elements (essential oil and resins, but not the gum part or the detritus - sand, dust, splinters etc present in the material when first collected) but with the alcohol used for the extraction subsequently recovered. This sometimes has a plasticiser added (and may then be sold as 'mobilised') to make it easier to use. Without this, the material may be hard, like toffee, at a cool room temperature.

BTW on spelling both Arctander and the OED give the spelling I've used as correct, though I notice that many, many suppliers use opoponax, I'm not sure why that should be.