Degum Silk with Natural Soap

After diving into the world wide web of information, I found lots of information for degumming silk cocoons.  I'll share some research first then dive into my experiments with naturally degumming my cocoons.

Wormspit recommends an alkaline and a surfactant: Arm & Hammer All Natural Super Washing Soda and Orvus paste.  If you keep reading, you learn that Orvus paste is pure sodium lauryl sulfate.  I've been eliminating products with SLS in my house for years so NO WAY am I going to buy it now.  Other sites recommend baking soda with lye OR natural soap, but none of them offered a recipe that suited me.  They would leave out the amount of water or cocoons relative to the amount of chemicals.  I particularly enjoyed the chart and the natural soap instructions from Textile Today.

Here we go with Experiment #1:
a non-reactive pot (I used glass)
6 cups of water
15 grams of fels-naptha by Purex
30 silk cocoons
no washing soda

The bar of soap does warn that it is an eye and skin irritant and since I simmered it for an extended period of time, I can say I got a headache.  I highly recommend using it outside!

cocoons, soap, and grated/diced soap ready for the pot


I added all the ingredients and stirred while heating and kept the temperature around 180F for about 1.5 hours.  I highly recommend stirring gently and very occasionally.  

in the begining: ensure each cocoon is full of water/soap mixture


cocoons are softening


these cocoons are overcooked and oversitred - they tangled with each other



Lessons Learned:

Over-stirring causes the cocoons to become one giant mass instead of distinct cocoons.

Do NOT play with cocoons while they are hot.  After 1.3 hours, I picked up one cocoon and kept lifting and all of them lifted out of the pot. Silk tangles easily when all the sericin is gone.

next time: remove the exterior (loose) silk off the cocoon

30 cocoons and frame on left; hanky on the right


Sources:

Degumming by WormSpit (Orvus paste and washing soda)

Textile Today shares about Silk and its Degumming Process (natural soap)

An Instructable called Silk spinning for lazy people goes into the degumming process (lye & baking soda)

YouTube Search shows that lots of people have made a video on Degumming Silk Cocoons

Here we go with Experiment #2:
a non-reactive pot (I used glass)
6 cups of water
15 grams of fels-naptha by Purex
15 grams washing soda
~70 silk cocoons (the rest of the one-ounce package)


I removed the loose silk and the small section of the cocoon that had been mostly cut off.




This time the cocoons were done processing in about 20 minutes.


The washing soda really sped up the cooking time and the cocoons were so soft that I chose not to rinse them.  


This left a film on each cocoon which resulted in a stiff hanky instead of the soft hanky that was the result of experiment #1.  As the wash water cooled it became gelatinous.  


The two hankies on the left are from experiment #2 (they are stiff - like pressed cardboard) and the hanky next to the cap is from experiment #1 (it is soft and whispy).

I would recommend rinsing and using much less washing soda,pi perhaps 2-3 grams to see how that affects the silk.