Teach Soap

I've tried to rebatch basic recipes several times and keep running into the same problem. It doesn't seem to melt smoothly. Before I thought it was because I was using older soap, but I just tried again with a 10 day old soap and it turned out the same. I grate the soap with a standard cheese grater, use a double broiler, low heat, and use 12 oz of soap shavings to 9 oz of water. The soap seems to start melting, turning into translucent blobs, but never truly melts smoothly. So in the end parts of it take on color and parts of it remain whitish, resulting in blobby looking bars. I must be doing something wrong because I'm getting the same results everytime. I appreciate any suggestions! Thank you!!

I've rebatched only two times and have had similiar results. No doubt: this will take some practice! But rebatched soap, from these two experiences alone and from what I've seen online, does not look pretty.

I have yet to see a nice looking bar of rebatched soap.

Check out Kathy Miller's Rebatching Page. There are tons of suggestions that Mrs. Miller has posted from many of her soapy-friends.

http://www.millersoap.com/re.html

Thanks! That website is very helpful! It had some good suggestions and it also made me feel alot better about my experiences. I'm not alone I think I'll try melting in the oven next time.

Rebatch soap will not be as smooth as CP. If I must rebatch, I use an oven cooking bag in a crock pot on low.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

We also use an oven broiling bag in a pot of water on the stove. Our rebatched bars are never as pretty as the originals, but when we add coffee grounds, herbs, oatmeal, dark f.o. or e.o. .... it comes out looking ok. We made a chunky bar soap that was kind of cute.



I put in 1/4 cup of vanilla extract when we rebatched, instead of water. The bars still got hard thank goodness. I've learned to use much less liquid when we rebatch (sometimes only 1 tablespoon!). My Lemon Flower bars never got hard, too much lemon juice!

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You can try the baggie method to color the soap. Just put your melted soap into a ziplock baggie with the colorant and squish away. You can squish any clumps out and get the color more even this way.

Rebatch is just different from other soaps though. It will never get totally thin and even when melting.

Patience and a heavy-duty ziplock have gotten me to love (well, like) rebatching. No, it will not ever be as smooth as CP, but I'm glad I can do it successfully now...

There's a tutorial on the Soap Queen Blog here: http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/search?q=rebatch!

Check out this link for the boil in a bag method of rebatching - with pics! I've done this successfully a couple of times and the rebatched soap looks quite smooth:
http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/r ... -soap.html.

Thanks so much everybody! The two books I have make it seem like making a plain basic recipe and then rebatching is the way that everybody does it. Now I see that's not the case! I'll definately start making my original batches more interesting and see if I can finally make a pretty bar of soap Thanks alot!