These are long
posts to the soapbubblefanciers group on yahoo. I truly do
like the CRICKET HILL GIANT SOAP BUBBLING POWDER. At least,
that's accurate as of 9/6/2005. The timeline for the posts
goes from bottom (past) to top (most
recent)...
................................
Third
post.
From: "ribubbleguy"
Date: Wed Sep 7, 2005 2:48 am
Subject: Welcome Shane & my further thoughts about CHP.
(the soap not the cops) ribubbleguy
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
--- In soapbubblefanciers@yahoogroups.com, "Shane Odom"
wrote:
They are truely small, I think there is a
> husband, the chemist, wife and adult daughter,
Welcome Shane, nice to meet you.
Yes, I talked to the daughter and she told me her dad is
the chemist
who was hired by the folks who used to own CH to develop a
soap powder
to go with their wands. The original owners went on to sell
CH to the
chemist's family. I wish I could remember their names. Both
ladies
are very nice on the phone. I'd love to have a few minutes
on the
phone with chemist/Dad at some point. It really is some
fine stuff
they put out down there in FLA.
If you haven't tried this powder yet folks, please do. I
went through
my initial trial supply and received a few days ago my
first bulk
order. I only bought ten pounds but that was enough to get
it down to
under $5.00 a pound of soap. One pound makes a gallon as I
recall.
Could be wrong there.
I wonder Shane, are you using distilled water? And yes, as
an
experiment with my first batch I set a pint of it aside in
a sealed
container to see how it would age. I didn't notice a smell
but at the
end of the first week it was getting pretty thick and
pastey so I
chucked it after experimenting with further dilution. Which
didn't
work. But that's another cool thing about it. I can mix it
up (with
warm distilled water) and be good to go by the time the
water cools.
You know, when I was on my ORVUS detergent kick (pure
sodium lauryl
sulphate & water = horse wash) and then went onto my
EVAPORATION binge
(evaporating different commercial bubble solutions to see
if it would
tell me more about what was in them) I became convinced
that Mr.
Bubbles contained a better "thickener" than the rest. I
further
figured they all were using sodium lauryl sulphate because
of it's
prodigious bubbling character and the fact that as I
reacall it came
on the market in the ?50s? and quickly became "the thing"
used to make
stuff bubble. Would not a commercial soap bubble juice
producer a
decade or two later look for such a product that is cheap,
tested and
bubbles like mad when you only use a dab of it? Heck, the
DAWN people
used it!
So in the commercial solutions there's distilled water, of
course. A
surfactant (SLS?) a dash of glycerine because of it's
hygroscopicness
(plus it thickens a bit) but in my mind that really does
leave a
thickener as the last dash of something to make a
commercial bubble
juice recipe something to celebrate. (Unless you're
counting the
preservatives & PH balancers.) A "better" thickener in
Mr. B than in
Miracle B? The world may never know. But that will not halt
my
speculating.
Anyway, in the evaporation experiments I did, it seemed
like Miracle
bubbles dried out to be a gummy, lumpy stuff-which I assume
IS a gum
type thickener based on my short conversation with a soap
chemist.
Mr. B. evaporated down into a flat puddle of thick
glycerine residue
and what looked like wet powder. Which sent me into a "what
powders
are used for thickening things" hunt.
Long story made short, I landed on Hydroxyethylcellulose.
Another
tested, cheap, a little goes a long way chemical. Which I
come to
discover is also the main thickener used in those personal
lubes I so
enjoy adding into my mixes. (Of which Surgilube was the
first and
inspiration for the rest. KY was a knock off.) So I did a
search on
bubble formulas in the US patent online archives and...
nothing much.
I then decided to appeal to Hercules Corp for samples of
their
hydroxyethylcellulose, which they were nice enough to send
to me after
I convinced them I was working on a potentially comercial
bubble
formula. It ends up being a fine white baby powder looking
stuff.
I'm about to experiment blending just the SLS with the
hydroxy...
powder and a splash of glycerine to see what would
happen... That's
when I found this Cricket Hill powder on the web.
A bubbling powder I'm very fond of after a very short time
because it
has all of the qualities I would have been looking for in
my own test
formulas. It makes big but not giant bubbles in all kinds
of weather,
beating out most of my other test solutions by a third
again as much
life time. It's mostly odorless. Kind in the eye and on the
hand.
Doesn't burn grass. I believe it lacks all of the extra
chems that
come with dish detergent. Dry, it feels like a soap powder.
That is,
there's enough liquid in it so you can pack it like a
snowball. If
CHP *is* a blend of sls, hec, glys & perhaps shavings
of some other
kind of soap (shaving cream bar soap?) I wouldn't be
surprised.
Now, I worry that if I get hooked on this soap powder, and
this family
business goes bust, I'm going to be back to the old Mr. B.
troubles
all over again. I think if after a hundred pounds of it or
so, if I'm
still as infatuated with the powder as I am today - I'm
going to get a
second mortgage and buy a lifetime supply and be done with
it. Shane!
What's it's shelf life?
Oh, it's late! I hope the ramble didn't bore you to death.
But if
you made it this far, it wasn't all for naught. Bubble on!
Nite. Keith.
.............................................................
Response from
Shane Odom (Posted with permission.)
And now the most exciting part.
I have been using the Cricket Hill
products to display my wands outdoors for 4 years(?) It is
a
fabluous product and absolutely not a repackaged item. They
are a
small craft buisness in Florida. I believe the series of
event is
that the orginal formula was cooked up by the first guy in
the
Renaissance Faire scene to sell bubblewands. He was a
chemist and
his name escapes me. The Crickethill folks had a
relationship with
him, I believe a fellow chemist thing, and ended up buying
the
formula and producing it. They are truely small, I think
there is a
husband, the chemist, wife and adult daughter, who run the
plastics
mancf and shipping, and a couple of employees. I love that
when I
call she answers the office phone with the baby on her lap.
I was
real worried about them last year during the hurricanes in
Florida,
the were out for over a week.
I and another bubblewand maker I know have been using there
stuff.
We bubble in outdoors conditions, at street festivals over
hot
pavement in full sun, and I do it for 9 weekends at the Ren
Fest. MD
faire runs from August through Oct. From hot and humid to
dry and
dusty, well actually, it's always dusty. We hand bubble
with it
constantly, doing double bubble tricks, pulling them apart,
doing
pass throughs with our fingers and lots of other tricks.
Our wands
are not decorative, they are all about the bubble. We have
a
doublebubble wand that makes 2-3 footers with multiple
bubbles
inside, and our wands are made of wire, with no "tooth" to
them to
hold the soap. Through it all, Crickethill come through.
When we do
get really dry weather, or dusty, yep, the bubbling goes
down abit.
We will add...more powder. This will thicken it back up and
gives us
more bubbling. 8 hours a day. We go through 3 gals of soap
a day and
sell upwards of 30 packages of it. I believe that part of
the
formula is cellulose based. It is really ph balanced. Very
little
eye burning when in contact, and won't kill grass. Also,
they have
created it to biodegrade and after a couple of days,
without proper
storage it will begin to stink a bit. I like this, means it
will
disperse quickly in environment. So that is my rant, I
really don't
work for CricketHill, just a really happy customer and
professional
bubbler. I have to call them today and order a rush soap
delivery
and will ask some questions.
Thank you all for doing this board, and please excuse the
length of
my rant. Much peace to all, Rainbow Colored Bubble
Blessings,
Shane and Leah Odom
Miscellaneous Oddiments LLC
Sculptural Leather Masks and Flying Rainbow
Bubblewands.
.....................................
second
post
--- In
soapbubblefanciers@yahoogroups.com, Sterling Johnson
wrote:
> Keith: does the "Ri" before bubbleguy stand for "rich"
or "ribald" or
> "rimshot" or "righteous" or ......?
Keith from Rhode Island responds... You were RIght each
time!
BTW
I emailed with someone who uses the Cricket Hill Powder
regularly.
Barry the Bubbleman. Actually he's the guy who owns the
Forget Me Not
Store that sells it. As he's trying to sell the stuff, I'm
sure he
wouldn't mind if I passed along his enthusiasm for the
product.
Here's a picture of him bubbling...
http://www.forgetmenotfactory.com/WhatsNew/Whats_new_with_bubbles.htm
Here's what he had to say...
...."Greetings Keith,
You will discover that this product is absolutely
outstanding. As you
will see in the formula you can stretch the volume by
adding the Ultra
Dawn- power-plus or Ajax- the new flavored red grapefruit
is also a
nice additive since it smells so nice.
In addition to making bubbles I enjoy looking at them thru
light
blaster glasses ( holographic film breaks light into a
spectrum ). I
also sell these glasses for $1.50 a piece. This would be
fabulous if
you could get a large enough to place <<I think he
meant piece-k.j.>>>
in front of you while demonstrating bubble magic.
I will definitely check out your website. Thanks again for
your interest.
Barry The Bubbleman"......
Along with the powder he sends out a tip sheet, including
his
stretching the solution with dish detergent. Fun! I can't
wait to
try it.
When I called down to Cricket Hill, they did call back a
day later,
perhaps because I gave them my 800#?, anyway, I talked to
the owner's
daughter (I think) as the owner wasn't there to answer my
questions
she suggested I call back in a few days. There was a
vacation
involved or something. She said many of the questions I had
would be
better answered by waiting to talk to "the chemist", but it
was her
understanding this is a very popular product on the
"bubbling at
(county) fairs and (regional) festivals" type markets. Do
you think
this means entertainers getting hired to make bubbles or
bubblers
getting hired to provide juice and wands for kids to make
bubbles? Is
anyone here familiar with how that goes? She also said that
many
folks buy the powder by the pound-bulk, rather than in the
smaller
amounts.
Once again their site is:
www.crickethilltoys.com
......................................
First
post
Hello all,
It's Keith (former mcejohnson now RiBubbleguy), I finally
sprung for
my own free yahoo address.
A while ago Tom or Sterling was asking about bubble blowing
powder to
add to water. I've stumbled across two sites that mention
it. It's
marketed by crickethilltoys.com, but also is available from
the other
site below. I plan on ordering some and will let you know
how it
goes. It's sold along with large style wands, hopefully
that means
it's stout stuff. We'll see. I don't hold out much hope...
The links...
www.forgetmenotfactory.com/Bubbles/bubbleland_accessories.htm
www.crickethilltoys.com